“Think of artistry as a lifestyle, not just the art form.” -Bomani Armah

Excerpt from an interview between Bomani Armah and Jessica Wallach (lightly edited)

My advice for young artists is to think of artistry as a lifestyle, not just the art form. It’s everything you do around it to facilitate you being able to make art as much as you can. That means fashioning your lifestyle around it, which means budgeting around it, which means controlling your vices and your urges so you’re not spending your time and your energy on things that make it harder for you to be an artist full time.

Sometimes monetizing your art form, especially in the beginning stages, is not in how much money you’re making from it, but how much money you’re spending.

I’ve learned to narrow down my focus. At first I was doing almost anything and everything, and my advice to young artists is it’s OK to have a whole bunch of pots on a whole bunch of different fires – just make sure you’re making the same dish in each pot.

So yeah, that’s my blanket advice to artists– just understanding being an artist is a lifestyle and just try to stay focused on keeping everything connected to what your main focus on art is.

“Become a Teaching Artist”

Then my other thing is I suggest people become teaching artists. Artists often are great teachers.

They hardly give themselves credit for it, but because to become good at an art form requires you to set a level of discipline and have a deep level of understanding. All it takes is a little bit of practice and understanding of young people or your audience to be able to translate that information to teaching.

And it helps you – the more you teach something, the better you become at it. You know? I’m better at writing on a dime right now because I teach, and you request because that’s all I do all day, you know? I know all the tricks of the trade, when I’m going down a dark alley, that’s not going anywhere artistically and when I need to rewind and go back.

And that’s not from intuition. That’s from 20 something years of going from my nine to five, which is writing songs with kids, which is writing songs for adults, and being able to keep that focus.

Read more blog post in this series: Bomani Armah — Language, Math and Engineering & Rap Songs, Bomani Armah — Starting a Class,  Bomani Armah: Art, Teaching and Influences

Watch Bomani in action: Writing Process

More about Story Tapestries

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