Passion Stories

Beatboxing has spread from the West to the rest of the world for decades. It arrived in India a few years ago, and the familiarity has grown since then. The art first piqued the interest of young people in the Northeast, and it later found listeners in the south, who continued to appreciate the music rather than viewing it as a one-time spectacle. Across the country, people practise and listen to beatboxing.

Vineeth Vincent, perhaps India’s greatest beatboxer, has performed thousands of shows. Let’s look at how his passion drove him to success in this story.

He began his career as an emcee in Bangalore in 2007. He began to find a balance between being on stage as a host and using the little bit of musicality that was stuck in his head after a successful career as an emcee and a failed career as a musician.

In 2008, he took a year off from Christ College to devote more time to music and beatboxing. He spent a month in Ahmedabad at Mrinalini Sarabhai’s Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, where he met artists and experimented with beatboxing. He soon returned to Bangalore and books, though he was preoccupied with beatboxing and learning tricks on his own.

He appeared with ‘The Boxettes’ and the Austrian beatboxing group ‘Bauchklang.’ In 2011, he created the largest human beatbox ensemble and entered the ‘Limca Book of Records’ at an event called ‘Can You Say Beat Box?’ The beat-boxer, 33, is known as “India’s biggest beat-boxer.” Despite the fact that the path of his passion was less traveled, he did not give up and succeeded. He had nearly 1700 shows by the end of 2017 and held two titles, one for the Guinness Book of World Records and one for the Limca Book of World Records. He owns ‘Musical Cubicle,’ a music studio, ‘Side Step,’ an artist management company, and ‘Meditating Monkey,’ a backpacking hostel.