The Beatbox House&nbsp;(Gene Shinozaki, Kenny Urban, Napom, Amit, &amp; Chris) were Nile FM's guests on the Big Breakfast with Rob &amp; Nadine, and they talked about their tour in Egypt, including their highly anticipated upcoming show at&nbsp;AUC's&nbsp;Tahrir Campus, which will be taking place next Wednesday, the 1st of May, and will see&nbsp;the World Champion American beatboxing group collaborating with the local Egyptian bands, Wust El-Balad, and Sharmoofers.&nbsp;
What is the US Department of the State American music abroad program, and what attracted you to it?
Kenny: Basically, it&rsquo;s a program that brings American bands to different countries, to kind of combine the cultures, and that&rsquo;s basically what we&rsquo;re doing here, and that&rsquo;s the power of music, we might not speak the same language but we&rsquo;re all feeling the vibe, feeling the rhythm, and that&rsquo;s the beauty of what we do, beatboxing, it&rsquo;s an international language because we don&rsquo;t need to speak the same language, but everyone speaks beats and rhythms.
What makes you excited about music, and why do you think music is such a special tool that can bring people together?
Kenny: Well, beatboxing brought us together, we all met through the American beatbox championships, where we battled each other, and then we started to win all these competitions, and we decided to form a group, and then we started to win the world championship, then we started to judge all the championships, from the Chinese beatbox championship to the Indonesian beatbox championship, and now we&rsquo;re here in Egypt.
The Egyptian bands Wust El-Balad, and Sharmoofers are both performing with you, and they have their own distinguished style, so what is the most exciting aspect of blending American and Egyptian music styles together for a fusion performance?
Gene: I think those bands have their own hip-hop elements to their music, so it&rsquo;s going to sound really cool. We are going to have our first rehearsal today with Wust El-Balad, and we are very excited to meet them and feel their vibe.
Do you know how are you going to infuse yourself with the music of these bands?
Gene: We have no idea, and that&rsquo;s the beauty of it, we&rsquo;re going to freestyle, we&rsquo;re very good at that we like to listen and just add in our element because us as beatboxers we cover pretty much the whole frequency spectrum from bass all the way to the highs and they are also a band and they cover those frequencies as well, so I think we going to try to fit ourselves in between those highs and lows.
How do you think your music is going to resonate with the Egyptian audience compared to other countries?
Chris: I think music itself is pretty universal, and what we are doing is making music, and that&rsquo;s the whole reason we&rsquo;re here. We might be American and Wust El-Balad is from Egypt, and we are going to be sharing our music but that&rsquo;s the whole point, being here together on the same stage, being present with one another with the people here in Cairo, it&rsquo;s so important that we&rsquo;re creating these bridges. I think they&rsquo;re going to love what we do cause we are just expressing ourselves with music that we love.
What other styles of music have you worked with?
Chris: I think it&rsquo;s interesting because beatboxing is kind of like an instrument, so for example with the guitar you can play blues or folk or rock, so it&rsquo;s very similar to beatboxing we got to use it with so many different kinds of genres of music.
You can go anywhere in the world and be a beatboxer, and I can connect with this other person through the language of music.
Is there any type of music that you haven&rsquo;t collaborated with but you want to?
Amit: I would love to collaborate with classical Indian music, cause I&rsquo;m big on yoga and meditation, just being more in touch with my roots, so when I listen to any Indian classical music I try to beatbox along with it, so that&rsquo;s one thing I would definitely like to do.
What do you hope to achieve during your tour in Egypt both musically and personally?
Amit: Musically, we just hope to bring beatboxing and spread a positive light, because beatboxing is really a healing art form, and whenever people hear us they can feel its healing effects, and also there&rsquo;s a huge shock factor cause what we are doing with our mouth most people have never heard before.
Personally, I&rsquo;m really excited to see the pyramids and the Karnak and Luxor temples.
Who inspired you to beatbox?
Napom: We definitely inspire each other the most, which is kind of a copout answer, but it&rsquo;s true once we all met each other and heard each other style, we all kept sharing and wanted to push each other but I think the old school beatbox scene is a big inspiration for all of us.
Beatbox started in the 80s in New York and some of the pioneers of beatboxing are still doing it today and that&rsquo;s definitely inspirational for us.
Are there any upcoming projects or collaborations you&rsquo;re particularly excited about?
Kenny: Definitely with Sharmoofers and Wust El-Balad, we are super excited to perform with them and collaborate with them, we know they&rsquo;re super popular and influential here, and it&rsquo;s going to be fun.
What advice would you give to aspiring musicians who hope to explore and integrate diverse cultural influences into their own music?
Napom: I&rsquo;d say that anything is possible in music. Whenever we started beatboxing a lot of our peers and our parents, looked at us like we were crazy, because we were just making noises out of our mouths, and it&rsquo;s definitely not the most normal job to have, but if anything that shows that you can do anything with music if you have the right belief and the right musical talent to back it up.
Kenny: And also collaboration, you know we all started as individuals we beatboxed for many years without even knowing who each other was, but once we met is when everything started to happen for us, when we started to collaborate and work together.
What do you hope the audience in Egypt take away from your show and what messages or feelings do you aim to convey through your music?
Napom: We stick to what we do regardless most of the time, we have an hour set that is pretty rehearsed, there are some parts of it, depending where we&rsquo;re at we kind of play to the crowd local types of music.
I mean everywhere we go, we get a good reaction and people are able to relate to it in some type of way, cause anybody can relate to this local art form which is super relatable.

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