Beatboxing: An Oral History

Hip-Hoppers Turn to Voice-Based Rhythms

By Marian Liu
The San Jose Mercury News
January 5, 2007

On the hip-hop scene, ‘’beatboxing‘’ — the term for the art of creating rhythms and sound effects with the human voice — has taken a back seat to rapping, DJing, emceeing, break dancing and graffiti art since it surfaced in the ’80s.

Until now.

The popularity of beatboxing is growing, and one indication is the 2007 West Coast Open Human Beatbox Battle, which takes place Friday night at the Ashkenaz music and dance club in Berkeley, where artists will create all kinds of beats, sometimes while playing along with other instruments.

Thirty-seven-year-old Anthony Rivera (a.k.a. Click) has been beatboxing for 22 years. His work was heard in the 2002 Eminem movie ‘’8 Mile.'’ Rivera says, ‘’I've seen beatboxing change. People are starting to get more creative, getting closer to the actual sound (of percussion instruments) than we did back in the day.'’

Beatboxing has gained an international following and an online audience, with artists uploading their beats to bulletin boards, fans mixing beats and some people even using them for ring tones.

The first official international beatboxing competition took place at the 2005 Hip Hop World Challenge in Leipzig, Germany.

Beatbox history

The artist frequently cited as the original beatbox pioneer is Barbados-born Doug E. Fresh (Douglas E. Davis), whose 1985 single “The Show/La Di Da Di'’ caught the attention of many future beatboxers.

‘’You had knucklehead kids in sixth grade like me, back in 1985 . . . , huddled in a little corner . . . bopping heads, all down to a beat that really wasn’t that advanced,'’ recalls Maximillian Reynolds, a 33-year-old Sacramento producer who is part of the Bay Area beatbox crew known as the Vowel Movement, which is sponsoring the competition at Ashkenaz.

‘’What’s happened now is kids have taken it. You’ve got hip-hop influences, trip-hop influences, jazz influences, rock influences, drum and base, techno, house. (Beatboxing) has gotten to a whole different element.'’

In the late ’90s, Rahzel from the hip-hop band the Roots was one of the most visible beatboxers, singing and creating beats simultaneously. He perfected an imitation of turntable scratching.

Rahzel says, ‘’Beatboxing . . . is still relevant to what’s going on today, because a lot of the kids are producing, emceeing. That’s the foundation of beatboxing — the creative sounds and noises. It’s fortunate that a new generation is taking hold.'’

Last year, Humanbeatbox.com created notation for beatboxing, and now the ‘’booms'’ and ‘’chicks'’ of performers can actually be written down.

In the Bay Area

The Vowel Movement has become the leading organization for beatboxers in the Bay Area. Launched in 2003, it has attracted artists from as far away as Sacramento, who meet about once a month to perform and listen to other innovators.

Recalling an early Vowel Movement event, 22-year-old Joshua Walters, a full-time beatboxer from Berkeley, says, ‘’It was a small venue, . . . just two guys who originally wanted to do a spoken-word event but decided the Bay Area had too many and so decided, `Why don’t we do a show dedicated to beatbox?’ For me and the group I was with, it was just an opportunity to perform.'’

Vowel Movement organizer Mike Tinoco recalls, ‘’It kind of grew every month, going and going, . . . very freak-show at times.'’

Beatbox 101

‘’There’s no one way'’ to do beatboxing, says Tinoco, who helped organize Friday’s ‘’battle'’ at Ashkenaz. ‘’There’s so many different genres of music. People have their different interests, their different tastes.'’

But the first thing a wannabe beatboxer needs to learn, he says, is rhythm. The basic percussion sounds, he adds, imitate the kick-drum (a ‘’p'’ sound), the high-hat (a ‘’th'’ sound) and the small snare drum (a ‘’kuh'’ sound).

Beatboxer Terry Lewis (a.k.a. Kid Lucky) recommends, “If you want to be a better beatboxer, listen to drum machines, listen to (drum) sounds, don’t listen to other beatboxers.'’

And Rivera, who has beatboxed in movies and on television, lays out these rules for beginners:

• Master the fundamentals.
• Do what you feel.
• Be yourself.
• Don’t degrade the art.
• And remember, practice makes perfect.

Women’s impact

Though females don’t make up ‘’a percentage worth counting,'’ according to Terry Lewis, who now heads the production company Beatboxer Entertainment, it is women who are pushing the art to new levels, rather than the men.

‘’I am much more impressed with what women are doing with beatboxing,'’ Lewis says.

One standout, he says, is Antoinette Clinton (a.k.a. Butterscotch) of Sacramento, who can simultaneously play piano while beatboxing. A classical-piano major at California State University-Sacramento, the 21-year-old Clinton hopes to teach beatboxing and see it offered as a university major. A winner at the 2005 Hip Hop World Challenge, she now works with Verizon’s new online beatbox mixer (www.beatboxmixer.com).

‘’One of my biggest idols growing up was Michael Jordan,'’ says Clinton, whose love for basketball almost matches her love for music. ‘’I always wanted to be in the NBA, the first girl in the NBA. Then they made the WNBA.'’ Clinton says that angered her at first because it meant that she would not be allowed in the NBA, but she later felt the WNBA allowed women to be empowered.

Beatbox of the future

Terry Lewis says, ‘’There’s so much going on'’ as with any other instrument. Beatbox sounds ‘’can be pushed to ring tones, to videos, to loop CDs . . . even video games. . . . The only thing keeping it from moving forward is the imagination,'’ adds Lewis, who is involved in a project pairing beatboxers with dolphins.

Source: mercurynews.com