The Intrinsics Bring The Soul

“When you hear a band playing soul music, you just come alive,” Rachel S. Horn ’14 says. As bandleader and saxophone player for The Intrinsics, a Harvard soul-funk band, Horn identifies the genre as a significant part of her life—a sentiment many of the other band members share. Founded this year, The Intrinsics evolved out of The Nostalgics, a student band that played for three years until a majority of their members graduated last year. Horn, a former member of The Nostalgics, teamed up with Intrinsics co-bandleader Ethan I. Simon ’16 to continue the legacy. “Everybody wanted to keep soul music alive on campus,” Horn says. “So this year I decided to join up with Ethan and make this happen.”

Composed of ten band members, The Intrinsics combine vocalists, horns, percussion, and strings to produce an energetic, buoyant sound. The band covers a wide range of musical legends, including Sam & Dave, Michael Jackson, Eddie Floyd, and Prince, as well as contemporary artists like Justin Timberlake and Bruno Mars, but always in their signature soulful style. Soul is far from a traditional college band genre, but it is precisely this rarity that helps The Intrinsics stand out. “There’s certain levity to [soul] music,” Simon says. “The typical college campus has all these musical acts…but the niche that isn’t filled is…soul.” Baritone saxophone player John B. Tournas ’16 agrees: “[College campuses have] mostly rock bands, but you can’t really beat music that is engineered to dance.”

The band’s large scale does present challenges. For a genre replete with improvisational embellishments and auxiliary sounds, orchestrating the instruments to create the right sonic qualities becomes more difficult. “For the kind of music we play, the tempo has to be just right to make the music gel,” vocalist Nadia L. Urrea ’17 says. According to Horn, it is also logistically difficult to fit everyone’s schedules together; gigs for which all of the band members are available are few and far between. Simon adds that a large group requires a more controlled approach from the bandleaders, which sometimes takes away from the autonomy found in smaller bands. Regardless, for the members of The Intrinsics, the results more than make up for any challenges. “We have a lot of different perspectives, and we get a great sound,” Horn says. Urrea agrees: “We have a lot of instrumentation, but it creates this brassy, festival, party sound that’s really exciting.”

When asked about their favorite gig in the band’s short history, most members of the group point to their performance at this year’s Hootfest, the pre-Yardfest party thrown by The Owl. “It was the band’s best gig musically, and it was the best crowd we played for,” singer and trombonist Jeremy S. Sabath ’16  says. “It was beautiful out, so everybody was having a great time—people dancing, people singing, people chanting, people jumping up and down…. What really makes a gig come alive is when the musicians and the crowd are part of the whole performance.”

As the academic year comes to a close, Horn, who will be graduating, expresses excitement for the future of The Intrinsics. “[The other members have] got a good two years in them,” she says, referencing the fact that most of the band’s members are still underclassmen. “People are starting to recognize our name, and that opens up a huge amount of possibilities.” Urrea hopes to start picking up gigs outside of the Harvard bubble and expand the group’s audience base. Sabath agrees: “The band has a lot of potential to make some noise, literally and figuratively.”