I found this video of two guys dressed as nerds trolling people with their beatboxing skills. At first, I thought the video was fake, but after doing a bit of digging it turns out that not only is it real, anyone can do it given enough practice.
Check out the video!
For those of you who don’t know, beatboxing is the art of creating music using only your mouth, that’s all, nothing else. You will be amazed the kind of sounds the human mouth can make, its unbelieveable. Ever made funny sounds to make your friends laugh? Combine it with a rhythmic beat and that’s beatboxing, Pretty simple, right? You can create a simple beat right now by repeating the phrase “boots in cats in” with emphasis on the “b” in boots and the “c” in cats. As you are comfortable with this you can add more sounds to it, like clicks and even a whistle if you want to.
Turns out, Beatboxing began all the way back in the 1980s on the streets of New York City as a subculture of Hip-Hop. This was a time when drum machines and synthesizers were not very affordable. Samplers were well out of reach even for well-paid musicians. So without machine-supplied beats to rap over, people began imitating machines that make these drum sounds. And thus human beatboxing was born. Now, beatboxing has become a global phenomenon enjoyed by millions internationally.
In India, Beatboxing only recently began picking up interest. The beatboxing community in India is still considered as a niche audience and is far from being as popular as other music styles like EDM or Dubstep. Despite that, the effort of these beatboxing artists has made a considerable following for Beatboxing in India, which is now growing at a rapid rate.
Beatboxing made its debut in India’s mainstream music scene with the launch of Voctronica, India`s first beatboxing orchestra. Ten beatboxers were chosen among the best to form this band.They were part of an eight-day training workshop in Mumbai in January, 2012 and eventually toured across India and in Britain in the first half of 2012 as India’s first ever locally bred beatboxing troupe.
Their story is documented brilliantly in this video :-
Four years later and 2016 was a historic year for the Indian beatbox community as India’s very first beatboxing competition was held called “India’s Beatbox Championship”. Top 32 Indian beatboxers among 400 were selected to land in Kohima, Nagaland at the Hornbill Music Festival venue to battle for the top spot at the first ever Indian national beatbox championship.
Beatboxing skills were at the highest levels as the top 16 were selected at the elimination round and then the battle rounds began where each beatboxer went head to head 60 second rounds of beatboxing till the finals. The final battle ended with Bhavesh from Mumbai being crowned India’s first beatbox champion.
This championship was one of the biggest beatbox gathering in the country so far both in terms of participation and viewership, and hopefully, will continue to inspire the art and culture of beatboxing by bringing together the best beatboxers in India.
Beatboxing is still in its infancy in India and is not as popular as in Europe and America, making it harder to commercialize oneself as a beatboxer here. The only way to make your presence known is to be part of communities of hip hop artists and beatboxers, and hope to god that your big break comes from somewhere. Nevertheless, Beatboxing is on its way to becoming one of the most recognized music styles in the country.
If you love beatboxing, these 3 indian beatboxers will take your breath away, literally :-
1) Capella cover of Ed Sheeran’s song by Voctronica:
2) Presentation of Beatboxing at Spectrum college fest by Prayatna Jain a.k.a TheBeatMachine:
3) Indian beatboxers Vineeth Vincent and Vineeth Kumar at TedXTirupathi:
About The Author
Pratik is a happy go lucky art and music enthusiast. When he’s not busy thinking of marketing ideas, he dabbles in reading books and exploring new music.