Summary:

Beatboxing picks up local influences like a sponge. With virtually no barriers to entry, and a reliance on an instrument everyone in the world has, this growing genre of vocal music welcomes anyone who tries it into a creative global dialogue that reflects diversity beyond the music itself.

Talk: I want you to think about all the noises you hear in daily life. Whether its spoken language, (radio swivel effect) chigauo no kakugo ERA ERA lenguas diferentes [dj record pull] d-d-d-d-different languages, (click the radio button again) different accents of the same language, instruments (bass, wah guitar, chinese whistle), animals (cow, peacock), TV Shows (Cartman impression), or just fun sound effects (whistle, submarine). Now imagine a style of music into which all of those noises could be suffused. Anywhere you go, at any time of day, you can encounter different sources of inspiration. This is beatboxing. [demonstrate for 20 seconds]
All the sounds you just heard are rooted in my life experience. Obviously some of them are associated with songs Ive heard. On the other hand, my throat bass (demonstrate) is an evolution of a cow impression I did to make friends in elementary school. Playing army man on the playground, every kid in my second grade class needed a really good gun sound. Mine (demonstrate) has become one of my drum rolls (demonstrate in a beat). One of the basic beats you heard is part of a theme song for a cartoon I used to watch on Nickelodeon called Rocket Power (demonstrate). I would sit in front of the television regurgitating the theme song back at the screen while my psychiatrist parents watched with what I can only imagine was a mixture of enthusiasm, confusion, and a temptation to start writing lists that began with phrases like symptoms include... Suffice it to say, my childhood was a noisy one. In its simplest form beatboxing imitates drums, but for a style of music based primarily in mimicry, drums are only the beginning. Beatboxers can draw on sounds from the places where they live, the sounds of the languages they hear and speak, and the sounds of the instruments in their favorite music for inspiration. Beatboxing for me has always worked like a sponge that absorbs sounds from local experiences. While living in Japan for--ultimately--two years, the sounds of Hokkaido inevitably made it into the mix. As a Japanese language student there was my hook, Zatsuon no yakata e yokoso!, or welcome to the house of noise! Then there was the Yakimo or Sweet Potato song. [Play sound recording] Every Sunday afternoon during the winter months in Hokkaido, a small truck would drive through my hometown of Nanae blaring this insidious jingle. The words are Yakimo, oishii yo, yattate, atsuaku!, which means Stone-baked sweet potatoes, theyre delicious. Freshly baked, piping hot. So...naturally I added it to a beatbox performance. (demonstrate?)

But then there were the Japanese beatbox styles. Getting into the Hip Hop scene as a beatboxer in Japan put my talent in an entirely new perspective. Six thousand miles from home, I found myself on stage with groups of people who had been practicing the same skill for years, but who employed sounds Id never heard before--entirely new patterns, sounds, and styles used to practice a passion I
thought I knew backward and forward. I joined a young hip hop crew called Hakodate Cypher in 2011, around the same time as a young beatboxer named Toshya. Toshya is a computer programmer, and to this day is my go-to collaborator and friendly opponent in Japanese beatbox battles and performances. Unlike my beats, the ones Toshya used were already popular amongst members of the group. In particular, they all had a favorite beat they routinely asked him to perform. They affectionately called it boonske boonske. [demonstrate] Even before we could communicate in any official language Toshya and I spoke in beats. He taught me the fundamentals for the boonske boonske. He taught me an early version of what American beatboxers call the zipper technique (demonstrate). Then I created my own version with a pull-off at the end (demonstrate). Whenever we beatboxed together, we were sharing musical ideas, and subsequently translating them into parts of our own routines. As I studied more Japanese, and Toshya and I started having normal conversations, we used our mutually understood components of language to teach and learn from one another as well. Its how I taught him a vocal scratch pattern (demonstrate). Using sounds from Japanese, this would be pronounced EH BA DA RA KA WAN. (speed up, back to sound from before). For a style of music based in mimicry, the sounds of everyday life can be very influential. Being able to practice anywhere, its only natural that the sounds of your hometown, the languages you hear and speak, and the instruments and styles you hear in music all become sources of inspiration. And thanks to the digital connections uniting not just the beatbox community but the entire world, the sounds we hear can come from almost anywhere, and we can experience them in greater volume than ever before. As more and more beatboxers share what they can do, more cultures come into the mix and expand the beatbox canon. Whats really exciting is that there are still places where beatbox is totally unheard of, where the infusion of local culture and beatbox has yet to take place. If you want to keep expanding the beatbox world, thats where the treasure is buried!! I was lucky to find myself on this beatbox frontier during a trip to Tanzania last January. [slide with video] I had been invited to participate in a warrior dance with a group of Maasai warriors near the Serengeti, and to express my thanks I offered to demonstrate a musical tradition from my life. What resulted was an impromptu joint-performance that combined basic beatbox techniques with tropes from traditional Maasai music, which Ill play for you now.

[Play first 40 seconds of the video]

This music I recorded was performed a cappella, but it offers such a rich tapestry of sounds. It also had a throat bass [mimic], clicks and whoops and hisses! The translation seamless. Play video [0:48-2:04] I said the translation was seamless. I cant say the same for my Maasai dance moves at high altitude. But perhaps the most compelling Maasai addition to beatbox was one Ill play for you now. Its a whistle shown to me by a young man named Johnson, who served as my translator and is featured in the far left of that video. [play whistle and beatbox track] Johnson produced this whistle out of nowhere, without any suggestions from me. It involves physical mechanics that I have not personally mastered. I asked him where it came from, and he explained that every Maasai warrior uses a similar whistle to communicate with fellow herdsmen in the bush. He and his friends went in circles and each demonstrated their individual whistles. They explained that they could all identify each other individually by whistle alone. THIS was an infusion of functional, everyday sound into music, music they had never even heard before. Our meeting through beatbox had opened a window to the rhythms and styles not just of how these people expressed themselves, but also of how they lived. It was nothing like my life, but it didnt matter. We used our voices, and our ears, to communicate and understand one another more deeply. A beatboxer can come from anywhere: two psychiatrist parents, a software company in rural Japan, the Serengeti Plains, or Northfield, Minnesota. By beatboxing together, we can learn that theres something incomparably joyous about communicating through an instrument we all have, yet some of us dont even think to use. And if you dig deep, and unleash the sounds and songs already on your lips, youll be surprised not only at the riches you can uncover, but how closely they can connect you with other people. When you put them into music, you become part of a creative global dialogue that reflects diversity beyond the music itself and, to a startling degree, reveals how new dimensions of our innate creativity can bring us together. Im very lucky today to have assembled, on this stage, a cast of ready and willing beatboxers who will join me in bringing this conversation here, now, to Northfield, Minnesota. Please welcome the Carleton TEDx beatbox crew! Ive asked each of these rising stars to think of a noise they want to use musically, and about where it comes from. Using this loopstation we will improvise a song in real time, unrehearsed, and proceed to rock out. TEDx beatbox crew! What are your noises? [each shares their noise] Lay down a basic beat on a loop station, have them add their sounds one at a time however they like. Make a song. Rock the fuck out.] END