Down The Rabbit Hole: The Barbershop Domino Effect

Written by 2025 AVP Barbershopper of the Year, Jose Salgado Torres

A somber atmosphere took over my home, Puerto Rico, in September 2017. Amidst a category 5 hurricane that brought destruction the likes my island had not seen in years, I found myself working my regular day job as a front desk agent for La Concha Hotel and Resort. A significant number of people were stranded for days until the capital could authorize flights in and out of Puerto Rico, and a lot of those people were staying in hotels. Even staff members such as I had to stay in the hotel, as the environment around us created natural barricades of fallen trees and not so natural cement rubble from buildings that were badly damaged due to the hurricane. Luckily, I had my bag ready with my contingency kit and, luckily, that included my laptop with my new game: Cuphead.

Cuphead is a game with an old-school vibe, a run and gun that takes inspiration from the cartoons of the golden era of American animation. The music of the game, like the hand drawn animations that comprise it, also fits the era Cuphead successfully goes back to, with a plethora of different jazz and big band instrumentals that would transport you back to a time where the family would just sit together and watch TV, or when you would wake up late on Saturday to watch the morning cartoons. The main theme of the game particularly stands out because, unlike the other tracks within the game, it was a simple yet charming a cappella tune: a barbershop quartet chart, to be specific. 

Needless to say, the song is an earworm. It would not leave my head while I played, worked, or went about my day. After everything that transpired around us at the time, it was a welcomed distraction. 

As I continue to progress in the game, I find these three characters standing in front of the entrance to the next level. They were these three animated barbershop poles, and they were sad because their fourth member was lost. The trio asks you to find their fourth and, if you do, they offer you a reward. Gameplay wise, it was pretty easy to find the final member of the quartet. But after you find them, they sing you this song, in the key of B flat:

Music has been embedded in me since I was in the womb. Mom was the director of the church ministry of music and all my family either sings or plays an instrument. I also learned to sing and play guitar at a young age and have had the opportunity to participate in different choruses, bands, ensembles; you name it. I especially enjoy harmonizing and how the sound created by instruments or voices coming together makes you feel complete, like putting a puzzle together to finalize a beautiful picture. I've known about barbershop for a long time but all I had seen was just the traditional outfits and quirky songs they would show on mainstream shows; a lot of the time making jokes at the expense of the craft that I now love. Cuphead made me curious to find out at least a bit more of the style, so I started asking questions. First one I asked: Who is the quartet that sang in the game? This is where the digging around started for me, not knowing the Barbershop Rabbit Hole was just a few steps away.

I journeyed into the barbershop world to find the quartet 'Shoptimus Prime. SP was credited for singing the songs I heard in Cuphead. I searched for some of their other performances and found this video of them singing at the Barbershop Harmony Society International competition back in 2015:

Not only did I think it was hilarious, what caught my attention was the fact that they used the rhythm of the intro for the show Family Guy to set up the rest of the chart. Hearing that got me thinking, what other songs can I find that fit nicely into the style? I grew up being a Beatles fan, for example, so would I be able to find something from The Beatles, but sung by a barbershop quartet? As it turns out, yes you can. 

What is funny is that I had no clue that the ones singing the tune above were International quartet gold medalist Realtime until just recently, when I wanted to see if the video I heard all the way back in 2017 was still up on Youtube. This rendition of the classic Beatles tune made me want to form a quartet together to try and sing it, just for the fun of it. I did get a group of friends together, but it did not pan out. Not knowing where to start was definitely the first hurdle, but the barbershop style is not something you hear often in Puerto Rico, if at all. It was sad when I started looking at the BHS website, hoping that maybe there was at least a small chapter I could join in my island, but the search did not bear any fruit. However, that did not stop me from enjoying a bunch of different performances I found online, including my introduction to The Newfangled Four quartet and consequently, Clay Hine arrangements.

The vast majority of the quartets I enjoyed while I continued my descent into the Barbershop Rabbit Hole were comedy inclined. I listened a lot to quartets like FRED and Main Street, and my appreciation for the art continued to grow as time went on. I started becoming a fan, tried to follow the international competition, looked for more songs and more quartets. It got to the point where the third question I asked was not something that formed in my head, but rather something that I realized you could do in barbershop: sing a powerful ballad.

I attribute Instant Classic’s rendition of How Could I Ever Know as the reason why I fell in love with barbershop. To this day it is my favorite barbershop ballad and performance of all time. You feel the raw emotion from the quartet from the breath at the edge. The chart crescendoes into a climactic combination of harmony, then sits in the unwavering silence that takes over the room, before finishing in a melancholic tag that brings back memories of the families and friends that lost everything to the hurricane that hit Puerto Rico a decade ago. It is a song about loss and about understanding that it is okay for you to feel this way when your loved one is gone. It is a chart that made me realize that Barbershop was more than just a hokey schtick in a TV series. To me, it is more than just music. Barbershop is emotion, energy, fun, bliss; it is art, and it is something that I want and need in my life until the day I lay to rest.

After years of following quartets and listening to so many wonderful performances from quartets and choruses, the possibility of being able to join a chapter from the Barbershop Harmony Society felt like an Impossible Dream; a bucket list item that would not be crossed off. My whole life was in Puerto Rico. The idea of leaving everything behind to start over in a new place is terrifying. I kept doing music and honing my skills as an instrumental and vocal arranger in the hopes that maybe one day the stars would align and point me in the direction of four part harmony. Then one day, out of the blue, my now fiancee texts me. She got a job offer in Atlanta, GA and she was going to take it and move in the summer. We talk about what the future holds for the both of us and she mentions “Hey, why don’t you look for music groups in the Georgia area?”

This lead me to investigate and in that search, made me ask the final question I write today:

Atlanta Vocal Project… What is that?

This testimonial is part of a series of recently joined members sharing their stories and what this chorus means to them.