Never had I thought that my son, Chi-an, will become a musician or a guitarist one day. But he is now, and is very busy teaching people of various age groups in schools in the daytime, in the Music Education Centre after the school hours, some other students come to our home to learn from him in his studio. This picture shows the place he sets up as his guitar tuition classroom.
Chi-an's involvement in learning guitar had a dramatic story behind it. When he had just turned to eight years old, an age local schoolboy student are entitled to join in a government-funded weekend music education, I enrolled him on that program. All of the new students of that program started learning music with an easy to play instrument called recorder.
Two terms had passed and I found Chi-an was not as passionate in his daily practice at home as he was when he just joined in the program. I asked him why and he showed a boring gesture, not even looked at me, but said "I'm bored with that". "How come?", "you played quite well, don't you?". "Yes, but I have learned all of the musics of that book." He replied.
How could that be possible? The first book meant to run for four terms. But I was curious to know if his words was true, so I asked him to play every piece of music for me. And as if he really wanted to get out of that program, he confidently and promptly picked up his recorder and played on and on till the last piece of the book. I was amazed, and I thought that I might have to consult Mrs. Rimer, chief executive officer of the music education program.
During the class break, I asked Mrs. Rimer how should I deal with this problem? Mrs. Rimer was concerned of problem that her student lost their interest in learning music. But Chi-an's cause sounded different to her. She told me that if Chi-an really could play the whole book of music, she would allow him to jump to the upper level straightaway.
So, Chi-an was summoned to present before Mrs. Rimer. He confidently played one after another without much mistakes. Mrs. Rimer could not allow him to play every single one because she was very busy, so after Chi-an had played four or five pieces, Mrs. Rimer turned to the last page of the book, and again Chi-an confidently played it to Mrs. Rimer's satisfaction. "Very good! I will inform the teacher of the second year recorder class about my decision to place Chi-an in her class right now."
That was how Chi-an jumped to a higher level of recorder class and finished the recorder class in one year.
After that basic recorder learning, each of the music education program students was supposed to select their favorite instrument to carry on their learning according to the program. As most of other Asian parents, I tried to persuade him to learn violin or cello. But he did not like either one of these two instruments, and finally agreed to learn clarinet.
In the year that followed, he learned Clarinet quite confidently and easily. But I could not see any of his passion in the learning of this instrument. Then, before the first year of learning clarinet was to finish, he argued to quit from the music education program. His reason was simple -- he was bored of it.
In order not to let him drop out of the music education, I suggested that he could change to learn some other instrument of his favorite. And this time, he chose cello. The reason was that cello was big, and to him "big" meant cool.
So he was placed in the cello class; was given a cello by the music school and was happily carrying that big object around in the school. There were only two students in his class, Chi-an and another student, a lovely Russian girl of Chi-an's age.
Every Saturday afternoon, I drove the cello, Chi-an and grandma to the school for the one-hour lesson. And to make him happy in the learning of the cello, three of us went to KFC for lunch after the class as a reward. Even I had so many encouragement and reward to motivate his learning, yet. I could not see a sign of his passion over that instrument.
Finally, the one year cello lesson was coming to an end. He told me what really interested him was guitar, electric guitar, the guitar that plays rock and roll. Oh, dear me! His real favorite was exactly what I was fear of.
One day, while I was waiting for his class to finish in the school yard, I came across Mrs. Rimer. She smiled and asked me "how is Chenny?" I think I must have a worrying facial expression at that time, instead of greeting back to Mrs. Rimer properly, I murmured "he played cello quite well, but he told me he was really interested in guitar." Then, Mrs. Reamer replied to me in quite a stern voice "guitar is also music, what's wrong with it?". With Mrs. Rimer's challenging remark, I was sort of suddenly enlightened. My mind was more opened to the instrument that Chi-an really liked.
Not even before Chi-an's cello class was finished, he and I were found in Mainline Music buying a guitar and an amplifier. This time, I really saw his passion of the guitar music.
In the long journey in supporting his pursuit of learning his favorite instrument, I had never thought that one day he would make guitar tuition his career. About eight years from the day he got his first guitar, he was employed by the Music Education Centre as a guitar teacher during his second year in the University on a part-time basis.
As of the time I'm writing this blog about his career, he has been teaching guitar full time just over one whole year. From the stories of his interactivity with the students and his steady growth of popularity reflected from his the enrollment and retention figures, I know he is on the right path of his career.
I'm now really relieved in seeing both my children are being active and passionate on their jobs. All I need to do now is to be their spiritual support and to concentrate more In the Amituofo chanting.
