The MSU Marching Band sings the fight song on Oct. 22, 2014, at the Spartan Statue. The band came out to show support for Sparty Watch. Raymond Williams/The State News
This year MSU is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Fight Song by creating the first ever Spartan Virtual Choir, and the university is asking the MSU community to be a part of it.
A "Share Your Voice" video published on the MSU website July 1 asked viewers to record a video of themselves singing along to the MSU Fight Song and then upload the recording to www.msu.edu/fightsong. The idea came from a TEDx video about a virtual choir Big Ten Network associate producer and manager of MSU Photography and Videography Kevin Epling watched last fall.
As for MSU associate vice president for Alumni Relations Scott Westerman, he said the university has been thinking of a unique video to make ever since the popular lip dub videos started to come out, such as the one Grand Valley State University did in 2010. And with the 100th anniversary of the MSU Fight Song coming up, the idea fell right into place.
The MSU Fight Song was composed by cheerleader Francis Irving Lankey at Michigan Agricultural College in 1915, and most of the words were written by Lankey's friend, fellow MAC student Arthur Sayles.
"When those (videos) started to come out, we wanted to think of something unique," Westerman said. "And we couldn't think of anything better than having people sing the song that they love so much."
However, they didn't want to just copy the other videos.
"We wanted to make something bigger and better at MSU," Westerman said.
And for the last several months, Epling, Westerman and a team of people at MSU, have been working together to make the Spartan Virtual Choir a reality. Within an hour of releasing the "Share Your Voice" video July 1, Epling said they were already seeing submissions start to pour in. It's combining those submissions into the finished product that will be the hard part, he said.
The deadline to submit recordings is August 12, so those creating the final video will have enough time to bring together the hundreds of voices into one performance by the time fall semester starts. When the video is complete, Epling said he hopes to be able to show the video at football games and alumni events. He also said he hopes it will go viral.
"Everybody knows the MSU Fight Song ... we have a great Spartan fan base worldwide," Epling said. He emphasized that one of the goals of this video is to get submissions from different places all over the world.
"Alumni young and old; we're going to have everyone from your grandparents to recent graduates," Epling said. "Everybody has a voice in this. That's going to be the magic of the editing ... trying to get all those voices into one video."
