Beatboxers mimic foreign tongues

Everyone is familiar with those things that may seem easy enough at first, but turn out to be ridiculously difficult. For many people, that thing is beatboxing.

Most people at one point or another have probably attempted to beatbox, but a lot of the time it just does not come out right. The way that beatboxers must move their mouths is truly remarkable, so remarkable that scientists at the University of Southern California decided to study it.

The research team developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology that can image in real time. Not only will this new imaging technique allow researchers to study how beatboxers make various sounds with their vocal cords, but it will also allow them to understand how speech develops. This imaging technology will enable a greater understanding of vocal cord damage and allow for the development of new therapies to treat it.

Through the beatboxing study, researchers came to discover that beat-boxers are capable of generating sounds from every language regardless of their own native tongue. For example, a beatboxer who only knows English and Spanish can replicate sounds characteristic of African languages that he’s never even heard before. The common “snare drum” and “rim shot” sounds are equivalent to pronunciations typically found in Xhosa (Eastern Cape, South Africa), Khoekhoe (Khoe, Botswana), and ǃXoon (Tuu, Namibia) languages. This fact led the researchers to believe that there exists a universal ‘soundboard’ from which all humans select their sounds.

Scientists also acknowledged that the sound of beat-boxing is strangely addicting. Beat-boxer sounds do not follow typical human vocal sounds such as vowel-consonant alternation. Because these natural sounds are not followed, beat-boxers must learn how to overcome these natural language tendencies to create the characteristic percussion sounds. Our human nature is to cue in on linguistic patterns in order to understand spoken words. In avoiding these natural patterns, beatboxers are able to create the illusion that the sounds are not coming from a human. Thus, we naturally believe that the beatboxer is not actually making the noise, making it seem all the more realistic.

Johns Hopkins senior beat-boxer Matt McCauley gave his own thoughts on why beat-boxing fascinates us: “It’s the unusual beats. Once you feel the rhythm, it infects you.”

As for himself, Matt has been “infected” for a while. “I like beats. Whether it’s banging on tables or blasting music on computers.” And it seems that everyone else likes his beats too.

No matter how you look at it, beat-boxing is truly an art. While I will always have to resort to the good ole’ “boots and cats,” people like Matt will continue to create unnatural beats for the rest of us to enjoy.