24 May,2026 11:55 AM IST | Mumbai | Tanisha Banerjee
Pranav Gupta fuses his beatboxing with flute, harmonica, and jaw harp. Pic/Atul Kamble; (right) For Charu Singh, beatboxing was about being able to create more music out of yourself
Beatboxing began as a street-born vocal art form in the 1980s hip-hop scene in the United States, where artistes imitated drum machines and turntable rhythms using only their mouths, throat, and breath. Over the years, the art evolved far beyond percussion. Today, beatboxers layer melodies, basslines, and even instrumental sounds into performances, creating music that feels orchestral despite coming from a single body. In India, beatboxing grew through YouTube tutorials, underground hip-hop communities and reality shows, eventually carving space within college festivals and fusion performances.
Increasingly, artistes are blending beatboxing with classical and folk instruments, creating sounds that feel both global and deeply rooted.
Among them is Charu Singh, a beatboxer who merges vocal percussion with the flute and harmonica. The 25-year-old engineering student discovered beatboxing on YouTube and instantly knew she wanted to pursue it. "I texted my best friend the same day and said, "I want to become a beatboxer. I want that label,'" she recalls.
What followed, however, was not instant applause. For nearly two years, Singh says people mocked the sounds she practised. But experimentation became central to her style. Having always loved music, she began combining beatboxing with instruments, creating performances that move between melody and rhythm seamlessly.
Singh also pushes back against being boxed into the label of a "female beatboxer". "You are a beatboxer. That's it," she says, arguing that gendered tags often overshadow the craft itself. Yet, she acknowledges the limitations women performers still navigate. While male artistes may freely travel for gigs, Singh says safety concerns and family restrictions constantly shape her decisions. "If I was a guy, I would have travelled the whole world," she says.
Even within the beatboxing community, fusion styles like hers are sometimes criticised as being "too easy" or audience-friendly. Singh disagrees. "I love beatboxing because you're just creating more music out of yourself," she says.
For Pranav Gupta, beatboxing began with a film. After watching Gully Boy in 2019 at 14, Gupta became fascinated by rap culture and was encouraged by a neighbourhood rapper to learn beatboxing for collaborations. What began as curiosity soon turned into obsession. "During the lockdown, I spent nearly eight hours a day on Discord servers, learning techniques from beatboxers across the world and practising relentlessly," he says.
Today, the 20-year-old performs as part of a trio called Aarambh alongside flautist Jay Chavan and singer Gauri Mishra. Together, they experiment with vocal percussion, melody and live instrumentation, creating performances that move beyond conventional hip-hop collaborations. Gupta himself has expanded into playing the flute, harmonica, and jaw harp alongside beatboxing. "People around me thought beatboxing only meant rap culture," he says. "And with rap came assumptions about smoking, drinking or drugs." But Gupta wanted to break away from stereotypes and create something unconventional. "Rap and beatboxing together had become common. Alag se kuch crazy karna tha (I wanted to do something crazy)," he says.
One of the biggest challenges, according to him, is that beatboxing still lacks a defined path in India. "There is no roadmap for this," he says. To sustain himself, Gupta teaches beatboxing in addition to performing at events. While there are months without gigs, teaching has become both financial support and a way of building awareness around the artform. "People know what beatboxing is," he says, "but they still don't realise it can exist as a complete art on its own."
Beatboxing has always existed between two worlds - competition and performance - as Benjamin Arockiaraj explains. The 21-year-old, who has been practising the artform for the past five years, says most beatboxers are deeply competition-oriented because battles and championships are where the real adrenaline lies. "A beatboxer gets this kick when performing in an actual competition," he says. Yet outside the community, audiences rarely follow championship winners closely. "Instead, performers who adapt beatboxing into stage acts and musical collaborations often gain wider recognition," he says.
Arockiaraj believes India's beatboxing scene is still in the process of finding its footing. Referring to Gully Boy, he says the film popularised rap culture but did not fully spotlight the wider hip-hop ecosystem that includes beatboxing. "We still struggle a lot in bringing up the artform," he says. He credits organisations like The Dharavi Dream Project for helping create visibility by integrating beatboxing into music events across Mumbai. "People are hustling everywhere just to bring this artform onto bigger platforms," he says.
