We were lucky to catch up with Enso Taves recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Enso thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

For most creative people earning a full living from their Artistic output is a dream, however it does come with some compromises. Getting started is the hardest thing, it means that you need your full mind and time available to create and perfect your craft while outputting some sort of useful service to people that will in exchange patron or support your career. This can often come in the way of a grant, patronage, teaching work, or even your own savings from past years of work.

For me starting to treat my career as a business was key, limit my expenses, and refine my services to clients. Consider networking too, it is a necessary part of any Artist career to have relationships with people in the field that can recomend you, hire you, or even mento you. You goal is spend less than you earn from selling your Artistic output / services, that is the equation you need to solve in you personal life, and that means that your time is limited to the amount of resources you have gathered to get that started up.

Like any business, a career as a Performing Artist (my case) needs some time to bloom, a few months after you service / product is ready you need to work hard at building business connections and that means that you will run a loss economically, so save up for that time too. Creating a product or service often produces opportunity to sell complementary services, for example being a Performing Artist also allows me the skills to be a Teaching and Recording Artist for hire, or even an instrumentalist for studio or to support other acts (again additional income streams).

Please barre in mind that is not your talent or skill set that will guarantee you a career, but rather the amount of useful services that you do provide to businesses or individuals. Note that clout (fame or importance) is the key that will make your earnings multiply manyfold, and not quantity (arguably even quality). Remember that your network equals your potential net-worth and that one business relationships is more beneficial to your goal (of being a Professional Artist) than 10 other friends / peer in the same boat dragging you back to old habits.

Enso, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am New York based Dominican Music Artist & Producer with 8 albums and 4 singles released mixing Afro-Caribbean Folklore with Jazz and Rock. Our live performance is a range of emotions from the high energy and good vibes Rumba, Guaguanco, and Merengue to the deep rooted soul and blue Bachata and Bolero.

As a teaching Artist I have the privilege to transmit this wealth of knowledge in a workshop or one o one fashion. Another important endeavor is the Internet, I teach and share my journey as a content creator in various platforms which provides opportunities for collaborations, sponsorship, and overall community building.

You can find me here: https://www.ensotaves.net/

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an Artist is to be true to myself, it is to be honest and take the hard path. A career in the Arts is full of challenges, ideologies, opinions, self-deceiving dogmas etc, that hinder one’s potential in this world. I find rewarding that every day I have the responsibility to humble myself and learn something new, the challenge to operate in two realities the imaginative and the productive one, the creative and the sober mind, and that is hard.

I find rewarding that I can do the hard things that can inspire other to live a more full life,

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I took a Sabbatical year a while back in other to direct my life and a creative endeavor, I moved living in Dominican Republic with a few thousand bucks in savings to pay for my living and focus 100% of my time in Artistic development and music production. After renting a place and moving all my things, buying furniture and getting settled (about a month in to my Sabbatical), a fire destroyed all of my belongings, my musical instruments, my production equipment (I had saved for 2 years to buy these and bring back to Dominican Republic). The fire destroyed my brand new furniture, my new clothes, my guitars, everything.

I had to rely on donations from friends and family in order to put myself back together, and I did. I cleaned up the place, repaired what could be repaired, re painted the place, and completed my Sabbatical. This experience taught me that the material things we think we posses are nothing but tools, and although it takes money to acquire them, you can always replace the for better ones as long as you have the fire in you to do the work and create and render useful services to other people.

The most important thing I remember was the value of self reliance, to have the vital fire in you to pursue a goal or dream, to see something through, that carried me through. One valuable asset of the sabbatical is the power of simplicity, when your life is simple your actions can carry more power.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ensotaves.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ensotaves/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ensotavesmusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ENSOTAVES

Image Credits

https://www.instagram.com/wendymella_nyc/
@wendymella_nyc

https://www.instagram.com/cecileklaus/
@cecileklaus