NPR‘s entertainment and pop culture blogger Linda Holmes covers the 2013 ICCA Finals. We think she nails it:

“This is a whole genre of performing that’s still fighting the perception that it’s affably goofy, and at least this year, in this competition, it pushed back hard in favor of a much darker brand of music than it’s sometimes embraced in the past.”

” … everybody is so talented and capable, but they’re engaged in a sort of battle to the death to pull this very niche-y subculture either toward half-joking and crowd-pleasing or toward the desire to be taken seriously, and it’s not clear at all who’s winning.”.

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