Box to the Beat

The artistes Alyusha Chagrin (vocals,lip bass,sirens),Belle Ehresmann (beatbox,lip bass,scratching) Harriet Syndercombe-Court (vocals,high hats),Neo Joshua (vocals,bass,kicks) and Yvette Riby-Williams (vocals,beats n bobs) all in their early 20’s,met at the Guildhall of Music and Drama where they were studying Jazz music. It was the lack of the popularity of the art form especially amongst the girls that got them started three years back. “A lot of practice goes into getting the beatbox sounds right and making sure that they are consistent. We generally isolate the sounds and practice them one by one till each one of us gets its steady and right. You can incorporate it easily into any variety of intricate patterns,” says Yvette,adding,“We practice together to piece the interlocking patterns which make up our songs and individually as well thus effort goes into this form of music. This weekend we will be using sounds like filters,vocal scratching,electric snarls,shakers and so on and combining them with the ones that we have built ourselves.”

The group in September will be collaborating with a French Jazz/ Hip-Hop beatboxer Napoleon Maddox,for a musical project. Meanwhile they will also be holding a workshop in Dharavi working with the local children to train them for beatboxing and singing.

Adding more about their tryst with the unusual art form Yvette says,“This form of art is not very popular as yet that’s why we hope that we can open up this strand of music to the public. Since it is all about the mouth,we spend a lot of time ensuring that the sounds we make are vocal manipulations,so that means we alter the notes we would usually sing by changing the shapes of our mouths and the placements of the tongue. Some of the sounds and instruments we impersonate are tabla,microtonal singing and also use a lot of lip bass,so that you can get a lot of powerful low frequencies that one might otherwise not be able to sing. For us beatboxing like this is about,more than just the voice. It’s about the infinite ways you can alter sound,the pitch and the air flow using only your mouth.”

(The Boxettes will be performing at Stone Water Grill on April 30,8pm onwards.)