We recently connected with Elijah Badua and have shared our conversation below.

Elijah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I started teaching myself music as a teenager, picking up guitar and cello and learning entirely by ear. I didn’t take on a formal education in music or go to college, and instead started traveling abroad any opportunity i got. I went to india, china, thailand, turkey, europe, oman, and opened my ears to a lot of diffferent approaches to music and picked up different instruments. I really fell in love with classical turkish music, playing primarily on bowed ottoman tanbur. It’s microtonal modes and melodies which seem to integrate the music of central asia, persia, the levant and europe capture my heart and it’s a lifelong pursuit to understand it fully.

Sometimes i believe i could be farther ahead in my musical skills or progress than where I am now, but you know life’s a pilgrimage and I can really only take it one step at a time. Still, I am working on being more disciplined and dedicating as much time as i can to practicing and learning new skills. Now I am taking on a lot more than just practicing my instrumental and musical knowledge, like learning production and engineering, as well as visual arts and using AI to help in all these processes. I am also getting into fashion and design, and taking a more entrepreneurial approach to my life and business. I’ve started started a brand FULU which makes garments and bedding out of natural fabrics and dyes, primarily rose cellulose fibre.

I’ve had a lot of life circumstances that in some ways kept me from staying on track with my goals, but I think that’s always the case and it’s really about just staying focused and consistent.

Elijah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter and DJ. I’ve been studying classical turkish music for 9 years, and I produce original music in styles ranging from ambient electronic to house and hip hop. My live performances often include experimental audio-visual shows, including co-producing and performing the music for Resilluion and Neoveaux with the LA based artist Orbseer, designed for a 70ft wide concave 3d LED screen and played for live audiences in LA and Art Basel Miami.

I would say my approach to music is shaped by my wide attention to different styles and lineages of music, and is as future-reaching as it is grounded in our collective past and emerging shared experience. I am especially interested in new genres of music being created in communities with limited financial or musical resources, which seems to be the case originally with most of the biggest styles of music today, such as with hip hop, house and amapiano.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

the main thing I’ve had to overcome these past few years has been to maintain a trajectory on my creative path while being the sole caretaker for my father, who suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed and slowed down his cognition significantly. it’s been 3 years now and has been one of the most challenging phases of our lives, but i feel overall has helped my grow and become more resilient and a better provider for my family and those around me.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think the support system for musicians, especially in terms of payment and ownership over our music needs to be reevaluated and brought more into the hands of artists and creators. I feel that the current model of streaming and artists ultimately being taken advantage of, which is nothing new by the way, is unsustainable and we should really come together to figure out new ways of distributing our art and supporting one another in the process. We’re going to continue seeing new technologies and platforms which will demonstrate this, and we should all be paying attention to the opportunities and staying ahead of the game.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.elijahbadua.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elijah.badua/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elijahsbadua
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE_I-H_cgww9MbMYistMHAw

Image Credits
Ibrahim Shehu, Wilder Rush, Josiah Falco