We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Asim Nichols. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Asim below.

Asim, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

The process of learning to play drums started with my love of sound and rhythm. Like most drummers I pretty much just started banging and tapping on things. Eventually my parents got me a drum kit when I was around 6 or 7 years old and I was self taught for a few years. My formal training in drums started in middle school although I did begin violin in elementary school. In my opinion there’s no speeding up the process in any art form. You have to put in your 10,000 hours before you organically tap into “something”. You work on your rudiments or basics continually until they begin to just flow out of you. I’m still working on those things because the deeper you dig, the more you discover.
Patience may be the most essential skill in progressing. You also have to be brutally honest with where you’re at in your development. If you suck at something you have to commit to putting in more time in that area.
Nothing ever stood in my way in terms of learning. I was fortunate in that my parents didn’t mind the noise! Lately I’ve learned to practice more and play less; meaning focus my time on improving my technique. It doesn’t matter if you practice one hour or 15 minutes as long as your time is focused.

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 background and context?

You can say I got my start during the early days of Hiphop. I formed the group DJ Whiz Kid and the High Powered MCs. At that time I was an MC. We did pretty well. Eventually joining up with DJ Kool Herc, the founder of Hiphop. At the same time I was playing drums and timpani in my school’s orchestra performing classical music. Later I formed several R&B/Funk bands. Once I got married and began to raise a family I took a break from music. In 2019 I started playing again and had a lot of not only re-learning but educating myself on the newer technologies. At this time I had a better understanding of how to practice and progress. I also started composing. Releasing music and performing was just a natural extension of the learning process. Although I don’t label myself or my music, most people identify me as a jazz artist, which is a little intimidating to me. That said I do get a lot of satisfaction when people come up to me after a show and say they didn’t know they liked jazz but they like what I do. This may have more to do with the fact that my music has a very strong Hiphop or New York City boombap feel to it. It’s not your traditional jazz. My music has a more alternative or modern sound. It’s definitely identified with jazzhop, chill beats, jazz beats, or similar genres. That said in keeping with the very strong jazz tradition, my group does a great deal of improvisation.; both live as well as recorded. We also do jazz covers of hiphop songs. I think this is the reason we have a very broad demographic that covers ages 25-65.
I’m also very encouraged by the world class musicians that I’ve been able to collaborate with. They include saxophonist Albert Rivera, vocalist Jermaine Holmes (D ‘Angelo), trumpet player Gabriel Bey, and vocalist Teri Tobin to name a few. Having these great musicians that I admire jump on a track, validates what I’m doing and lets me know they respect the work.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is to know when it is time to pivot or move on from something, especially a situation that you’re very comfortable in. I can recall a time when I was very comfortable with a band I put together. We were mainly doing my original compositions. We had steady work, knew the songs backwards, etc. Gradually I wanted to write different things (as well as challenge myself technically) but I held back for fear of disrupting the group. I knew I didn’t have the personnel to perform the music I wanted to compose so I continued to write for the resources I had. Well that lead to a lack of enthusiasm and frustration on my part. Also the band wasn’t very happy with what we were doing. The music had become stale. The performances dull. I knew something had to change.
Although it was a little scary I began writing what I wanted without regard to how it would or would not be accepted. As expected the members of the band didn’t buy into this new direction and wanted to move on. As it turned out, other musicians approached me when they heard the new stuff. Actually pretty quickly the right guys turned up. They understood what I was doing and were very enthusiastic about the music. We’ve been grooving ever since..
The lesson is simply do what you feel. There will come a time when your growth will force you to move on from a comfortable situation. Not everyone will be happy. You may even be a bit intimidated but in the end you have to own your work, own your business, and own your art. You have to be happy with the product you put out, even if no one else gets it. Eventually people on your vibe will find you but you have to do work that you yourself are passionate about.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

We’re in a time where there is so much saturation. It’s extremely hard for creatives to break through. As artists all we can do is do the best work possible. However as consumers we need to be more discriminating of the input we receive. This means being diligent about filtering out things that don’t affect us positively or energies that take up needed space. We need to make an effort to seek out and support the content we find interesting. Support artists with likes, reposting, direct purchases, word of mouth, etc.
We need to form communities around the art we want to experience more of. Technology has given us a tremendous amount of power as consumers. We need to utilize it judiciously.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.asimnichols.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asimnicholsmusic/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@asimnicholsmusic
• Other: https://bio.site/AsimNichols

Image Credits
Casey Olsen