Tay Zonday on Music and Arts Education

How did you get into making music, and how did arts education (or lack thereof) affect you and your music?

There’s a better question to ask: How did everybody else get into being silent? I ask myself that question a lot when I’m not making music. Usually there are things causing the silence that I need to confront and resolve. Then the music just happens.

My mother was trained from a very young age as a vocalist and a pianist. Her parents aggressively primed her to be a successful performer. It didn’t happen, largely because there were no opportunities for a young, black, Coloratura Soprano in the early 1960s. Despite growing into a competent musician, my mother felt that being forced into a rigorous study of the arts created a context where she never truly enjoyed music. She ended up becoming a successful professional but in a manner that was largely separate from her music.

With this backdrop, my mother never forced any of her children to pursue an arts education. But the door was always open. Sometimes I wish I had been pushed a bit harder, but who knows? Everybody spends the rest of their lives armchair-quarterbacking about their childhood. I never earned formal credentials in the arts. I try to be the best musician that I can be today, which often involves being the best student. Education is where you choose to be a student, whereas schooling is a context in which being a student is chosen for you. They can overlap.

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