Contact Theatre in Manchester recently screened our documentary “The Beatbox Choir”, which follows the formation of the Vocal Orchestra. Some people at the screening thought we were wrong to call ourselves the “world’s first” beatboxing choir. I hadn’t heard of any similar projects at the time, but then again I didn’t look very hard. It turns out I was wrong – the Vocal Orchestra wasn’t the only beatbox group in existence.
It was childish to call it “the first” (i get over excited!) and it got me thinking – how is there really the world’s first anything? Everything we do leads on from something else, gradually evolving in a continuum.
Our music is influenced by beatbox culture, which originated from New York’s hip hop tradition. Before that, hip hop developed from many things, including funk, jazz, poetry and the new technology of the late 1970s. But earlier still, these genres were influenced by the blues, which in turn grew from African-American work songs, and it just keeps going back forever. It’s a giant family tree that grows constantly, spawning new genres, with no beginning and no end. Beatboxers have now taken these roots and created music that is influenced by cultures from all over the world, from punk and drum n bass, to opera and Mongolian throat singing.
But this is just one route that music has followed. Hundreds of years before all of this, similar vocal styles developed in other parts of the world. I can hardly believe the parallels between classical Indian vocal rhythms and beatboxing – they have so much in common despite following completely different paths, centuries apart.
So it is ridiculous for me to claim that I was the first to do anything. Everything you do derives from something else. It’s the music that matters the most – that’s what I’m all about really 
Here are some other great vocal groups that pre-date the vocal orchestra.
Saian Supa Crew from France, back in 2000:
Nu Voices, run by the NYC beatboxer Kid Lucky:
Bauchklang – from Austra
Naturally 7 who are like an updated beatbox version of Boys II Men:
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