Assorted Grand Beatbox Battle Thoughts

We are officially less than a month away from the Grand Beatbox Battle (GBB), but you wouldn’t know if you were relying on Swissbeatbox to promote their flagship event. The world’s biggest beatboxing organization has been largely quiet on their major platforms regarding the battle.

The official Grand Beatbox Battle account has been silent for the past 10 weeks except to announce that some artists have dropped out and been replaced by runner up wild card winners.

Amidst posts about shoutouts, minor events, vlogs, and promotion for Beatland and Beatscore — two odd competitions that have done little to build Swissbeatbox — the European beatboxing giants have maintained radio silence on, theoretically, the biggest beatbox event in the world.

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The only post that gave any insight into what Swissbeatbox was thinking vis a vis the GBB was a milquetoast statement released on May 21 regarding a series of statements on the Beatbox Bros podcast that essentially call Swissbeatbox and Pepouni shitty people to work with, and verge on calling Pepouni an asshole who shouldn’t be the face of international beatboxing. (In case you weren’t aware, I had thoughts, even before the Beatbox Bros weighed in.)

What is this radio silence meant to imply? Could Swissbeatbox be tired of self promotion? Do they think that they have already reached every possible beatbox fan? Did they stop worrying about promotion when they sold out the event? I don’t know. 

I reached out to Swissbeatbox to see if they will comment, and I’ll update this and any subsequent posts about the GBB if they agree to chat. I’m skeptical though. They haven’t responded to any of my texts or emails in a while. 

In any event, if Swissbeatbox has no interest in telling people what to look forward to about the GBB, I will take on that burden and share a few of my thoughts. (Okay, I would have done this regardless. But there is a content void and I do not mind filling it!)

Just like my curiosity about the suspicious lack of posting from Swissbeatbox, the following ideas aren’t long enough to be full articles, but they are the things that I want to know about the GBB. Let’s see if we can learn about it together.

The safety of it all…

The 2021 Grand Beatbox Battle was not a safe one. As I wrote after the event,

In the aftermath of the GBB, many community members began to consider the allegations in light of this unwelcoming atmosphere for non-men. Just a few years prior, the international community blacklisted an American beatboxer for violent sexual conduct, and yet, after statements and warnings, nothing changed. 

Could women who love beatboxing ever feel safe in the community? Could men continue to support organizations that didn’t actively work to ensure their female peers were safe and welcome? Trust was at an all time-low. 

Little has changed since Swissbeatbox and Pepouni took time away to consider their complicity in the harm people experienced at the 2021 GBB. When I spoke to Julianna Olanska of Swissbeatbox in April 2022, she layed out how they ultimately decided to let a performer who was accused of assault to attend the event, even though they knew he was accused of violent conduct in his home country well before GBB.

“We received documents from the court stating that he's found not guilty. When he came to Poland, there was already another case, we were not informed about that. We only received papers from the lawyers and from the court, stating about his innocence that he was found not guilty [in the first case]. 

When we then went to the GBB, we had a talk with [him] where we asked him to go and speak to the artists that you're performing with to describe your situation. And be honest with everyone, [explain] the current situation, so that there's no allegations going from one corner to another.

To be honest, we don't know what happened. He just didn't do it. And then everything seemed fine…”

Why did the process not include asking the performer’s home beatbox association if they feel that it is safe for him to be at events? Olanska didn’t say. But this artist was long unwelcome at his country’s events.

After the assaults and general lack of safety, Swissbeatbox shared dialogue with Beatbox Safe Space and Take Back the Night, but the talks “fizzled out,” said Rabea Eichhorn, the executive director of Beatbox Safe Space. Take Back the Night is an organization dedicated to ending sexual, relationship, and domestic violence in all forms, and Beatbox Safe Space is an organization that aims to make the beatbox community a safer place.

After the talks fizzled out, the two organizations reached out to Swissbeatbox again and were ignored. They even “reached out through other means like through other people beatboxers that are more closely connected” to Swissbeatbox, but to no avail.

In my 2022 conversation with Olanska, she described the conversations with Take Back the Night and Beatbox Safe Space as follows:

“We had a conversation with Take Back the Night. We wanted to have a training about that, so that all of our team could be prepared for any kind of, you know, situations like that in the future.” 

This is an interesting way to describe inviting a person who stands accused of sexual assault across the world to attend your event. It is also an interesting way to describe multiple people reporting assaults at your event. “Situations like that” indeed. The euphemisms are strong with this one.  

