Every now and then an album comes along that makes you discover a musical instrument in a different way. Tia Imani Hanna’s The Book Of Tia Chapter One was such an album for me that introduced me to the violin in a different way than I’ve heard it before. And then there’s Tia’s voice of course. Lucikly she wants to extend her singing on her sophomore set Everything I Hear, which is scheduled for a release in summer 2006 as she mentiones in her interview with jazz-not-jazz.
Q: Please tell me more about your musical background. What was it like to grow up in a family with renowned musicians?
Tia Imani Hanna: Truth be told, it was a lot of fun and hard work. We were all musical. Music was always in my environment. The nature/nurture argument rears its’ head here because, yes, I have in my genes the seeds of musical greatness, but I think it was more important to be constantly exposed to music in many different genres and work helleva hard on technique on a daily basis. My parents sang and played music and my brother and sisters and I all took music lessons. I was a very lucky child because my parents loved music and wanted us all to be exposed to it. The stereo or the radio or practicing was always heard in our house. I remember my brother and I breaking a piano bench because we both wanted to practice at the same time. I remember our next door neighbors had a baby grand piano that I could see from my living room window and whenever I went over to see the neighbor kids I would ask to practice on their piano. I remember my siblings and I being taken to Saturday music lessons at Wayne State University community music school. We would be there all day long. My dad would drop us off and go grocery shopping and in between lessons we would hang out at the Detroit Institute of Arts or the Main branch of the Detroit Public Library. Culture was coming out of our ears. I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Well done Mom and Dad.
Q: Why did you pick the violin as instrument? What makes it so special for you that you decided you wanted to learn this particular instrument?
Tia Imani Hanna: As I mentioned earlier I played the piano as well as the violin and I sang. I owe my playing the violin to the Detroit Public School system music program in the 1970s. The string ensemble in my elementary school was recruiting new members so they went from classroom to classroom playing a few selections and passing out permission slips to study music. They played a particular piece of music that used the plucking of the strings called pizzicato and I was hooked. I just thought it was one of the coolest sounds I had ever heard. It took me a long time to learn to love the thing though. Piano was definitely my first love because I could play all of the sounds of a symphony with two hands unlike the violin with its single one-dimensional tones. I was 32 years old before I understood how to make that violin and my voice mesh into it’s own unique sound and appreciate how single lines can have just as much depth as chordal sound. Maybe even more because it was a way to speak my truth on my terms with my voice.
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