In the 1970's when the first affordable reel to reels starting appearing in personal studios in homes, my grandad, a professional musician in Harlem was among the first to get one. I remember him playing his instruments (woodwinds and brass) and recording. That influenced me heavily early on in the fine arts and exploring areas of content creation.
Another influence was my grandmother who was the one who cultivated my affinity for visual images. She had beautiful works of art on the walls and was one of the family historians in terms of keeping collections of pictures dating back to the early 1900's. I used to sit and listen to music while going through boxes and albums filled with pictures. I absolutely loved pictures What intrigued me the most was the stories that they would tell. I was terribly distraught when her collections and grandpa's professional recordings, vinyls, and memorabilia were tossed after grandma's death in 1987.
My grandmother, her sister and other family members worked at Lincoln Center 
and I spent many days there watching the creative folks do what they do day in and day out. All this content being created for the viewing and listening audiences and there I was soaking it all in. I believe I started frequenting Avery Fisher Hall 
at age 3 and continued on until I graduated high school. I even worked at the Sedutto's ice-cream Kiosk (where the outdoor concerts went on) in the summer of 1987. I met Teddy Pendegrass and attended his concert at least four times. I attended Mostly Mozart Concerts, 
Bernice Johnson and other concerts and recitals.
In the second grade, I actually started participating in the performing arts when I attended catholic school and my teacher, Mr. Silver introduced us to content created for musicals. That year we learned the titles from the content created by Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein II called "The Sound of Music" and "Oklahoma" (the first musical written the same composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II), (WIKI, 2009).
I will never forget that year because a classmate named Jennifer created the song "My Dog has Fleas". I was so terribly excited about how one of my peers had created this content to perform at school and had set up props and prepared a entire stage show with actual dogs on stage!! I also was part of the Irish dancing team learning yet another fine art and involved in its content creation for audiences.
In the fifth grade I was introduced to percussion and strings- Violins, Viola's, and the upright bass. The content that we worked with was created by Jerry Wexler. We learned all of the music from the "Wiz"........Part III tomorrow.
