Music all over the map: UW alumnus hopes to bring musical passion to students ...

After completing his last final in June 2011, without attending his UW graduation ceremony, Tom Tafejian jumped on a plane to Mississippi, where he began his formal training as a music teacher. There, he formed the idea of an international music workshop to empower young people through musical expression. Nearly three years after his graduation, that idea has blossomed into his Workshop World Tour, a crowd-funded project that would take him and his music workshop to eight countries in 11 months. On January 26, he was off on a plane once again — this time to Thailand, the first stop of his workshop.

This idea all started when Tafejian received his music training through Teach For America (TFA), an organization that places recent college graduates and young professionals into low-income urban or rural schools across America. He applied to TFA in December of his senior year and got the offer to teach in Mississippi in January. In June 2011, Tafejian officially started teaching music. But beforehand, music had always been an inseparable part of his life.

The beginning

Tafejian started taking piano classes in elementary school, and joined his school band and started composing in middle school. By high school, Tafejian had begun teaching private music lessons. After coming to UW, majoring in psychology and minoring in music, Tafejian was involved in a variety of organizations, including Men’s Glee Club, Symphonic Band as a saxophone player, and Rainy Dawg Radio as a DJ.

While active in extracurricular activities, Tafejian also made a deep impression on professors in class. John Vallier, Tafejian’s instructor for his freshman seminar class “Puget Sounds: Documenting Music Cultures Close to Home,” especially remembers Tafejian.

“He inspired all of us to think about how we can better incorporate music and song into all aspects of our lives: academic, professional, the day-to-day,” Vallier said. “I’m not surprised he is still inspiring.”

The music class that left the most lasting impact on Tafejian was one he took his freshmen year: “Music Cultures of the World.”

“That class really opened up my mind to the idea that music [is] not based on what the Western school conceived as music,” Tafejian said. “There’s a really big world of music out there that’s not within the Western music perimeter.”

Impacted by this global perception of music, Tafejian developed a passion to teach in different cultural settings, which he learned require different teaching methods. For Tafejian, in order to keep a class under control but not dead silent, setting rules and guidelines in the beginning is crucial to cultivating student creativity.

“You need perimeters in arts, and it’s the same thing [in the] classroom,” Tafejian said. “If you go into a class and it’s a chaos, then kids won’t be able to be as creative as they can be because they don’t have anything to focus their creativity on.”

Constance Shepherd, a roommate, co-worker, and good friend of Tafejian in Mississippi, was very familiar with his commitment to teaching music.

“Tom was a very dedicated teacher and great team member,” Shepherd said. “He worked really hard to make sure his students were having meaningful musical experience. He always had good ideas and would do whatever it took to get the job done.”

Despite initially encountering challenges in Mississippi with classroom discipline, it was during this time Tafejian started to think about what was most important about being a musician: authentic expression.

“Authenticity — I love teaching that word to my students,” he said. “In your music you need to be the most ‘you’ you can be. I think that is true for most things in life.”

Student empowerment

As for the inspiration to empower young people to express themselves through music, it began with a student Tafejian had in his first year in Mississippi.

The student was Quevon, a 16-year-old in middle school who was held back more than once. Most of the students, Tafejian said, had a rough time at home, but Quevon seemed to live an especially tough life.

Quevon was in Tafejian’s third period class, a group that was particularly out of control. But among all the students, most of whom had a hard time concentrating, Quevon was really respectful. According to Tafejian, Quevon would come in to class everyday, sit down at his keyboard, and play his music.

One day, when Tafejian asked the class to write down anything they wanted to share at the end of their first test, Quevon wrote, “All I want to do this year is to learn how to play this song on the keyboard, so I can play it for my mom, and my mom will be proud of me.”

And so Quevon did later in the spring quarter, when Tafejian had every student perform his or her song on the keyboard.

“I swear to you, that’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever heard,” Tafejian said. “And everyone in the class, who’s usually crazy, they looked at Quevon and they’re like, ‘Dang bro, that was pretty good!’”

At the end of the year, Tafejian held a recital for the students who wrote the best songs at a local Blues museum, and invited all of his students and the community. The recital was significant to the small town as well as to the performers; most of the students had never played the piano before Tafejian’s class.

Quevon was one of the students who performed. Tafejian could never forget the moment when he watched Quevon standing on the stage. Nothing else in the world mattered in those few minutes, Tafejian said, besides the boy, who was too old to play school sports and not doing well academically, but whose voice was heard.

“‘Hey, I made this song, and this song is about the people that I love in my life.’ And to be able to show that in front of the audience, and for him to be able to express himself in that way, I think that’s the most beautiful thing,” Tafejian said.

Looking forward

After teaching two years in Mississippi, Tafejian founded the W.A. Higgins Keyboard Studio and two after-school programs: the W.A. Higgins Rock Ensemble and Rap Group. Tafejian then joined Birthright Armenia and Armenian Volunteer Corps and stayed in Armenia for four months.

During his stay in Armenia, Tafejian designed and facilitated a 10-week workshop in which he worked with 10 students on creating their own songs and, in the end, performing in front of the class. This experience inspired Tafejian to teach songwriting to people around the world.

Just a month ago, Tafejian was back in Seattle and started planning to implement what he accomplished in Armenia and other countries. He hopes, depending on available funding, to bring his workshop from Armenia to Thailand, Singapore, India, Lebanon, Ethiopia, South Africa, Argentina, and finally Guatemala.

Although Thailand is, for now, the only definite destination for Tafejian, he is excited about sharing his passion for music with the world and empowering kids from different cultural backgrounds with musical expression.

Reach reporter Tiffany Lee at features@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @JzTif

Music all over the map: UW alumnus hopes to bring musical passion to students ...