Beatbox Flutist Azeem Ward Is a Living Internet Meme

When Azeem Ward's Senior Flute Recital went viral last spring, the world was treated to a crash course in internet culture. The University of California student listed a Facebook event for a small concert he was playing—in which he promised a few classical classics, some beatbox flute, and a couple of original pieces—intending to reach 100 of his friends.

Instead, over 80,000 people—mostly students from the UK—clicked "attending"; remixes of Ward's video (including one that made it look like he was playing Darude's "Sandstorm") were uploaded to YouTube; media from across the Western world picked up the story; and a petition was launched online to fly Ward to the UK so he could play a flute rendition of "Sandstorm" in a branch of Nando's.

For a week or so, Ward was a true internet icon, with over 50,000 people tuning into a livestream of his recital. But what happens when the buzz starts to die?

I'd seen Ward had been booked for a UK tour, playing flute covers of club classics in various student towns, so arranged to catch up with him in Oxford for a Cheeky Nando's and a chat.

5:10 PM: Ward jumps out of a taxi with his sidekick, DJ Underbelly, just after 5 PM. It's an early dinner, but they've been traveling all day. I apologize for taking him for a cheeky Nando's, a joke he must be as tired of as the rest of the country.

Does he actually even like it? "I only eat halal, so a lot of the restaurants I can't go to," he says. Fortunately we rang ahead to check this one was suitable, making it Ward's fifth Nando's since he arrived in the UK little over two weeks ago.

5:30 PM: Ward opts for the Churrasco thigh burger with salad and peas. I forget to note how cheeky he likes his sauce.

5:57 PM: I ask about flute beatbox, a technically-complicated technique that Ward dabbles in. Greg Pattillo of the three-piece PROJECT Trio is the key player in this genre, apparently, but Ward also cites G-Funk era hip-hop, Snoop, and J Dilla as his own personal inspirations. Once he's finished with this tour he hopes to put out an album experimenting with the hip-hop flute style.

6:15 PM: I ask Ward if he thinks the internet has led to people rating novelty over quality when it comes to music—if a track is more likely to be shared on social media because it's unusual rather than actually good—and if he thinks he has a place in this. DJ Underbelly's not so sure; he thinks there's a place for novelty in the music industry if it's used as a springboard for more ambitious subsequent projects—like, presumably, Ward's planned hip-hop flute album.

6:30 PM: When I get political, Ward doesn't give away a dot. His music leaves no time to support any of the presidential candidates, nor has he heard of Black Lesbians United, whose Facebook event was hijacked in a similar (albeit much more malicious) way only a few days after Ward's Senior Flute Recital.

"Azeem, have you been media-trained?" I ask.

"What's media-trained?" he replies.

6:43 PM: At this point, someone from the student website the Tab turns up and asks Ward how many scales he can play on the flute. I take this cue to check out the venue with his managers, leaving Ward and DJ Underbelly in Nando's with their merchandise for the night, a box of 150 T-shirts, which I notice just as I'm leaving.

Apparently Ward was very particular about the design: He wanted a silhouette of his iconic crouching position with "CHEEKY" written above him in bold.

8:03 PM: Turns out the design isn't the only thing Ward was particular about. While he fits in a pre-show rehearsal, I talk to his managers about the tour. His rider is a flute mic, six bottles of water (sealed), two hot meals, and a well-lit changing room. A room full of white kittens was a concession he'd had to make.

8:57 PM: I accompany Ward's managers to their car, where they pocket a hip flask and try to figure out where they're sleeping tonight. Like Ward and Underbelly, these guys are in their early twenties. It's their first time managing anyone, and they secured the tour by sending a well-timed email.

Unsurprisingly, given their limited experience, the tour seems to be run as a sort of happy-go-lucky farce. It's not immediately apparent that anyone really knows what they're doing, but they seem to be just about pulling it off.

9:30 PM: As we move onto the pub, the managers invite me to see their band perform in a couple of weeks.

"Our guitarist will put his dick in a pig if you can get it in VICE."

"Jerry's a vegan."

"Yeah, but not for moral reasons. I reckon he'd do it."

10:47 PM: I head to the club to get some interviews before the show. Everyone I speak to denies any knowledge of Ward, apart from one guy, who describes his appeal as a mix of charm and mystique, and compares his flute-playing to Yo-Yo Ma's cello.

12:52 AM: The track roaring through the club's speakers is wheeled up and Ward and DJ Underbely appear on stage. "Aaaaa-zeem! Aaaa-zeem! Aaaa-zeem!" starts the chant.

1:05 AM: Four or five songs in, DJ Underbelly starts to play TNGHT's "Higher Ground" and the crowd, mostly disinterested after Ward's entrance, rear their heads. When Ward plays the drop, everyone goes wild. Two girls walk to the front of the stage to take a selfie with the bouncer.

1:12 AM: After 20 minutes, the set is over, the DJ starts back up and Ward disappears into a throng of admirers.

1:30 AM: The night is drawing to an end, so I head to the smoking area for some post-show reactions. I'm met with predictable responses: "Extra cheeky," "Ed Balls," more Twitter in-jokes that don't make a lot of sense in the real world.

1:57 AM: I know I've asked one too many questions when a guy concludes from my appearance that I'm "Danish Bacon" and starts prodding me in the head with his finger until someone pulls him off.

"Why are you doing that?" asks his friend.

"It's fun," comes the reply.

It occurs to me this sense of flash-in-the-pan fun is the very substance of Azeem Ward's appeal. In a world where space and time are collapsed by the internet, how do we continue to find meaning in the mundane? Yes, you can work every day for the rest of your life, moving up the career ladder like you moved up math classes, but when someone comes along and jumps the system on the back of 100,000 event attendees and simply having a good time, where does that leave the rest of us?

These are the themes Ward forces us to confront. His concerts are a venue for young people harrowed by the possibility of adulthood reverting to fun as one constant they can still control. Lad Bible, beatbox flute, repeatedly poking a stranger in the face—what all these things have in common is the abandonment of a higher truth for a brief, fleeting moment where we can just forget about everything else.

I make a note in my phone and head home.

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