Olanska continued: “What happened is unfortunately it is extremely expensive [to get training]. What we decided to invest into is to have a person that we can reach out to in case there is a situation like that because having constant specialists on board working permanently is something that we don't have [a] budget for.”

In advance of the 2023 Grand Beatbox Battle, oversights like allowing the alleged assaulter at GBB 21, declining to train staff on event safety, and with the continued silence from Swissbeatbox on safety matters, seriously concern the folks at Beatbox Safe Space and Take Back the Night.

“There's no organization that makes them accountable,” said Katie Koestner, the executive director of Take Back the Night. Koestner critiqued Swissbeatbox, adding that there are other small event companies that manage to foster equity inclusion and respect despite their lack of staffing and funding. “There are efficient and effective communities that [have] processes, protocols, and policies that make it easy for them to be efficient, effective and organized.”

Unfortunately, she concluded, “I'm not sure how many of them are in beatbox.”

Take Back the Night and Beatbox Safe Space will be hosting an online event on October 8 to increase awareness of harassment in the beatbox community. The event is not specifically about the Grand Beatbox Battle, but the timing, just two weeks before the GBB is intentional. 

Safety will be a prime concern at the Tokyo GBB, and, at least for now, the few efforts to make the GBB a safe event have been external.

The men of it all… 

As a corollary to the event safety element of the GBB, their inability or unwillingness to platform women and non-binary people is unsurprising, if disappointing. Barring another surprise performance from Olanska — the Swissbeatbox employee was invited to perform with her band at the closing ceremony of the 2021 GBB — all but two performers at the GBB will be men. 

Newly crowned 2-time world champion Pe4enkata will again serve as a judge, this year in the Tag Team and U-18 categories, and Shivali Joshi will be competing in the crew category with Desible, the 2022 Indian crew champions. 

It is not hard for the organizers of beatboxers to find ways for women and non-binary people to get on stage. Short of creating a category for women — a non-starter for many beatboxers, and a caging category for non-binary people who were assigned female at birth — Swissbeatbox could find showcase times for female Japanese champions, or, perhaps, invite one of those champions to serve as a judge.

There are many qualified judges in the world, including Na-Na from Japan, who placed top-6 in the world at this summer’s world championship, and Rinka, another Japanese champion, who has been hosting and judging events for years. As of now, I don’t know if Swissbeatbox made any attempts to include more women among the judges and performers (I’ll update this if I hear from them), but it is yet another year where female and non-binary beatboxers will not be represented on beatboxing’s biggest stage.

The Asia of it all…

For as long as I’ve been covering beatboxing, beatboxers have been saying that Asia is the future. In Asia, the best beatboxers from around the world found many many devoted fans, often in far bigger numbers than in their home countries. 

By bringing the GBB to Japan, Swissbeatbox have realized that future, and brought it into the present. 

The impact of this event will be felt in Japan, and potentially Asia, in the years to come (more on this next week), and we will see how that plays out after the event. But I would say that by hosting smaller events in Japan throughout the past year, Swissbeatbox has already made their impact on the Japanese beatboxing community. 

It seems that Swissbeatbox hosted these smaller events to build up familiarity with the country and with their hosting partners, but by lending their gravitas and expertise, they were able to give a jolt of energy to a country that had already been on the ascendency within the beatboxing world. 

Much like the discussion of gender above, it would have been nice for Swissbeatbox to include more Asian beatboxers on the judging panels. Sh0h from Japan will be the lone Asian judge. When it comes to representation of all types, Swissbeatbox can’t step up to the plate. 

The competition of it all…

I don’t have too much to say about the competition. The level should be very high again, and, hopefully Swissbeatbox will continue to bring the livestream and videos to their YouTube in high fidelity. After covering the last GBB on-site, I am excited to check out the live stream this time.

In the past I’ve given predictions, so why not do it again. These are not endorsements, or informed by anything other than watching a lot of videos. Don’t take it too seriously or make any bets based on my guesses (but if you are someone betting on beatbox, please please please get in touch to tell me about it).

Here they are…

• Solo: MaxO
• Tag-Team: Rogue Wave
• Loopstation: Dice
• Producer: KBA
• Crew: M.O.M.

In the meantime, if you haven’t checked out my interview on the Beatbox International Podcast after the World Champs, now’s a great chance to check it out. I put it right here for ya. Talk Soon.