Where has music gotten you so far?
I didn’t really get into music until I was 14. Until then I had grown up on radio bubblegum just like everyone else I suppose. It all changed when I went out to go purchase my very first CD with my own money. At the time, Daft Punk’s, “One More Time” was dominating the airways. I really piqued my curiosity. Here was this track that broke the traditional verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - chorus pop music scheme. The track itself essentially was this half electronic half big band arrangement dominated by a repeating vocal phrase. I couldn’t help but wonder what else Daft Punk was capable of, so I went and bought the now legendary album (and appropriately named), “Discovery.” It was perhaps the first time it hit me that there was an absolutely whole other sonic world out there and it began to drive me to seek out new music.
Fast forward a couple years into high school. I was heavily addicted to anime and pretty much watched it nonstop. I was watching Samurai Champloo at the time. A stylish samurai anime that combined elements of hip hop in a feudal Japan setting. The soundtrack is what really hooked me. It turns out most of Champloo’s soundtrack was created by this Japanese producer named Nujabes. He often combined hip-hop with jazz elements resulting in some of the most relaxing yet infectiously head nodding music I’ve ever heard in my life. If Daft Punk opened me up to the diversity of the music world, the Nujabes set me on my path to discovering the music I truly aligned with.
Unknown music becoming readily more accessible as the internet saw services like kazaa, limewire, and youtube bringing more and more non radio music to the masses. You didn’t have to go out and buy CD’s and cassettes anymore. It fed my obsession with finding new music more than ever. Almost like a hunger. Around this time, a couple of friends of mine were messing around with a program called Virtual DJ. It was the first foray into music. Eventually it landed me a few small time gigs, birthday parties, events, a few weddings and socials. And whenever my friends and I would gather for house parties, I was behind the laptop controlling the music.
I was heavily inspired by DJ’s like Jazzy Jeff, Qbert, Scratch Bastid, and Craze. These were “performance” DJ’s and I thought they stood a cut above typical club and lounge DJ’s. People would be paying money to see them put their mixing skills on display. It put me at odds with taking typical gigs. All too often someone would come up to me and say, “can you play something everybody knows?” It didn’t vibe well with me and I stepped down from DJing for a while. It still didn’t stop me for looking for music all the time though.
I was in my second year of nursing when I hit a pretty pivotal point in my life. Nursing was something I had been struggling to get into since I could start attending university, and being in the program was something I had wanted for quite some time now - or so I thought. I found myself at odds with whether or not this was something I could see myself doing in the long term. This internal struggle began to reflect in my performance at school. Studying and focussing became quite difficult for me. I don’t think I really would have admitted back then, but I was depressed. But I stayed as long as I did because everyone was proud of me. Friends and family thought I was going somewhere, and well, I did too. But something was horribly off. Somewhere down the road I was in the middle of my surgery rotation. On top of prepping for midterms, attending class, and holding down a part time job, we had these 12 hour shifts in the middle of the week. Nursing felt like it was just about surviving the program rather than thriving in it. It all came to a header when I had this elderly gentleman as my patient. He had every condition in the book and his status looked pretty grim, but I still had to give him professional care to the utmost of my abilities. As I’m preparing him for the morning he grabs me by the arm and looks deep into my eyes, right into my soul you could say, and utters the words with glazed but pleading eyes: “don’t grow old.” I know anyone could interpret this any way, but in that moment I questioned everything I was doing with my life up until that point.
I wrestled with the old man’s words for a while. My performance in the program wasn’t getting any better. In fact, I found myself looking for music again when I was supposed to be studying. Eventually, it led me to drop out. It wasn’t something I came to terms with easily. I couldn’t face my family, in fact I didn’t admit it to them until they realized I should have been graduating soon… except I wasn’t. I had spent a couple months pretending I was still attending class, sometimes spending entire days hiding out at the Millennium Library. Eventually we did come to an understanding. At the end of the day your family just wants you to be happy and successful no matter what the path. I owed it to them and myself to find that path.
Malcolm Jay, a long time friend and veteran of the Winnipeg music scene approached me one day. He said I had an ear for sampling and offered to show me the ropes in production. We had a couple sessions at his place as he demonstrated his process and workflow. The encouragement from him gave me the drive to learn music production in a couple months. I had the basics down, and an entire arsenal of sounds and inspiration from my years of searching and searching for music. I’d also like to think that maybe it was in my blood. My mother had a wealth of music from the 80s that she would always have me look for to build her own music library. I think she sent me on the hunt for more than 10 Gigabytes worth of music to this day.
There was a person I never got to meet but has been an enormous driving force in my journey as a creative. My grandmother on my mother’s side, Lola Ched. She passed away when my mother was 7. She was a writer for a magazine in the Philippines. Although I had difficulty translating or relating to her writing, I nonetheless knew that creativity ran in my veins. Eventually, a sepia tone photo of her became the album art for my very first project, “Zero by Zero.”
Our generation is fortunate enough to have the option to go off and do something high risk high return like becoming a creative or going into freelance. I’ve kept myself grounded by reminding myself constantly why I started in the first place. When I first started making music, I first and foremost wanted it to be an extension of myself. I was planning not to work with anybody. I just wanted to do my own thing and make purely instrumental albums and some how be successful from that. Inevitably, I wanted to work with people and people wanted to work with me. There is a lot of understated potential in Winnipeg’s sleepy local scene. I might not exactly have the most likes, followers, and views, but for every person that I get in touch with and work with, it makes it all worth it. I don’t have 1000+ followers, but the 20 or so key creatives that I’ve met because of music, is something I’ll carry on for years. And that is way more important to me.
Your desire to create depends where it comes from. I think if your heart wants it enough, it will find a way out. It’s just a question of when you will embrace it. If I had started music when I was 21, I don’t think I would know myself enough, nor would I have the advantage of experience behind me. A lot of it is timing. Expression is a uniquely human trait, if anything its the most human thing about… being human. A very important friend of mine asked me why I make music. I gave pretty basic answers, and every time she followed up with “why?” She repeated this seven times and finally I said ‘I just feel like I woke up one day and I realized my purpose was to create’. She said apparently when you ask someone “why,” 7 times you come to the real answer thats been sitting inside. They say that you’re going to find your most important supporters in your craft, not outside of it. I find that to be incredibly true. You need to know where you resonate. One of the best things to know about going into what you’re going into, especially as a creative, is accepting things the way they are for what they are.”
Today, my talents have gone a bit above and beyond music. My discography is at 2 EPs, and a couple singles, and a plethora of collaborations with a number of artists throughout the city. I’ve worked with rappers, singers, bloggers, streamers, and other producers. I’ve embraced DJing again, a bit less picky about the gigs I take and more open minded to the experience and connections I can gain from taking more gigs. I’ve also taught myself a bit of video editing and graphic design. Eventually, I plan to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps and see what kind of doors will open if I take writing seriously. It can be a challenge to fit it all in, never feels like I have any real breaks, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like “work” at all. Strangely, I nearly had a breakdown the other week, not because of anxiety or depression (which is typically what caused them before), but because I was at a crossroads at where to put my energy into. In a moment of clarity I realized that I am not required to place all my energy in one place at a time because putting energy literally anywhere creative will cause all the other facets to grow. Because now, Infinity Zan is more than just music.
