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Off the record
Evening Standard 16.05.08
Mouthing off: Beatboxer Shlomo Kahn has been inspired by Björk
American dream: Leona Lewis
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THE BEATBOX GENERATION
Now if you've ever seen someone beatboxing and thought “anyone can do that”, here's your chance to prove it. Professional beatboxer Shlomo Kahn — an expert in the art of making an array of drum beats and other sounds using just his mouth — is seeking a place in the Guinness World Records at Queen Elizabeth Hall tomorrow night, by attempting to create the world's largest beatbox choir.
Those with a ticket can come down at 11am to take part in a crash-course workshop in the craft, before starring along with up to 1,000 others in the evening.
Having watched Shlomo rehearsing with a group of around 20 schoolchildren who will take part in the show, I can confirm that he makes it look easy. In the warm-up, he has the kids impersonating passing cars, ringing phones and fireworks. Keeping the beat by walking on the spot, he is soon to conduct them in a jam session that sounds remarkably coherent, as they each add simple repeated sounds to form a whole that is both melodic and danceable.
The beatboxers are all boys, mostly teenage. Girls are invited but aren't usually interested, apparently, although leading female beatboxer Bellatrix is a member of Shlomo's Vocal Orchestra. Some have been plucked from a south London school after an outreach project, while others attend a regular workshop Shlomo runs at Battersea Arts Centre.
All clearly love what they are doing, exchanging booming, hissing and tsk-ing noises with each other even in their breaks. Most are confident and creative on the microphone. Azeem Ahmed, 16, strides up to me and presents a red business card on which he is described as “Beatbox Extraordinaire, available by appointment”, and makes a noise like a parping trumpet. Shlomo tells me about another boy who has been expelled from school three times but couldn't be less of a troublemaker when he's doing beatbox.
“I've got real issues with the way music is taught in this country,” Shlomo says. “Kids aren't being inspired. You can't just give them a clarinet and tell them to learn a piece of music. Why would they want to?”
Shlomo, from Bucks, but based near Portsmouth, started learning to play the drums at eight. He only found out later that the noises he made to praxctise when he wasn't near his kit were a skill that has been part of hip hop culture since the early Eighties.
An invitation from Björk to perform on her mainly a cappella album Med£lla in 2004 inspired him to try something more original than the traditional beatboxer's trick of mimicking hip hop tracks. “She blew my mind and completely changed my attitude.” He now drums live and uses a loop sampler to make original music, and having been an artist in residence at the Southbank Centre since last August, he has the perfect platform to give his talent credibility as an art form.
In recent shows he has held improvised sessions with folk singers Martha Wainwright and Teddy Thompson and jazz band Polar Bear.
“Once you get over the novelty of it, you can concentrate on making music.”
But if that sounds too po-faced for a skill that involves blowing raspberries, tomorrow's record-breaking show will emphasise that beatboxing is fun for all.
May 17, 8.30pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall, SE1 (0871 663 2500; www.southbankcentre.co.uk).
BRITS TAKE THE US CHARTS — BY SOUNDING AMERICAN
Believe it or not, this week there are more British acts in the American top 10 albums chart than at any time since the Nineties.
How did that happen? There have been no Beatles-style British invasions, no one squeezing into a Union Jack dress to spread our culture worldwide. Conquering the most lucrative music market in the world is the dream for hungry singers across the globe but Americans don't normally buy anything except yee-hawing country and booty-shaking R&B. Where did we go right?
Unfortunately, it seems we're just getting better at impersonating Americans. Aside from Portishead, whose bleak album, Third, sits at number seven in the Billboard 200 thanks to an absence of more than a decade, there's Sheffield's Def Leppard, whose shiny pop metal has always appealed to chest-beating jocks, and X Factor winner Leona Lewis, who has had any Britishness sanded away from her.
Further down is Natasha Bedingfield, who has twice cancelled her UK tour to spend more time courting the US, and Estelle, who rapped about her London roots but lives in New York and has a new sound dominated by American collaborators including Kanye West and will.i.am. The Brits may be invading but you wouldn't know it.
NEW ON THE NET
For those who need a little help negotiating London's myriad sub-genres of dance music a useful primer to the influential Croydon-based dubstep movement has just been launched. Steppas' Delight contains 19 of the finest examples of the bleak, bass-heavy sound, and is downloadable at www.souljazz records.co.uk. There's also a launch party featuring acts such as Kode9 and Ikonika at Electrowerkz, EC1, tomorrow night.
An appearance on Jools Holland or an iPod advert can have a powerful effect on your record sales but if you can't get on the telly, the internet will do. Endearingly, amateur web videos such as Welcome to Our TV Show (www.youtube.com/ welcometoourtvshow), which features singer-songwriter Jeremy Warmsley introducing a host of new Britfolk talent, and Live From Daryl's House (www. livefromdarylshouse.com), in which Daryl Hall, of Hall and Oates, jams with acts including KT Tunstall and Chuck Prophet, are leading the way.
Dirty Pretty Things are back with a new album next month, and are whetting appetites with a free preview this week. Hear Carl Barat's new growly vocal style on Hippy's Son at http://dirtyprettythings. trinitystreetdirect.com.
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