Camille: Beatboxing Meets Body Percussion
While digging through the CDs in my car the other day, I came upon French artist Camille’s oddly compelling Le Fil ("The Thread"). Released in 2006, Le Fil isn’t new, but it continues to fascinate me, as does the artist herself. Quirky, bold, and unselfconscious, the 31-year-old Camille is known for her beatboxing, but her performances are somehow more than that—they’re thoroughly and viscerally corporeal in a way that I’ve rarely seen or heard before. She snorts, squeals, spits, and snuffles her way through songs, stomping her bare feet and blowing raspberries. This would be comic except for the fact that Camille can really sing, and her astute use of body percussion makes for some complex, catchy and rhythmically interesting music.
Check out a video of Camille performing "Ta Douleur" ("Your Pain") from Le Fil:
-- Bri Nguyen
Jason Kirk on May 06, 2009 at 08:56 AM
Pretty cool performance. For this kind of stuff, I'm partial to Kenny Muhammad the Human Orchestra, and a friend of mine named Blake Lewis merits mention, but I hadn't heard Camille before. Thanks for posting...