Beatboxer Harry D Cruz, also known as Hariharan from Bengaluru represented Karnataka at the Great Indian Beatbox Festival. Hariharan and Pawan Rio, another outstanding beatboxer from the city performed as a tag team popularly known as “Eminent’s” and made it to the top 16 at the Indian Beatbox Championship hosted by BBXIndia in Mumbai.
As India’s first Kazoo beatboxer and the man to create the best saxophone sound using only human voice, Hariharan is indeed not your average beatboxer. He holds numerous records and titles, including entries in the Asia book of records and the India book of records.
When Hariharan combined beatboxing with strange musical instruments like the Thai flute and the Kazoo to produce something he calls “revolutionary,” it was highly praised. “When I first started beatboxing, I looked around and discovered that many others were also doing it. My adventure as a Kazoo and Thai flute beatboxer began because I didn’t want to blend in with the crowd, instead, I wanted to stand out from the same crowd”, he said.
Hariharan, who comes from a humble family, claimed that he was unaware of beatboxing at first. He decided to learn the technique of beatboxing on his own by just studying YouTube videos after being captivated by one of his seniors’ performances at a college festival.
While recently he has also been a Jury member for the Sargam got talent 2022 which was state level inter-collegiate cultural fest Sargam 2022 organized by New horizon college of engineering, and a Jury member for the beatboxing state level inter-collegiate cultural fest “Sagara Taranga 2022″ organized by Dayananda Sagar Business Academy. Moreover, in the years year’s 2017, 2018, and 2022 he was again appointed as a jury member for the National level inter-collegiate cultural fest Beatboxing event at Chiguru organized by Cambridge institute of technology Bengaluru.
“One of my friends advised that all artists have fancy names that make them stand out and that is when I decided to keep a stage name, which is Harry D Cruz,” he replied when asked about his stage name. Recently, he started exploring DJing and investing his time to hone his new skills.
“Now I experiment with other forms of music almost every day. I don’t want to think of myself as just a beatboxer anymore, it limited me artistically. I want to use all my possibilities so as not to lock myself in a register,” he said.
Further, Harry D Cruz has judged various festivals at prestigious universities including Dayanand Sagar Business Academy and New Horizon College of Engineering. He recently earned an MBA in Finance and HR from St. George College of Management Studies and is employed by an IT firm.
