I'm pretty skeptical when Dan Newman '09 tells me that anyone can beat-box. I've marveled at the vocal percussion featured at many a coffeehouse performance but the talent still seems, well, superhuman. Still, sitting in Usdan on a Monday morning, Newman teaches me how to koovk'chow a convincing basic beat. "It's just part of a toolbox of sounds," he encourages, adding, somewhat improbably, "It's good for your abs."
Newman is co-music director of the a cappella group Rather Be Giraffes, which, according to the group's history, was formed when several Brandeis singers "decided they would Rather Be Giraffes than be in any of the other, then-existing a cappella groups on campus," due to the animals' notorious silence. They withdrew from their respective groups to establish the club in which Newman now sings. In RBG, he tells me, everyone really does beat -box.
