Body percussion may be performed on its own or as an accompaniment to song. The folk traditions of many countries include the use of body percussion. Examples of these include Indonesian saman, Ethiopian armpit music, palmas in flamenco, and the hambone from the United States.

Percussion instruments produce their sound when a player hits, scrapes, rubs or shakes them to produce vibrations. These techniques can also be applied to the human body. The body also presents several unique possibilities including the use of inhaled or exhaled air and vocal sounds.

Traditionally the four main body percussion sounds (in order from lowest pitch to highest in pitch) are:

However, there are numerous other possibilities including: hitting the chest, whistling, slapping or flicking the cheeks with an open mouth, clicking with the tongue against the roof of the mouth, grunting and hitting the buttocks.

Variations of sound are possible through changing the playing technique. For example, clapping the hands in various positions will affect factors such as pitch and resonance.

Jack Savoretti (born 10 October 1983) is an Italian English solo acoustic singer who didn’t pick up a guitar until he was 16. He was brought up in London before moving to Lugano, a Swiss town near the Italian border. Moving around Europe as a child he wound up at The American School In Switzerland where he picked up an accent he describes as “transatlantic mutt”.

Burn Magazine has compared his songwriting to that of Simon & Garfunkel, London’s Daily Telegraph describes his guitar playing as having a ‘primal magic about it,’ and some music industry insiders are already buzzing around calling him the new Bob Dylan.

As a teenager, the only thing that interested him was poetry.“I was writing all the time, it was the thing to do, sit under a tree with a notebook, go somewhere else in your head. I was in the clouds.” When his mother gave him a guitar and suggested he try putting some of his words to music he was “surprised how much more people listen to you when you are singing than if you read a poem,” he admits. “After that, I couldn’t stop, it was constant writing, every day, it became almost a form of conversation, the way I interact with the world.”