Sunday 12 June 2011

Saturday 11 June 2011

Don't worry, be happy... and the grand-daddy of beatboxing should know!

You won't be surprised to hear that Bobby McFerrin's 1980s hit single Don't worry, be happy is already in my collection of Bouncy Happy Tunes. Few songs are as cheering and chilled as this one!

But I'd never listened to any of his other music, until last night when I casually clicked on the Bobby McFerrin YouTube playlist. And what a revelation. I'm not a music critic, and the only words I can find are inadequate cliches like "Wow" and "Oh. My. God", so I won't even try. If you don't already know this music, just click on some of the links and listen.




Even if you do know some of McFerrin's music, you may not have made a connection between it and beatboxing - one of the most amazing music forms - a sort of awe-inspiring acapella hip-hop. Back in 2008 I enthused here about ReepsOne, a young beatboxer who left me joyfully stunned when I listened to him making his mouth-music in my friend's sitting room. ReepsOne won the UK Beatboxing championship the next year, but of course there was no such competition back in the '80s. Yet listen to Bobby McFerrin's version of Blackbird above, and you'll see he's obviously the funky grand-daddy of beatboxing!

How can people possibly make such unbelievable, beautiful sounds with only their voices?!

Flow x