On the beaten track

Beatboxing is the art of making music with your mouth. Carolina D'Souza listens to UAE-based beatboxer Richie 'HiraBeat' Hiranandani, who mimics synthesisers, DJ decks, whirring helicopter blades and chugging trains with panache.

It is a let-down to meet a beatboxer dressed head-to-toe in regular threads no hooded sweatshirt, oversized T-shirt, baggy jeans, showy sneakers or bling, save for a cap worn backwards.

Watch video: Beatbox masterclass

And Richie 'HiraBeat' Hiranandani isn't apologetic about it.

"It's simply extra weight!" says the 23-year-old, grinning.

Hiranandani has been beatboxing, or as he describes the music genre "making music with my mouth" for five years, for the most part in Manila, the Philippines, and for eight months in Dubai.

The trappings of dress code are just that trappings, he says. "Beatboxing is a movement, an expression that goes beyond what you wear."

While his clothes don't reveal his beatboxer identity, his gangster rapper-ish body language lets him down, especially when he talks in his raspy, orotund voice with animated hand gestures and a bobbing head.

Hiranandani is a cheerful bloke with a disposition offset ever so slightly by braggadocio, an expected personality trait for someone who represents the hip hop genre.

"You need a bit of swagger and confidence so people can take you seriously," he says.

He has performed in top clubs in Manila and has had several gigs in the UAE including those at Alpha Club at the Le Méridien Airport Hotel, Touch Nightclub at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel and the Red Bull Air Race. He has also jammed along with Emirati hip hop group Desert Heat.

Beatboxing, often dubbed as the fifth element of hip hop after MCing or rapping, DJing, graffiti and breakdancing, is a vocal percussion art that produces drum beats, rhythm and musical sounds using the mouth, lips, tongue, voice, nasal passage and throat.

"You can create any sound you want," says Hiranandani, whose vocal repertoire includes sounds of electronic musical equipment like drum machines, samplers, synthesisers and DJ decks and onomatopoeic imitations of whirring helicopter blades, chugging trains and robotic enunciations.

And though the half-Filipino, half-Indian beatboxer has never been musically trained (vocally or with an instrument), he says beatboxing is easy. "What I do doesn't require formal training; anyone can do it."

And yet, not everyone does it well enough.

Hiranandani speaks of the Dubai-based beatboxer and disc jockey Krunkster, an Egyptian who has been featured in advertisements for MTV Arabia. "He is brilliant. There are only a few of us in the UAE; but we try to keep the art alive."

In comparison, the international scene is different, energised by the presence of Beatboxer Entertainment, the world's first artist agency dedicated to beatboxing and The International Human Beatbox Convention, also known as Boxcon.

Still, beatboxing is considered a niche genre, almost esoteric on the global music platform. "It's on the fringes. It only came of age a few years ago," says Hiranandani explaining how the genre has grown slowly since the days of the Bronx in the '80s.

"It was put on the map by pioneers like Doug E. Fresh and Buffy from The Fat Boys, and Biz Markie. Since the '90s, several beatboxing artists including British Killa Kela [with his album Elocution], Australian Idol star Joel Turner and American rapper and producer Rahzel, have bestowed it with star status."

Beatboxing also got a much needed fillip when Bjork, the Icelandic singer sang Oceania from her album Medulla at the 2004 Athens Olympics ceremony. "It featured the famous British beatboxer Shlomo," he says.

Hiranandani rattles off names most readers may find unfamiliar, but almost everyone, he says, can relate to the '88 chart-topping song Don't Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin. "He blows my mind away! His a cappella hit has nothing more than layers and layers of vocal percussions; he dubbed all the sounds using his voice."

Interestingly, McFerrin's contribution illustrates the fact that beatboxing isn't restricted to hip hop. It proves that the genre can indeed go mainstream. While Hiranandani agrees, as a representative of the genre, he says there are two sides to the substantiation. "On the obverse, if it were mainstream, many artists would abuse it. The fact that it is a niche means we have a few, but highly respected names."

This young beatboxer wasn't always this knowledgeable and opinionated, and when he recalls his early beatboxing days, he chuckles.

A family friend and sound engineer Milton Kyvernitis was also watching when Hiranandani took notice of "a guy making crazy sounds with his mouth".

He exclaimed, "What is that? And how is he doing it?"

Kyvernitis turned to the still-in-awe adolescent and replied, "That's beatboxing. Let me show you," and performed a few beats.

Kyvernitis' amateur rendition was enough to encourage the soon-to-be beatboxer. So fascinated was he that he mastered the three basic sounds of his own volition (see sidebar).

He admits he is an autodidactic beatboxer who sought help from online tutorials and MP3 recordings.

It took him six months to learn to mix the three sounds in a beat. Initially it made him look "cool" he says, especially in high school. "I'd beatbox with friends to mess around," he says.

Till 2004, he was a dilettante in beatboxing. He only started taking it seriously after he moved from the UAE to Manila to major in multi-media design.

At the time, Dubai had an almost non-existent beatboxing scene, far removed from the one in Manila he says. "In Dubai, people didn't see it as a profession whereas in Manila, it [beatboxing] was part of a thriving, hi-energy hip hop culture. There was a large community of beatboxers and plenty of opportunities to go pro," he says.

So he did, adopting the name HiraBeat, created by yoking the suffix 'beat' to the first two syllables of his family name. "Plus, it had a pun to it," he says.

When he returned to Dubai last November, he was surprised at the vibrancy of the city's hip hop setting. "I left the place with random people in hip hop clothes, experimenting with factitious hip hop genres, and returned to a pulsating scene and fit right in," he says.

There are times when the crowd stares at him nonplussed. "I can see they don't quite know what to make of my beatboxing. They probably think: what is that and how does he do it?"

To initiate his audience, the first act three to five minutes is a cover of a popular song. "I do the Star Wars anthem or a song by Jay-Z or another popular artist and then I'll throw in a few original beats for good measure," he says. Unfortunately, Hiranandani says he has to be content performing covers since he isn't "there yet".

He toys with several aspirational ideas. He wants to teach beatboxing at a music school, conduct workshops for aspiring beatboxers, find a resident position in a club, perform gigs around the world, and even enter a beatboxing competition, "like the one in Germany this year. But reality is different, I don't have that recognition as yet. Till then, I have a full-time job as a graphic designer."