We recently connected with Ziggy Karraa and have shared our conversation below.

Ziggy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I feel like lately I’ve been learning so much about what it actually means to do art…I’m a musician and I’ve been in a lot of situations lately, at shows, talking to other musicians, where it’s very clear that we’re all trying to get to the next step.

I think this definitely has its pros and cons because, on one hand, I’m seeing some people do some really amazing things around me. That sort of pressure to achieve forces us as artists to be the absolute best version of ourselves and find creative new ways to make and sell art. The negative side to this though, for me, is that I seem to lose a bit of intimacy with the actual craft. The process of achieving some unclear end goal where I’ll just be happy and it won’t be hard drains a lot of love and life out of making art because I’m never satisfied with the moment that I’m in now or what I’m making now.

All that to say…I think this constant reach towards a sort of creative Nirvana isn’t the only way to do this art thing, and that I am currently trying to learn the craft of enjoying the process.

Ziggy, 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 started playing music seriously around the start of high school to sort of work through some bad anxiety…one thing led to another and I started recording music that I wrote and I feel absolutely in love. Ever since, I’ve made that my one goal in life and that’s allowed me to do some pretty cool things along the way.

I currently write, record, and produce my own original music which I get to play live all around Los Angeles. I bring around a 6 piece band of fantastic young jazz musicians and we play music that can be enjoyed by people ranging from music theory nerds to accountants trying to blow off steam after work.

Other than work on my own music, I teach music lessons at Angeles Academy of Music in West LA, and also teach lessons privately. I teach guitar, bass, drums, piano, and music theory and I absolutely love it–I feel like teaching and performing are so similar and I know that teaching only makes me a better performer.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I think NFTs are so so interesting…I’m super new to the concept and don’t know much about them, but I’ve been throwing around the idea of creating an NFT app for music. It would kind of function like Spotify, but allow you to pay the artists directly as if you were buying a vinyl or cd copy of their music, and in exchange you get this NFT with something else unique from the artist that they can throw in as an incentive…

I don’t know just an idea. If someone wants to steal that feel free.

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

I think that society can support artists on an individual level. I think that ever since the worst of the pandemic, people have been more eager to go out, see shows, dance, all sorts of cool stuff. And by virtue of going out and being a part of the community a lot of local/independent artists are getting supported.

So I would just continue to encourage people to support their friends. Find local musicians, vendors, and performers and buy their work or tickets to their shows knowing that their work is truly giving you something in return.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ziggymoonmusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009744438607
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQgZCdMyQT4CB4lkmxEX7IQ
• Other: https://soundcloud.com/ziggymoonkarraa

Image Credits
Milan Dileo