We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tammy Huynh a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Tammy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Recently, I completed a residency granted by Wildflower Composers and Asian Arts Initiative. For this residency, I was able to write a new piece and give several workshops on composition at Asian Arts Initiative. This whole experience allowed me to really reflect and connect with my Asian identity and community— an opportunity that I haven’t had as a creative until recently. I think this experience made me realized how out of touch I was with myself. Through connecting with the people at Asian Arts Initiative and interacting with so many other Asian creatives, it gave me a sense of self, strength and purpose I was craving but didn’t know.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an improvising electronic musician from Philadelphia but am currently based in New York City. The first time I started creating music with my computer was when I was in middle school. I had a USB rock band microphone that I hooked up to my laptop and I would use it to record myself singing my favorite songs. When it was time to go to college, I decided I wanted to learn music more formally. I was originally studying classical piano but later transitioned to studying jazz voice in the middle of my degree. I fell in love with jazz and it’s deep history as a dissenting art form. It taught me the beauty of improvisation and it’s something I want to have and honor in much of my music.

My main focus nowadays is futurism and how we can use our art to envision a future that is now just doom and gloom. I think it’s interesting that throughout history, we’ve always perceived the “end of the world”. There are so many apocryphal stories but what if we started envision past the “end of the world”? The music that I’ve been focusing on nowadays is art that allows us to perceive past the end and dream of beginnings that center itself on liberation.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I’ve been actively unlearning is that hard work will always be rewarded. I think this narrative that many Americans and those dreaming of America have been fed. I grew up in an immigrant household and this concept of hard work to many of my family members equated to social mobility. There is a morality surrounding hard work that I do not agree with. Immigrants and marginalized groups are often seen as “lazy” because they are not apart of a certain income bracket but the truth is, they are the most hardworking people in this country. It makes you wonder who are the people that crafted this narrative and why are continuing to exploit the working class?

This mentality also affects creatives as well. There was this promise that if you work hard at your craft, you will achieve…god I don’t know…fame, fortune, opportunity…you name it. If these things happen, I think that’s incredible but I don’t think we can expect that from our craft. I think divorcing ourselves from the idea that our craft can produce certain results for us will allow us to keep foster more sustainable relationships with our art. When our self-worth isn’t tied to how hard we work, I think we can enjoy what we do much more.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think many people that don’t pursue a career in the arts might feel like we do it to one day achieve fame. The idea of “making it” in the arts is such a common trope. I think media portrays much of what we do in an overly glamorized way. In most of my communities, we make music because we just want to connect with others. Share stories, build the community around us, and overall to enrich all of our lives.

For me, I never considered music as something I was going to profit from. It’s simply the thing I do that gives me incredible joy. During my time in school, as I was studying my craft, I was also trying to cultivate other skills in teaching and administration. I think my mindset was I want music to be part of my life in a positive way and in order for me to do that, I can’t expect it to make money for me. Today, most of my money doesn’t come from performing. It comes from these other avenues which gives me a lot of room to perform and create on my own terms.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mitamu.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_mitamu/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sunflowerintheeast
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/_mitamu
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC92B3rfFslspnNkdqyi5kGQ

Image Credits
allis chang (insta: @titwillo) — for pictures with yellow dress and blue background Alex Tregaskis (insta: mal4m) — pictures in green frill outfit Tien Huynh — pictures in black dress of me singing (minus the full band photo)