Musical Autobiography

I've always liked music, the music that I was introduced to as a child was mostly Country/Western since I grew up in a farm town called Easley. After a few years in elementary school, my music experience broadened when I was given a radio for one of my Christmases. I became interested in hip-hop and pop music and slowly moved away from the music that I was raised on. On late nights when I couldn't sleep, I'd surf the stations until I found a song that I haven't heard and would come across classical music and gospel hymns along with some world music such as Latin American music, which I found familiar because I lived near a Latin American neighborhood called Little Mexico. Our bus stop was across the street from it and I remember old men sitting out on their porches playing guitars and clapping their hands while smoking their cigarettes and drinking coffee in the morning.When we were dropped off, a newer/ younger generation replaced them with the same instruments but they played different tunes. Although I've never really been introduced to their culture directly, I felt a connection to them.

I stayed with my father during a summer in North Carolina. Since he lived there for so long, he became friends with the men who lived on the reservations in Cherokee and even married one of their daughters. Every Friday night, we would go into town with a group of the men in their native dress and watch them perform and tell stories through song, the languages that they sang in were new to me but my dad has been able to see that performance so much that he was able to become a translator to the crowd of new comers and told the story about the Coyote and the Moon.

That was the only time that I was actually introduced to music that was some what out of my culture until I went to Europe for Mozart's anniversary. We went to Germany, Czech Republic, and Austria and played a few concerts. When we were in Germany and Austria, we passed by the usual street performers playing flutes and guitars until we came across a man who played music with glasses that had water in them. After seeing that, I started understanding that you can make anything an instrument.