Index – Culture – Men who did something with their mouths that no one expected

Of course, it wasn’t easy for them either. Although the show started at 6pm, the sun was still shining on the dance floor, so most of the audience could only watch from a reasonable distance. On today’s show, British champions, D-LOW, and Australia’s world number one, MOM, performed sets lasting 20-25 minutes each.

Their performance was hosted on the Sziget Dropyard stage, where we saw the breakdancing championship at last year’s festival. Here, the audience gets the most interesting shades of underground subculture, from classic hip-hop and DJ sets to seemingly curious things like beatboxing. But sometimes there are also artists trained in the arena and festivals, for example, Pojani Indolo and Otvar Pestis performed on the fourth day of Sziget.

The stage itself enhances this atmosphere, with graffiti-effect walls, wooden flooring and stunning lighting technology all coming together. Added to this are the LED panels, which this year turned out to be very distinctive, and instead of a continuous wall, this time they reminded me of fragmented mirror pieces.

New collaboration

A short while ago, the beatboxing team, whose performance was organized by Beatbox Europe, toured the field. The goal of the movement is to bring the biggest names in the genre to as many places as possible, to as many audiences as possible, so, according to them, their collaboration with Sziget Festival will not be just a coincidence. As proof of this, not only did two world champions get a 45-minute set, but this time period belongs to the beatboxers for three days,

The first event was opened by D-LOW, a three-time UK solo beatbox champion and one-time winner of his duo production, and in addition, he became the world leader in the World Classic Beatbox Competition in 2018 and in the Grand Beatbox Battle in 2019, and has since won numerous international judges in the competition.

Of course, he could gauge his knowledge primarily on the audience, which was less than impressed with beatboxing, and who were apparently amazed when D-LOW started making sounds that many thought no human could make—at least that’s what we inferred based on one or two snippets of conversation. The few people who had gone to the stage despite the sunshine soon turned into a few dozen people,

He performed many of his famous beatbox routines, which he had previously performed in competitions or released in online listening format. He drew on many different musical styles, from a cappella R&B, to electronic genres and even hip-hop trends. At the end of his performance, MOM, the other world champion, took the stage.

roar of the crowd

The three-member beatboxing team consisted of individually known artists in the genre, who together excitingly combined audience entertainment, a concert experience and an interactive performance. The audience was involved in the production in some way every 2-3 minutes, which the audience was very receptive to.

Added to this were lots of different party music entries, beatbox interpretations of various electronic trends and rhythmic rap and hip-hop entries. By the end of the show, not just a hundred, but hundreds of people had gathered around Droppard, dancing, jumping, throwing pandas and cheering, even though there was nothing else happening on stage except three guys playing music,

Although we are not talking about the most popular genre in the world, a significant part of the audience, when asked at the end of the show if they would come to the beatbox shows in the next two days, shouted yes at the top of their lungs. At the end of the performance, even D-LOW returned to the stage, and the four guys finished the concert together, then the representatives of Europe Beatbox thanked them for their attention and said that they were waiting for everyone the next day, when even more world beatbox stars will take the microphone.

(Cover image: Ben Tovesi / Index)

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