This guy is just plain amazing! Last week I went on to You Tube looking for something specific. I can't remember what it was. But there on the front page, in their most popular videos section, was this "beatbox flute player". The concept was certainly intriguing. I couldn't imagine how one person could do both: beatbox and flute. Then again I felt the same way about a lot of wind instruments before I first heard Rahsaan Roland Kirk. It turns out this guy has studied Kirk as well.
The video starts out pretty normally: he's adjusting his shirt, his trousers and his shirt again and then he's playing the theme song to Inspector Gadget. This is not exactly high-brow entertainment. Then, about 30 seconds in, everything changes. My head started bobbing and I knew I was in love.
I proceeded to find everything I could that this guy's done... first on You Tube:
I then realised I somehow had to add these tunes to my music collection. I would gladly buy and download these if I could. I looked all over and could not find him anywhere on iTunes, MP3.com, Napster or anywhere else for that matter. I listened to the tunes a few times and realised I had to do something. I Googled and found a system for converting You Tube videos to MP3 files: Vixy. They also convert the videos to video files (AVI (DivX) or MPEG4). But that's not what I was interested in. I can't play videos in my car for example. I converted all 4 of his Youtubes to MP3 and added them to our music server and I've listened to them over and over and over since.
I wrote to him to find out if there's anywhere one could find his music either electronically or commercially. I didn't mention that the quality of the You Tube video converted to MP3 is pretty lousy. Unfortunately I haven't heard back from him yet. Looking at how popular and famous he has become on You Tube it's unlikely I ever will hear back from him.
I then went looking for more. His My Space page has a couple of more tunes which are also quite good. But I can't figure out how to download them...
Googling his name again and getting past all of the You Tube references I found what felt like a gold mine: Aoka. This is a group he performs with and they've got 5 tunes on their web site which I quite enjoy as well. Haunting I guess is the first adjective which comes to mind. Again I can't figure out how to get the music from the site and on to my computer...
I wrote Aoka professing my love and adoration of their music and begging for some way of getting their music... I haven't heard back yet but I'm more hopeful...
These are exactly the sort of discoveries that I've always felt the Internet was developed for!
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