We were lucky to catch up with Terence Hobdy recently and have shared our conversation below.

Terence, appreciate you joining 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.

Learning the craft…the craft of music. This journey for me began truly when I was 18 but started when I was 6. I am musician whose primary instrument is percussion/drumset. I have been studying the art of rhythm and how to manipulate rhythm in order to make music since I was 18. The craft of this is understanding where things go and how they are to be placed when you use them. Understanding this art is a skill in it of itself. The second part of this craft is understanding how to execute it physically in real time with other people or the collective (as I like to call it). This is in short making music. Music is defined in what we call, ” The BIG 3″ which is rhythm, melody, harmony. The rhythm is the vehicle that gives motion to the melody, and harmony is how the melody underscored or supported to give it life. I have dedicated a huge chunk of my life to learning how to understand specifically the rhythmic aspect of the big 3 is paramount. This craft has transcended the notes on a page, or the drum set it self, and is now the craft of life taught from understanding music. That is to say where, and how things go, and how they should be placed to facilitate progress (movement, or dance), in others.

Terence, 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 native of Houston, Texas. I am the third of 3 boys. Music was our common thread. My brothers are both pianist and one also plays guitar, and the other also plays trumpet. I grew up taking lessons in percussion at the age of 6 and then my mother said I needed to be well rounded musician. I was enrolled in my middle school band, and there I learned all about percussion. My brothers taught me small lessons on piano so that I could better understand melodic percussion (xylophone. marimba, etc.). I continued onto high school and discovered marching percussion and got. very into that which developed my rudimentary study of percussion. After that I pursued a degree in music at The University of Houston where I studied percussion more in depth, learning about hand percussion, orchestral percussion, marching percussion, but my love for the drum set truly intensified here. I finished at UofH in 2012 and moved on to the University of North Texas to pursue a masters in jazz studies with an emphasis on drum set percussion and here I dug deep into the vocabulary and foundations of music. Throughout all this time, I was a working musician performing locally in Houston and then in the DFW area when I moved to the North Texas area for graduate school. My time at UNT took me to Europe where I was able to perform and learn more. Eventually I landed a adjunct instructor position at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where I taught drum set lesson and some jazz studies courses. I then moved onto my current position which is the director of jazz studies at Booker T. Washington High School for The Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, Texas. I am what you would call an artist educator. I utilize the experience of being a practitioner of the art as guide for pedagogical approach in the classroom with students. I understand that ART is as much a fabric of society as politics, economics would be. Because of this I continue in this work to help make better citizen’s of the world. In this time I started a LLC called PANDAWORKS. Because of my love for panda bears the word “PANDA” means to me Person Always Needing Divine Assistance. This is how I offer music education, do peformances, and generally serve the community apart from my duties as a public school teacher.

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

The resilience to fight against bad practices in action and thought is the story I will share. I learned so much about myself during my time at UNT. Of the many lessons learned, the greatest was the acceptance of mediocrity as default. Changing that habit was extremely difficult.Mainly because you are not changing an action, you are changing a paradigm, a worldview even. That process is increasingly frustrating and lends you to (ironically) wanting to quit all together. That mountain is the hardest to overcome. Fighting each day to CHOOSE to want to push, is something I don’t think the word resilience can accurately describe. In this, I was overcoming myself in my resilience.

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

The best thing right now is not to view artist and their art as PURELY aesthetics or entertainment. If society could be educated or re-educated on the importance of the art, I think the audience would connect deeply whilst still enjoying the full entertainment value. In fact it would thoroughly enhance it.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @justcallmeTerence
• Facebook: Terence Hobdy

Image Credits
Bart Morantz Photography Keren Escobar Vonda K Photography PANDAWORKS,LLC