Felix Zenger & Kasper van der Meulen freestyle
Musical Performance
Finnish beatbox artist Felix Zenger has made a showstopping entry into the scene during the past couple of years. Praised by the likes of Pharrell Williams, rubbing shoulders with such talent as Kid Koala, Bahamadia and Blu, Zenger is also a YouTube hit, with his most popular clip amassing over 30 million plays. On his debut album "Won't Say A Thing", Zenger goes way beyond the common conceptions of the beatbox as an art form.
What makes Felix Zenger an artist to keep your eye on is not just his extraordinary skill level, but his ability to put that talent into good use when aiming for his musical goal. As his debut album goes to show, what rules here is a fresh musical vision, with instrumental virtuosity added as a spice.
Listening to Zenger’s music and seeing him live, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the man has been immersed in sound from the young age of five. Starting out with the piano, Zenger later on moved into beatboxing and into the field of urban rhythms. Studies at the Helsinki Pop & Jazz Conservatory added fresh ideas to the mix for Zenger, who is also the only person to date to complete his final thesis on beatboxing.
Recently he has performed in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, China, Mexico, El Salvador, Russia, Singapore, Canada, plus all over Europe and the Nordic countries. “I’m sorry, but you’re one of the best that ever did it.” – Pharrell Williams
Felix Zenger, an officially trained mouth musician and Finnish YouTube record holder,
It’s almost like a new language, but also like a new instrument. Before you can play your instrument, you have to know how to talk the language.
Summary
- The presentation mentions record-breaking YouTube viewership for vocal artistry in Finland. - Beatboxing is defined as a "biohack," serving as both a new language and a musical instrument played through the mouth. - Instruction is provided for three fundamental vocal percussion sounds: the bass kick, the hi-hat, and the snare drum. - A basic rhythmic sequence is demonstrated by combining the kick, hi-hat, and snare sounds. - A freestyle collaboration concludes the session by featuring beatboxing alongside a handpan.
Article
Felix Zenger And Kasper Van Der Meulen Turn The Human Body Into An Instrument At Biohacker Summit 2019 Helsinki
A Freestyle Performance That Made Biology Sound Like Music
At Biohacker Summit 2019 Helsinki, the Finnish beatbox artist Felix Zenger and Kasper van der Meulen delivered a performance that felt at once playful, technically dazzling and strangely fitting for a gathering devoted to the optimisation of human potential. Presented on Friday, 1 November 2019, in Helsinki, Finland, the session, titled *Felix Zenger & Kasper van der Meulen freestyle*, transformed the stage into a laboratory of rhythm, breath and improvisation.
Zenger, introduced as a master of the mouth and a record-breaking YouTube phenomenon in Finland, did not simply perform. He made an argument. In his hands, or rather in his lips, tongue, lungs and throat, beatboxing became more than entertainment. It became a kind of embodied technology, a living demonstration of how the body could be trained, refined and repurposed into an instrument of remarkable range.
“Beatboxing is the oldest instrument in the world,” he said, framing the art form not as novelty but as origin.
The Beatbox As Biohack
The event’s larger theme was never far from the stage. Where other speakers had offered protocols, supplements, data and routines, Zenger offered something more immediate and perhaps more elemental. “You have been learning all kinds of biohacks here today, but I am going to teach you the beatbox biohack,” he told the audience.
It was a line that landed because it reframed beatboxing in the language of the summit itself. Here was biohacking stripped to its most human core: no wearable, no app, no device, just the disciplined manipulation of breath, pressure and sound. Beatboxing, as Zenger presented it, was both a new language and a new instrument, one played entirely through the mouth.
That idea gave the performance an unusual power. In a conference often oriented toward the future, Zenger returned the audience to the oldest technology they possessed, the body itself.
A Lesson In Rhythm, Built From The Mouth Up
What followed was part performance, part tutorial, and all of it carried by Zenger’s charisma. He broke beatboxing down into its core percussive elements, demonstrating how complex rhythm could be assembled from simple phonetic units.
First came the kick drum, formed from the forceful compression of a “B” into a punchier consonant. Then the hi-hat, a crisp blend of “T” and “S.” Then the snare, explained with comic precision: “To produce a snare drum sound, perform a kick drum and try to smile at the same time while adding an S at the end.”
It was a beautifully odd instruction, half technical direction, half theatrical joke. Yet it worked. Bit by bit, the audience was ushered into the mechanics of vocal percussion, encouraged to hear the mouth not as a vehicle for speech alone but as a drum kit, sampler and rhythm machine.
From there, Zenger layered the sounds into a basic beat, showing how a sequence of kick, hi-hat and snare could become a pulse. The lesson carried a larger message beyond music: mastery often begins with decomposition, with reducing complexity into repeatable, physical actions.
Nature Sounds, Laughter And The Art Of Improvisation
The atmosphere was not austere. It was loose, funny and collaborative. There was banter on stage, mock seriousness, and a willingness to let the absurd into the room. When the conversation turned to nature sounds, one vocal effect came out less birdsong than machinery, prompting the joke that a helicopter, too, could count as nature in a technology-minded crowd.
That interplay mattered. It prevented the session from becoming merely demonstrative. Instead, it retained the alive, unstable energy of freestyle itself, the sense that anything might happen and that even mistakes could become part of the show.
Technical Glitches Could Not Silence The Stage
And indeed, something did happen. Stage monitors and audio levels faltered just as the performance expanded. Yet the interruption only underscored Zenger’s point. If the most advanced systems failed, the oldest instrument remained.
As adjustments were made, he filled the space with improvisation, including a brief vocal turn that kept the audience engaged rather than restless. It was a small but telling moment. Technical difficulty, so often the dead air of live events, became instead an opportunity to demonstrate resilience, humour and command.
The body, once again, proved more adaptable than the machinery around it.
Kasper Van Der Meulen And The Handpan Enter The Conversation
When Kasper van der Meulen joined the stage, the session shifted from workshop to collaboration. “Let us add more instruments so it will be just the three of us,” came the invitation, before the handpan was brought into the frame. Then, with disarming candour, the premise of the duet was laid bare: “We have never played together before, but we are going to try it out.”
That admission gave the finale its charge. There was no polished certainty, no rehearsed sheen, only trust in instinct, listening and timing. The handpan’s resonant, melodic tones met Zenger’s tightly controlled vocal percussion in a closing improvisation that fused acoustic rhythm with modern melodic structure.
The result was not simply a novelty pairing. It was a conversation between breath and metal, body and object, pulse and atmosphere.
A Performance That Captured The Spirit Of The Summit
Felix Zenger arrived at Biohacker Summit 2019 Helsinki with the credentials of a globally recognised performer, praised by figures including Pharrell Williams and known for pushing beatboxing beyond its conventional boundaries. But what made this appearance memorable was not fame alone. It was the clarity with which he aligned his art with the ethos of the event.
In a summit devoted to upgrading the self, Zenger reminded the audience that enhancement need not always come from outside. Sometimes it begins by rediscovering the astonishing capacities already built into the human frame.
By the end of the freestyle session, with Kasper van der Meulen beside him and the handpan finally sounding through the room, the message had become unmistakable. The voice was not only expressive. It was rhythmic, architectural and ancient. It could teach, entertain and adapt. It could fail and recover. It could become, in the fullest sense, an instrument.
And for a few vivid minutes in Helsinki, it did.
Part of Biohacker Summit 2019 Helsinki