Music has always inspired acts of violence due to the language depicted in popular songs nowadays. Despite this mentality being pushed onto many young people, Sophomore Zion Eastland wants to use his knowledge of how to play five instruments to make songs about promoting peace.
Eastland first learned how to play the drums from his father when he was in second grade and as he grew older he learned how to play the bass guitar, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and is currently learning the violin. His father had a life of music that inspired Eastland to follow in his footsteps.
“Music is important to me because I think music is the only way the world can really change…” Eastland said.
Specifically, he wants people to be able to exist just how they are.
“I don’t like the fact that people get judged so much for their style or their skin color,” Eastland said.
He looks up to celebrities who share that mindset. He wants to eventually become a musician who makes songs about stopping violence.
“It’s like just when you look at it, Michael Jackson and all other people had peace movements,” he said. “A lot of violence is just kind of unreasonable”.
Currently, he has only made one melody, but his father helps keep him on track.
“Some days my dad would come home and he won’t see me playing the guitar and he’d be like ‘you have to practice’, ‘you have to keep practicing every day for at least 30 minutes’,” Eastland said.
His dad has helped him in multiple ways. From encouraging him to keep going, to helping Eastland go out of his comfort zone.
“I was at this guitar store with my dad and my mom and my mom was recording this video.” Eastland said, “I kinda got nervous playing because it was my first time that my mom ever recorded me. I was playing the song, but I kept messing up. I was going to give up playing and just tell her no. I didn’t want to do it anymore but my dad was like, ‘no keep doing it because it’s not like you got somewhere to be. Keep doing it until you get it right because you’re supposed to perfect it.’”.
An event that inspires him to keep going is the disastrous concert called Woodstock ‘69. It was an overcrowded concert that caused the deaths of multiple people, but Eastland was moved by how the attendees reacted.
“Everybody was just trying to help each other because there was a food shortage,” he said.
While under duress, those people bonded together. That event changed multiple people, and Eastland wants to continue that change through writing his own music.
“I hope if I do become a musician then the violence stops,” Eastland said.
