Two Freshmen Compete in American Beatbox Championships
November 19, 2019
John Watts ’23 (MBET) and Alex Sanchez ’23 (Dance) traveled to New York City the weekend of Nov. 8 to compete in the American Beatbox Championships. The championship is an annual series of beatbox battles to determine the best beatboxers in the U.S. The winners will represent the country in the 2020 Beatbox Battle World Beatbox Championships, held biannually, in Berlin.
The competition is divided into three categories: solo, team and loop station. The top 32 solo battlers were selected from their video entry. Both students submitted a two-minute wildcard video, collaborating with Shamar Binns ’23 (Film), and made it into the top 32, with Sanchez seeded fourth and Watts seeded 13th in solo. Watts and Sanchez met at the 2017 Championships, and in 2018, they both made it to the top 16.
This year marked the 10th anniversary of this national competition and honored rapper, record producer and beatboxing pioneer Doug E. Fresh with a lifetime achievement award.
Battlers had 90 seconds to showcase in an elimination round and were judged on originality, musicality, technicality and flow. The top 16 were placed into a bracket based on their elimination round score and had two rounds of 90 seconds to show their best routines to the judges and audience. The winner of each solo battle advanced to the next round until only two beatboxers were left fighting for the title of 2019 American Beatbox Champion. Sanchez made it to the top eight in solo and ended up winning the tag team division with his partner for the second year in a row.
Watts and Sanchez have no plans to rest after competition. When asked about their hopes for future collaborations at UArts, Sanchez says “There are so many ideas that we’ve thought about…UArts really provides everything that we could ever need or want to do. There are so many media to combine beatboxing with here, the possibilities are literally endless.”
Watts and Sanchez perform under the stage names JWat and BizKit, respectively, and recently performed at the UArts Day block party, where students, faculty, staff, families and passersby stopped to watch and listen.