Making music with your mouth

I have seen art, and it goes like this: untz-badish, untz-untz-badish, scritchy-scritchy-erp-erp-erp, woh-woh-womp. No, I didn’t have a mid-sentence stroke. This is the art of beatboxing – or as the late rapper Biz Markie put it, “make the music with your mouth” – and it’s due its moment in the sun.

Hiphop’s reigning 50th-anniversary celebrations (the genre was officially born in the Bronx on August 11, 1973) have understandably emphasised the role of emcees and deejays in the genre’s origin story. But, outside a subtle nod by rapper Slick Rick to his old partner in crime Doug E. Fresh at this month’s MTV Video Music Awards, there have been few mainstream moments highlighting the human beatbox, hiphop’s most underrated contribution to pop culture.

Why isn’t the algorithm feeding me nonstop late-night appearances from Rahzel, the dean of Beatbox University, or at least his seminal If Your Mother Only Knew live edit? Why aren’t I drowning in highlight reels from Kenny Muhammad, the Human Orchestra? If November’s ARIA Awards, set to feature their own tribute to hiphop’s birthday, don’t include an appearance by Joel Turner, who brought beatboxing to Dicko and the local masses on Australian Idol in 2003, it’ll be a missed opportunity.

Of course, the cultural sidelining of beatboxing is predictable. Like many of the best art forms (musical theatre, improv comedy, ventriloquism), beatboxing lives on the fine line between “inspired” and “completely embarrassing”.

Take a mental step back and the sight of full-grown men and women conducting trip-hop symphonies with their mouths looks ludicrous. I just watched a video of Kevin Olusola, beatboxer of ridiculously popular a capella group Pentatonix, doing something called “cello-boxing” to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 and almost reconsidered the complete argument of this article. But don’t be fooled, beatboxing is special.

My soft-spot for beatboxing is (obviously) personal. Like anyone with a mouth, I have a hidden talent for it, and by hidden I mean I’ll never show you. At school, I used to entertain my classmates from the back row with the deepest 808 bass drops the human throat can muster, expertly timed to whenever the teacher turned back towards the blackboard. I can still hear the laughter, the warm embrace of the classroom spotlight.

At some point, I also perfected the beat from Tone Loc’s Wild Thing, as featured in the 1989 John Candy masterpiece Uncle Buck. And, like playing the piano or juggling, you don’t forget how to beatbox: when my daughter was a baby and wailing hysterically in the back of the car, the only thing that would calm her down was me in the driver’s seat doing Jai Paul’s BTSTU with my mouth. I don’t think you understand how complicated that is.

I have seen art, and it goes like this: untz-badish, untz-untz-badish, scritchy-scritchy-erp-erp-erp, woh-woh-womp. No, I didn’t have a mid-sentence stroke. This is the art of beatboxing – or as the late rapper Biz Markie put it, “make the music with your mouth” – and it’s due its moment in the sun.

Hiphop’s reigning 50th-anniversary celebrations (the genre was officially born in the Bronx on August 11, 1973) have understandably emphasised the role of emcees and deejays in the genre’s origin story. But, outside a subtle nod by rapper Slick Rick to his old partner in crime Doug E. Fresh at this month’s MTV Video Music Awards, there have been few mainstream moments highlighting the human beatbox, hiphop’s most underrated contribution to pop culture.

Why isn’t the algorithm feeding me nonstop late-night appearances from Rahzel, the dean of Beatbox University, or at least his seminal If Your Mother Only Knew live edit? Why aren’t I drowning in highlight reels from Kenny Muhammad, the Human Orchestra? If November’s ARIA Awards, set to feature their own tribute to hiphop’s birthday, don’t include an appearance by Joel Turner, who brought beatboxing to Dicko and the local masses on Australian Idol in 2003, it’ll be a missed opportunity.

Of course, the cultural sidelining of beatboxing is predictable. Like many of the best art forms (musical theatre, improv comedy, ventriloquism), beatboxing lives on the fine line between “inspired” and “completely embarrassing”.

Take a mental step back and the sight of full-grown men and women conducting trip-hop symphonies with their mouths looks ludicrous. I just watched a video of Kevin Olusola, beatboxer of ridiculously popular a capella group Pentatonix, doing something called “cello-boxing” to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 and almost reconsidered the complete argument of this article. But don’t be fooled, beatboxing is special.

My soft-spot for beatboxing is (obviously) personal. Like anyone with a mouth, I have a hidden talent for it, and by hidden I mean I’ll never show you. At school, I used to entertain my classmates from the back row with the deepest 808 bass drops the human throat can muster, expertly timed to whenever the teacher turned back towards the blackboard. I can still hear the laughter, the warm embrace of the classroom spotlight.

At some point, I also perfected the beat from Tone Loc’s Wild Thing, as featured in the 1989 John Candy masterpiece Uncle Buck. And, like playing the piano or juggling, you don’t forget how to beatbox: when my daughter was a baby and wailing hysterically in the back of the car, the only thing that would calm her down was me in the driver’s seat doing Jai Paul’s BTSTU with my mouth. I don’t think you understand how complicated that is.