check out beatbox academy on BBC Newsround
Check out Adam, aka X-Hunter (star of BOXED and of the BAC Beatbox Academy) reporting for BBC Newsround! WATCH THE VIDEO
Babelbox Podcast Episode 7 is Live
Featuring the BAC Beatbox Academy, Colin Currie, Hexstatic, Amiina and Romeo from the Magic Numbers.
Listen now: http://www.shlo.co.uk/podcast-mp3/Babelbox_Podcast_Ep_7_BeatboxAcademy.mp3
Mouthwash Exercises – Part 2
This is the second set of exercises I created for the Beatbox Academy.
These are Mouthwashes – daily routines to build up your vocal dexterity. Start slow and try and take it a little faster each day.
Set 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRPK8a4KIWs
Set 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNox7yMiPYA
Mouthwash Exercises – Part 1
This is a resource I created recently for the Beatbox Academy.
These are Mouthwashes – daily routines to build up your vocal dexterity. Start slow and try and take it a little faster each day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6yD9y3v5Ic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgXN4KUj1nM
beatbox academy show july 2009
Big love to all involved in the closing show of the summer term at the BAC Beatbox Academy. The young people created the entire show themselves and it was a hit! These pics are by Gemma Riggs, more here.
Beatbox Academy 2009!
Come and see the Beatbox Academy performing at BAC on July 11th!
pics from the beatbox academy showcase
Check out Gemma Riggs’ photos from the recent Beatbox Academy showcase at BAC. View the whole set here.
| www.flickr.com |
beatbox academy allstars
Here’s a video of some of the beatbox academy in action.
You can see the current crop of Beatbox Academy performers live at the Urban Music Showcase, alongside myself jestar* and current UK Beatbox Champion MC Zani at 8.30pm on April 4th at BAC, £5 / £3 Concessions.
reality check
yo.. what a hectic week, things are hotting up getting ready for the big show!
On Friday I had a meeting with MP David Lammy, and interviewed him for the short film on knife crime that we are screening at the benefit gig… he was recently Minister for Culture and is now Minister of State for Higher Education, and he’s a humble guy. He grew up in a tough background; many of the people he went to school with are now locked up or involved in crime. He escaped through a music scholarship and went on to make something of his life.
Shlomo and David Lammy MP
Then on Saturday I was working with a group of young people from the Beatbox Academy getting ready for their performance at the big show. They are an amazing bunch… some of them have been with us for nearly two years and are starting to develop truly original beatbox styles of their own.
Reuben
Joe
RJ Fernandez is working on a photographic study of the beatbox academy allstars.
Whilst chatting to a couple of the lads about the anti-knife crime message of this gig, they told me some stories of the regularity of getting robbed on their estates. One of our young beatboxers has made a special ankle pocket in the inside lining of his trousers, so that his phone can’t be found when he gets robbed… not in case he gets robbed, but when…. that sucks.
Young Beatboxers in training
Why beatboxing can save the world (part 2)
…continued from here
We started the BAC Beatbox Academy with some outreach workshops in schools and youth clubs. One teacher responded to our follow up call with: “No, no you don’t want to bother contacting him, he’s a nightmare. He is disruptive, noisy, sometimes violent and cannot concentrate on anything for more than 5 seconds. He’s been excluded from this school.”
Eventually we got hold of him through his mates. He is one of the most dedicated, focused and fast-learning students I have ever worked with.
During the Academy’s term, a group of kids come together for two hours every Saturday. Some of them are from difficult backgrounds, with little going on at school that they care about. When they are with us, they work together to develop their own music, experiment with their voices and improvise in a group situation. At the end of the course, each young beatboxer records a video for a DVD which they can take home and show to their mates, and the course ends with a show for family and friends.
The next big step is to teach some of the older kids how to be leaders themselves, so that the movement can keep on developing.
Bringing all these young beatboxers onstage at the QEH earlier this month has proved to me that beatboxing is a way of bringing people together. In the past year I’ve seen grannies beatboxing side by side with “hoodies”, and I’ve seen parents amazed by the talent they never realised their child had.
Group beatbox teaching is a unique technique for encouraging people to connect with others in a positive, musical way, without looking un-cool.
I think these ideas have the potential to change the attitudes of certain young people. Attitudes which are currently leading to a downward spiral of post-code wars, drugs, knife crime and in some areas gun crime. It gives young people an excuse to take an interest in learning, applying themselves, and taking some positive steps out of the vicious chain of events in their lives.
It was the World’s Largest Beatbox Choir… I think!
Saturday was an amazing concert, and one of the proudest moments of my career. It was great to perform again with my Vocal Orchestra, but the highlight for me was our ‘Beatbox Chorus’ – 25 kids from a range of backgrounds in South London. Jes and Zani, two beatboxers from my choir, have been working with these young people since the beginning of the year, firstly at the Beatbox Academy that we set up at BAC, and then at Southbank for the weeks before the show.
It was incredible to see these youngsters get up and beatbox in front of a sold-out QEH (about 1,000 people). Some of them had no musical experience whatsoever, and performing on a stage of that scale was a first for all of them. Someone said to me after the show that they loved the performance, but that maybe we should have got some kids who couldn’t already beatbox. I was exasperated: the kids had learnt their skills from scratch, in an amazingly short time. Maybe people didn’t understand how much work had gone into the project, and that drive came mostly from the kids themselves.
The “Beatbox Chorus” looking as mean they can!
