We were lucky to catch up with Khabu Young recently and have shared our conversation below.

Khabu, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I went to the High School for the Performing & Visual Arts (HSPVA) in Houston TX. I earned my first pay check at age 15 playing guitar for a production of Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and then playing jazz music professionally. I was being groomed to go to New York City to pursue being a ‘Jazz Guitarist’ to hopefully play with some of the Jazz Giants along the yellow brick road to success. The reality of living in NYC was something else completely different and being in a highly conservative and myopic Jazz Studies environment turned out to feel very stifling and creatively unsatisfying.

My Humanities professor had a flyer for a Vipassana Meditation retreat posted on his office door and spoke glowingly of his own experiences while there. I knew that I needed this kind of training and experience to become a whole person beyond the persona of a ‘jazz cat’. When I returned to TX that summer, I taught guitar lessons at a music store and earned enough money to go to this meditation retreat. It completely changed my world literally from the inside out. While there I dreamed of playing gongs and a variety of instruments to express my inner landscape. However, I shelved this idea for decades as I traveled my own path, still rooted in the guitar as my dominant instrument.

Instead of returning to NYC, I instead went to Naropa University in Boulder CO to integrate meditation with my music making. Ever since, meditation and spiritual discipline has become the foundation from which I live, teach, and create musical community. Eventually, I did go back to NYC where I lived for 20 years, raised a daughter, and worked with people of all ages from babies to senior citizens, making music and art.

Today, I’m back in Boulder doing all the things I love most and always using meditation as the basis for self awereness and building beloved community. And finally, I’ve been able to pursue my dream of playing gongs over the past four years, integrating this into my path of wholeness.

Khabu, 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 compose, improvise, play, and teach music in a variety of settings from concerts, recordings, multi-media, interdisciplinary performances, workshops to sonic meditations.

I aim to help others in their creative endeavors and self-realization, utelizing the arts and meditation as vehicles along the journey.

My journey has been about my own creativity, self-discovery and how we all intersect within community as interdependent beings – humans, plants, animals, minerals, elements – living in true reciprocity. It’a always in flux, cycling through different balancing acts. It’s on ongoing dance of discrimintating awareness and non-judgement, the pursuit of inner freedom, appreciating the incredible beauty of Life itself, loving deeply and fearlessly.

While I’m proud that I’ve maintained the discipline to be a reasonably well-rounded musician fluent in many ways of playing music, I’m most proud of the communities that I’ve had the privledge and honor to help develop and participate in. This is especially true of my core lifelong community that has discovered unique ways of improvising, composing, and playing together which is very specific to each unique individual and the sounds we create collectively. This is not a generic or idomatic approach, but rather a celebration of individuality and diversity within the whole. I model this way whenever I teach and hold a strong inclusive container for others to experience the inherent magic of being together honestly as we serve the needs of the present moment.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

My life as a musician has allowed me to travel the world, meeting interesting people and having an intimate local’s perspective rather than only the tourist view. I’m my own boss, keep my own hours, and live according to my innermost values, as I model for my students what it means to live creatively and courageously vulnerable. It’s my sincere belief that all people are inherently creative and artistic, that it’s our birthright. It’s unimportant whether or not this is done in a professional capacity or at a rarified level of skill. We can all live and share in a basic artistic way. At the end of the day, I love that I get to encourage and engage people of all ages and backgrounds in this Beauty Way.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I moved to NYC in my late 20’s, after having become well established in the Colorado Front Range jazz and improvised music community. Initially I tried to set my life up in a similar way, but quickly found that I couldn’t function in that same way in New York. I had to have different gear to get around on the subway and play and teach in different ways, according to different needs both practical and aesthetic. I tried doing other kinds of jobs – none of which worked out very well. I had to adjust my meditation practices due to the incessant density of sounds and vibrations from all the people, buildings, means of transportation.

After 4-5 years things eventually settled again and I found my stride. But not so long after I was blessed with a daughter, living in a small one bedroom 5th floor walk up in the East Village. Once again, I had to reinvent myself and began playing ukulele instead of electric guitar with amps and pedals. I taught ‘mommy & me’ type music classes for babies and toddlers with their caregivers, performed at ukulele festivals, played house concerts. Of course I still kept up with my roots in avant-garde jazz and had the great fortune to teach highly talented young people attending the various performing arts high schools in the city.

I’ve had numerous similar pivots throughout my life that demanded serious soul-searching inquiries into what I do and why. They’ve often been quite painful and unnerving transitions. And I’m grateful to all these periods that have shaped how I live and interact in the world along with the depth of inner growth. All of it comes out through my music.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.khabu.net
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@khabuyoungdog
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/khabu
• Other: https://vimeo.com/khabu

Image Credits

Rick Cummings, Rachael Gula, Elena Camerin Young