Are these two Israelis the world’s next big beatbox stars?
The beatbox team Middle School of Belgium wins the Tag Team category at the 2021 Grand Beatbox Battle. Photo by Tani Levitt
By Tani Levitt February 24, 2023
Two Israeli beatboxers will grace the stage of the biggest beatbox event in the world: the Grand Beatbox Battle, an annual music festival and world championship competition that will take place this October in Tokyo.
Maxim Mirel and Ori Abada, who perform as a duo under the stage name Max and H1ppy, won entry into the Tag Team category of the competition, in which teams engage in two-on-two battles. In the past decade, the beatbox scene has grown to an international community of millions, and the GBB is widely considered its most prestigious event.
Mirel, who had a breakout solo performance as part of the 2021 GBB, and Abada are at the forefront of a golden generation of beatboxers in Israel — a generation that first started gaining attention in late 2020, when the pair battled against each other for the title of Israeli Beatbox Champion. (Mirel eventually took home the crown.)
The two won a spot in the GBB lineup with a trap routine titled “No More,” a bass-driven attack on the ears punctuated by a series of intricate tongue clicks.
As GBB participants, Max and H1ppy will perform in front of a live crowd of thousands — the estimated attendance at the 2021 GBB was over 3,000 — as well as an avid community of online fans. Video of Mirel’s performance from the 2021 GBB has over 400,000 views. A successful run at the GBB Championship is the type of accolade that can propel a beatboxer to be able to make a living off of their art, and the pressure is on.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
