Ondřej! Don‘t Make the Ticking Noise!

By Andrej Slivka

I heard about an unusual group mixing a lot of styles called Mako Mako. One day I went through Zelný trh and there were playing musicians from Mako Mako. It was exciting! Then I checked their website and Ondřej Havlík interested me as a Czech beatbox champion.
About twenty people in Brno music club Trojka stand up and start dancing. They are shaking theirs hips and waving their hands before the stage. There is the pianobox performance of a beatboxer Ondřej Havlík and a piano player Zdeněk Král.
Havlík is a small guy dressed in loose and comfortable T-shirt, trousers and wide skate shoes and entertains his audience just using his mouth and loop-station (an electronic machine that repeats recorded voice) for side music effects.
The show culminates when Havlík invites a special guest, Brooklyn rapper Tah Phrum Da Bush, on the stage. These two guys improvise on any topic. Havlík randomly chooses an African topic, Tah needs a few seconds, then starts to rap about imagined life in the savanna while Havlík is making some sounds from the bush – elephants, flying birds, lions.
“I love performing as a mix of my job and my hobby,” Havlík later tells a reporter. “I can play with the best musicians and discharge my exhibitionist inclinations.”
This is the same style and energy that has made Havlik the country’s best beatboxer – he has won the Czech beatbox championship in last two years, took part in World beatbox championship three years ago, too.
“Ondřej can make any music sound: salsa, bossa nova, jazz, hip hop,“ says Tah, the Brooklyn rapper. “Moreover, he thinks about the music he makes. It‘s not just making a sound.”
Havlík has tended to performing arts since his childhood. He loved to simulate anything and became dependent on entertaining others. He danced lambada for his kindergarten mates when he was five years old, imitated Michael Jackson´s style for friends at elementary school, or made electric boogie that he saw in Paris when he was ten years old.
His parents encouraged him in these funny things. No wonder. Havlík inherited showman skills from his father and musician skills from his mother.
That is why he felt the geniality of Michael Jackson, his musical idol, when he was young. “Nobody phrases words better than him! He superbly feels the rhythm,“ says Havlík about his idol. He started to imitate uncommon sounds from Jackson´s mouth. “These sounds sounded to my mother like watch ticking. Sometimes she exhorted me: Ondřej! Don´t make the ticking noise!” laughs Havlík.
But his musician part was still to boil over. Havlík´s desire to entertain others brought him in drama classes at age 12. On one hand he learned the basic acting techniques. On the other hand he started not to feel good in theatre.“You are still shut in dark and dusty theatre trying to improve your drama performance. You haven´t got any time to do sports, join the friends… And your salary is too small!” explains Havlík his bad feelings.
Nevertheless he went to study drama acting at Janáček Academy of Musical Arts in Brno at the age of seventeen. He started to study two schools simultaneously. Drama acting at academy in Brno and last year at grammar school in Ústí nad Labem.
Although Havlík is a very optimistic person he started to be depressed. “I was sitting on the train to Ústí, shivering and thinking what would happen if I didn´t finish the grammar school,” he recalls. Finally, he passed his final exams at grammar school very well.
After that, he had a lot of free time. He started to improvise on mouth beatboxing with bass guitarist Michal Procházka five years ago. And he went to a beatbox workshop where he met the best beatboxers in the country: Jaro Cossiga and Freaky Jezus from Beatburger band.
But the main breakpoint of his beatbox career came in 2004, when he went for his academic trainee-ship to the Netherlands. The theatre and drama plays in these country were crazy and bored him, as did the marihuana-stoned people in Netherlands coffee shops.
He spent much time with Mad Track, one of the best Netherlands beatboxers, who studied at the same school which Havlík attended. Mad Track taught him basic beatbox techniques, especially using one´s lips.
When Havlík came back to the Czech Republic there came a call. It was Jaro Cossiga who had to find somebody who could go to World beatbox championship in 2005 as a fourth member of Beatburger band. Havlík was so excited, it was his beatbox chance.
He was in euphoria at world championship. “I didn´t sleep for thirty-six hours, ate a little. I was beatboxing all the time and tried to catch others´ styles,” says Havlík. Beatburger band placed in best five beatbox bands in the world.
After that, he came a part of Beatburger band. And he realised that the world‘s top beatbox is not just the making of sounds. It is the music. So he formed a band called Mako Mako in Brno with bass guitarist Michal Procházka, violin player Peter Strenáčik and singer Kristína Šimegová. It is a unique group which can play many styles: hip hop, pop, funky, chill out.
Mako Mako helped Havlík to understand a beatbox as music and to win the last two Czech championships. He does not have any competition in a deep mix of beatbox and music feeling in his country. But Havlík wants more. He has to train. Everywhere.
“He is still training! He goes in the street, beats some song and doesn´t notice anybody!” says his girlfriend, Kristína Šimegová, with a laugh.
Improvised performances with pianist Zdeněk Král called pianobox are a part of Havlík´s training, too. But Havlík does not forget about his academic education. He started to companion theater performances with all possible sounds. It‘s an unusual, but not original idea. It is enough for Havlík. He can join his performing, acting and beatboxing skills together in the plays Pink Panther and Lulu in Brno theatres. And again, he trains.
Naturally, beatbox is number one for him. He would like to make some website to be more known and record some albums. One solo record and one with Mako Mako band. But he has even a bigger dream. “I would like to show people that they could start to notice the mouth as a musical instrument,” firmly says Havlík.
Maybe he is sitting in front of Youtube now, and trying to imitate the style of his next competitor on World beatbox championship 2009. As he says, it is the best training. And he wants to become a world beatbox master. Not just to win, but to make his biggest dream true.