One of the great things about Cheltenham Jazz Festival as well as its music and raising funds for their charity for opportunities for schools and more (please read more here) is the events that they put on for children. Everyone is welcome at any Cheltenham Festival whether they be ticketed events or free.

This year, one of the ticketed events for kids was superstar beatboxer SK Shlomo.

SK Shlomo has performed with the likes of Rudimental, Ed Sheeran and more.

SK Shlomo is of Jewish descent, with Israeli, Iraqi and German lineage but grew up the UK. Shlomo learned to play the drums when they were 8 years old after receiving a drum set for Christmas. However, Shlomo explained on stage that the neighbours complained so they took to learning how to play the drums using their mouth.

With this, Shlomo gave a demonstration which absolutely wowed not just the young members of the audience but the grown ups too.

The kids completely in awe and amazed how those sounds can possibly come out of a persons mouth when it sounds like so many sounds at once and an actual drum set on stage. Shlomo showed the audience how to do the same by breaking down the sounds individually and trying them before putting all of the sounds together.

We learned to use the letter P for the bass, T for the High Hat and K for the snare. Have we practiced at home since? Well…yea but we will never be as good haha!

A lot of audience participation and a lot of laughter (especially from kids laughing at the grown ups, how embarrassing for them, haha), the hour went fast as everyone was very invested.

Four volunteers took to the stage to be superstar beatboxers on the mic. In pairs, the young volunteers competed to see who put in the most work. Each child did remarkably well and were very brave. Of course, the audience whom had to choose the winners, equally cheered for each pair resulting in a much deserved draw.

It was great to see a young audience experience Beatboxing for the first time! They were very entertained which is a hard thing to do when the majority of the audience is under 10 years old.

My son in particular was having a blast and was very surprised when after the show, me, his mother showed off the very little bit of beatboxing I could do. (No it wasn’t boots and cats).