Edited by Azizi Powell
This post provides information about African American celloboxer (playing cello and beatboxing simultaneously) and singer Kevin "K.O" Olusola. This post also showcases five of Kevin Olusola's performances and includes selected comments from some of those YouTube video's discussion threads.
The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Kevin Olusola for his musical performances. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publishers of these examples on YouTube.
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INFORMATION ABOUT KEVIN OLUSOLA
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Olusola
"Kevin Olusola (born October 5, 1988) is an American musician, beatboxer, songwriter, record producer, singer, and rapper. Olusola is best known as the beatboxer of the vocal band Pentatonix.[2] After the group won NBC's The Sing-Off in 2011, they released five albums which all charted in the top 5 of the Billboard 200 charts, have sold over 2 million records,[3] and have amassed more than one billion views on their YouTube channel.
Olusola has also been identified as developing the art of "celloboxing" (playing cello and beatboxing simultaneously).[4] His celloboxing version of Mark Summer's "Julie-O" went viral in April 2011, which led him to become involved with Pentatonix. Olusola has performed at classical musical festivals such as the Amsterdam Cello Biennale and the Kronberg Academy Festival, opened the TED Conference in Vancouver, and was chosen by Quincy Jones to represent him in concert at the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival on the same program as Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea.[5] Olusola is fluent in Mandarin.[6]
Olusola was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, to Nigerian-born Oluwole Olusola, a psychiatrist, and Grenadian-born Curline Paul, a nurse. At that time, his father had just come from medical school in Nigeria and an internship in Trinidad and Tobago to Loma Linda University (a Seventh-day Adventist institution), where he met his wife while she was doing her MPH. After they married, they moved to Hershey, Pennsylvania (where Kevin's sister Candace was born) for a short period of time, and then to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for his father to finish residency at Albert Einstein Medical Center (where Kevin’s brother Kellon was born). Olusola started his education at Greater Philadelphia Junior Academy, but his family eventually moved to Owensboro, Kentucky where he was raised...
Olusola’s parents discovered his musical talent when he was six months old and decided to put him in music lessons. He started the piano at age 4, the cello at age 6, and alto saxophone at age 10...
While at Yale, Olusola was one of the principal cellists of the Yale Symphony Orchestra and participated in chamber music. It was during his junior year when he started thinking about music as a career when, that previous summer in Beijing, he began working on "celloboxing". One of his teachers at a Harvard summer intensive Chinese program suggested that he should try combining the two abilities. He won runner-up in Yo-Yo Ma’s "Celebrate and Collaborate With Yo-Yo Ma’ competition (Ma said Olusola’s version of Dona Nobis Pacem was "inventive and unexpected") and opened for KRS-One at Southern Connecticut State University. Olusola says that, during that spring break, his pre-med mentor Brandon Ogbunugafor (who was MD/PhD at Yale at the time) helped him to make the decision to finally go into music, saying medicine would always be there. After a summer of neurobiology research at Yale, Olusola moved to Beijing for his academic year of Chinese study and continuously honed his celloboxing skills."...
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SHOWCASE VIDEOS
These videos are presented in chronological order by their posting dates on YouTube with the video with the oldest date given first.
Example #1: Kevin Olusola's Amazing Solo Cello Beatbox Combo VIDEO
thestuffwelove, Uploaded on Apr 19, 2011
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Example #2:Kevin Olusola - "Julie-O"
The Spaulding Sessions, Published on Apr 9, 2012
The Spaulding Session, Volume 1
March 29, 2012
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Example #3: Sugar (Maroon 5 Live KOver) - Kevin "K.O." Olusola
Kevin K.O. Olusola, Published on Feb 2, 2015
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Example #4: Stay With Me (Sam Smith looping KOver) - Kevin "K.O." Olusola
Kevin K.O. Olusola, Published on Feb 9, 2015
-snip-
Selected comments from this video's discussion thread:
2016
Luan Trovador
"How can you play cello, do beatbox and SMILE at the same time?!"
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Uwagwu Michael
"This is Awesome! Kevin, you are an inspiration to so many. Keep it Up."
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Anika
"He speaks Chinese, plays cello, graduated from Yale, plays saxophone, sings a capella, and beatboxes...seriously, is there anything Kevin can't do?"
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Reply
America The Brave
"And he also went to the 2 best UNI's in China !!"
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Heather Figi
"A gift to the world - wow, wow, wow!!!!! Kevin, wishing you all the best - may all your dreams come true. Thank you for making this beautiful music in the world. Don't stop"
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Example #5: Renegade - Kevin "K.O." Olusola
Kevin K.O. Olusola, Published on Mar 9, 2015
-snip-
Selected comments from this video's discussion thread:
2016
Carl Lindstrom
"Musicality to me, is a combination of soul and skill ... Kevin has both and then some spark"
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Anna
"His opening falsetto is like a cross between Rose's theme in Doctor Who, and one of the themes from The Hunger Games and it makes me so nostalgic"
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Kays Navales
"Kevin's so underrated. He is an amazing person with a kind heart, speaks Mandarin fluently, knows four other languages, developed the art of celloboxing, is a Yale graduate and so so much more. RESPECT. 😍"
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Laurel Shepard
"Wait so Kevin is really smart and he can sing and beatbox and play the cello and saxophone and compose music and is super nice and has a great laugh AND can sing falsetto like a badass? I CAN'T HANDLE IT ILY KEV"
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molliny viriri
"Don't ever stop, your music brings so much joy and peace to many. I love your passion."
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Taylor H.
"This is awesome. No doubt he will go far."
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Reply
Fayola Online
"He already has two grammys (with Pentatonix)"
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