"Brrr -- Stick 'Em -- Ah Ha Ha Stick 'Em!"

Whatever happened to beatboxing?

I wondered this as I watched the music video "Wipeout" on YouTube while bored at work a couple of days ago. "Wipeout", for those who don't remember, was a Surfaris cover done by the Fat Boys and the Beach Boys back in 1987. It was horrible and rediculous.

As a twelve-year-old, I loved this video and hated it at the same time. I often tried to mimic the beatboxing mastered by Buffy, the Human Beatbox, arguably the fattest and most talented of the Fat Boys. I thought it was hilarious yet terribly sad and embarrassing to watch the Beach Boys, once considered geniuses for their 1966 masterpeice Pet Sounds to fall vicitim to such an obvious attempt at comeback fame. Of course, they did find brief success again a year later with their hit "Kokomo" for the Tom Cruise film Cocktail and continued to milk it for some time, unfortunately, by appearing on the television sitcom Full House with their buddy and sometimes bandmate John "Uncle Jessie" Stamos.

Wikipedia describes beatboxing as "...a form of vocal percussion connected with hip hop culture (it has been called the fifth element of hip hop) although it is not limited to hip hop music. It primarily involves the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one's mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and more. It may also involve singing, vocal imitation of turntablism, the simulation of horns, strings, and other musical instruments."

Modern beatboxing originated in the early 1980s, though various forms of it have been documented as far back as the 1930s with the arrival of bebop in jazz and blues music. Besides the Fat Boys, early rap artists such as Biz Markie, Barry B., and Doug E.Fresh, who is credited for being the first modern beatboxer, have all been influential in the lost art.

I remember how, for a brief moment in time, it seemed like everyone in the world either knew how to beatbox or knew someone who could. At school, there were always groups of kids who held beatboxing battles on the playground, in class and on the bus, using almost every part of their of mouths and hands to create the most distinctive sounds and beats.

As the 1980s came to a close, beatboxing began its gradual fade into obscurity as mainstream music made way for darker, more brooding music such as grunge and gangsta rap. And with the death of Buffy, the Human Beat Box in Decmber of 1995, it seemed that beatboxing died with him.

Surprisingly, beatboxing has made a dramatic comeback with the help of new beat box legends Rahzel and Kenny Muhammad. In 2005 the WBBF or World Beatboxing Federation was formed to unite beatboxers from all over the world in a grand effort to make beatboxing more popular than ever before.

For a complete history of beatboxing and to brush up on your skills, follow these links:

http://www.humanbeatbox.com/history/p2_articleid/38

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatboxing