Outside the 'Box' With Chesney Snow

I’m sitting in the Hip-Hop Archive on Mount Auburn Street, in a room of 30 people—all of whom are humming as loudly as they possibly can. I’ve got my fingers jammed up against Adrian From Pennsylvania’s carotid, trying to feel the vibrations in of his jawbone as he hums assiduously. For his part, he’s got his hand clamped around the base of my neck, right up against my c5 vertebra. We can’t decide whether or not to make eye contact—the etiquette of scanning someone else’s body for vibrations isn’t exactly covered in most cotillion courses.

Chesney Snow, beatboxing virtuoso, is big on vibrations. At the start of his Harvard Office for the Arts-sponsored beatboxing workshop, he has us stand in a circle, hold hands with our neighbors (“But really feel their hands—be aware of them, don’t just hold them”), and take massive “cleansing breaths” designed to focus our minds and prepare our lungs. “To me, beatboxing becomes a very spiritual thing because it is about vibration,” Snow says. “We are connected to vibration—vibration is sound. Our vibration goes from here”—he points to his head—“all the way to our ankles. You can actually hum and feel the bones vibrating in your ankles.”

Snow speaks like a guru. He has a gentle, slightly lisping voice, so it’s surprising when he puts mic to mouth and emits powerful, pounding drumbeats: loud, commanding kicks; high, bracing snares; delicate cymbals. And when he layers melodic elements over the percussive backbeat, threading them through the gaps in the beats, I have to look around to verify that, yes, this is all coming from one person.

But you wouldn’t expect any less from one of the world’s preeminent beatboxers. Chesney Snow is a huge name in the beatboxing community—he co-founded the World Beatbox Association, which coordinates beatboxing competitions all over the globe, and he produced the 2013 documentary “American Beatboxer,” which follows eight beatboxers on their journeys to the World Beatbox Championships. Snow is also an award-winning poet, actor, and musician. But he credits beatboxing as a central element in his success.

“I was classically trained as an actor. And I found out, when I got to New York, that—so were a lot of other people,” Snow says. “And so to have something that kind of separated me, I would use beatboxing with my poetry…and that started to take me all around the world.”

Snow’s also brought in an all-star cast of seven premier beatboxers, who break the attendees into small groups and teach them the bare essentials of beatboxing, in preparation for a quick beatboxing battle at the end of the workshop. I’m sorted into HeaveN Beatbox’s group. HeaveN, a tall Georgia native with dreadlocks, then valiantly undertakes the task of trying to teach our group the basics of beatboxing in just under 15 minutes.

He starts with bass drum kicks, pulling the microphone up to his mouth and emitting a series of sharp, low thuds that seem far too resonant to have come out of his frame. The sound’s production is tricky to explain, but HeaveN pulls it off. He tells us the kick’s essentially the letter ‘P’ with the trailing long ‘ee’ sounds cut off and the core ‘p’ sound amplified by allowing that little puff of air to build. He does it a few more times, as we, fishlike, open and close our mouths in imitation. Confident that I understand the theory, I try to emit a bass kick, only to have a few wheezy ‘paaah’s slink out of my mouth.

HeaveN coaches me on my embouchure, and my bass kicks lose a bit of their anemic trail. But they’re still not great. He then quickly runs through a few more sounds, but the only one I’m actually able to do is the hi-hat, a short hiss of air directed through the front teeth. So, for our beatbox battle, I’m told to make hi-hat sounds at constant intervals—a steady stream of “tsssss” noises. Heaven calls me the “metronome” for our little routine, but I’m pretty sure that’s just a way of making me feel important while I’m belligerently hissing at the opposing team.

The battles were phenomenally entertaining—standout performances included a middle-aged attendee singing “Sexy Back” over an R&B-laced backbeat and a beatboxed rendition of the  “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” theme. Finally, it was my group’s turn—and we were up against Snow himself. I was ready with my hi-hat, but I wasn’t able to do much else. And I did lose the beat about halfway through—so much for being a metronome. Snow destroyed us, of course. But the experience of beatboxing in front of a crowd, with real microphones, was exhilarating. And even with my complete lack of rhythm, I could feel a certain thrum in the air, an undercurrent. Perhaps these were Snow’s real vibrations.