SOUVIK CHAKRABORT Y
Beat boxing has essentially become a synergy of mouth, lips,
tongue, and voice to produce impeccably realistic music for
the ears, that is hard to differentiate from the real sound of
music of the desired instruments.
For India, beat boxing has brought alongwith it, immense
possibilities of explorations in the most frugal sense. The
young and passionate musicians of India, may not afford
to buy the costly musical gears, but can afford to live their
dreams with a little effort- hitting YouTube tutorials and
learning on the go from there. And with the likes of Vineet
Vincent and Voctronica, the craze for this new age alternate
music is actually turning itself to a revolution.
Much like the self trained dancers of the YouTube generation,
beat boxing is largely a bye product of the power of internet.
But, it started largely through underground experiments
and exercises into foraying in the alternative. In the 1990s
the solo beat boxers from London were signing albums
with big labels at a really tender age of their career. Then
Make the Music 2000, made beat boxing mainstream. It was
largely the techniques used in the album that resulted in an
unprecedented growth in interest for the medium. It featured
voice scratchings and packed in a lot of surprises like a bonus
track after 60 seconds of silence.
It was however, largely an off the grid experiment, that was
standing against the waves of the popular music of the times.
But then, artists like Justin Timberlake or even more creative
persons like Bjork used beat boxing straight up as the core
for her music. Beat boxing was slowly getting into a vogue by
then.
TV music channels were harping in newer and bolder
experiments in the field of beat boxing. This meant
that layered studio beat boxing and more polished and
professional sounding tracks were making it to the world
wide market. In the year of 2001 was released the very first
beatboxing compilation DVD, the raw album had a very basic
nomenclature of just Beatboxing Vol.1. In the very next year
Beatboxer Entertainment was formed, aiming at focusing
purely on the propagation of the new art form.
From there on, it propelled real fast as beatboxing got
featured in the opening ceremony of the Olympics in 2004.
Suddenly the craze and euphoria surrounding beat boxing
bombarded throughout the world. Kids got so excited that
they held amateur jam sessions to figure out their talents in
the field. The alleys and the ghettos where once the rap artists
would thrive, now became the lab house to a completely new
kind of music. But, these however were largely scattered and
often got los in random smoked up afternoon discussions.
With the advent of the internet and the democratization of the
video making and distribution the indie music scene erupted
and now the entire world got curious of this new trade. People
started searching for more exciting videos on the internet and
contributed towards generating even more creative projects.
The community of the go getters gave rise to the amazing
work scape of beat boxers through which, even to this day,
newer and more innovative beat boxers are evolving. Today
websites like humanbeatbox.com by Tye Tye are dedicated
towards creation of tutorials for the emerging beat boxers.
Many celebrated YouTube channels have dedicated playlists
of hundreds of tutorials on different styles and flavors.
In the West the Beat boxing convention is the order of the
day, in our country college students are largely eyeing at
national beat boxing championships. From what had been
largely an underground movement of experiments and
explorations has curiously today grown up into one of the
sought after facilities of college students. After Vineeth (the
college kid from Bangalore) who attempted the world record
for the largest human beat boxing with over 2000 people. The
students of Bangalore and others around got largely intrigued
by the awesome new trade to stardom, and today the internet
is flooded with beat boxing videos by students across different
colleges of the country.
It's amazing to see, how much one can achieve by just "raising
his voice"!
WHAT BEATS THE
DRUMS? ACTIONS
OR WORDS?
Beat boxing has obviously been the lazy man's best
friend, for using your 'voice as an instrument' has its own
perks like freedom from carrying bulky drumkits and
mighty consoles meant for turn table effects.
44
The
Score Magazine
highonscore.com