By Madeeha Syed
Sunday, 23 Aug, 2009 | 10:55 AM PST |

Dawud Wharnsby Ali. Photo by Shahzad ‘Shahi’ Hasan

I walked into a recording studio in Karachi recently to find Dawud Wharnsby Ali (formerly known as David Howard Wharnsby), one of the pioneers in the genre of English nasheed on a global level (along with the likes of Yusuf Islam, Zain Bhikha and the more recently popular, Sami Yusuf) in the vocal booth recording his vocals for a local project in which he was actually singing in Urdu. Repeatedly tutored by the music producer there on the nuances of pronunciation, Dawud would eventually get the song right.

A bit of history here: Dawud initially began pursuing music in 1991 in Canada where he began as a solo artiste and eventually collaborating with the band members of the folk band, Crackenthorpe’s Teapot. He ended up releasing two independent albums with the band. An ardent observer of world religions and the concept of spirituality, he was exposed to the Quran in 1993 and decided to study it.

In 1995, he released his first inspirational album, Blue Walls and the Big Sky, through his own independent label and has since then released over 10 English nasheed albums. Not only is he gifted vocally, but he’s also an instrumentalist and has produced music and collaborated with the likes of Yusuf Islam, South African songwriter and nasheed Zain Bhikha, Mumbai-based sitar player Ustad Irshad Khan among others.

He’s also an avid advocate of education for children and has done several television programmes (predominantly for Canada’s Vision TV and the BBC) targeted at educating children worldwide. A prominent feature in the nasheed circles abroad, Dawud, whose wife is Pakistani has now also established his base at Abbottabad which he calls home. As an educator, his wife moved back to Pakistan to help run the school her grandmother established 20 years ago. Dawud himself has established a private trust fund supporting educational programmes in the northern areas of Pakistan.

Here, Images on Sunday talks to this incredibly polite artiste about his perception of music in religion, peace, life in Pakistan, his collaborations and what he has planned in store for the future.

Q. When you embraced the Islamic way of life, did you have any doubts about music?
A. No. I mean, the music that I was involved in up until that point was very personal to me anyway. It was very much a part of my journey into life, my spiritual journey. So I started to see, as I was performing at different venues that music, as faith and knowledge, can be often misused.
When I embraced the Quran and when I read things about humility, integrity and about poets not practicing what they did preach, I felt that this was a sign to me. It wasn’t music that I needed to stop doing but it was something I needed to utilize even more for my spiritual growth. And that’s why I think my shift in the approach of my music changed at that time as well.
I was never doubtful about music being a powerful method for expression or it having a powerful effect on people. I was never doubtful of it as a medium. The only thing I was doubtful of was the environment; where was I going to begin to share my music? How was I going to use it? In an environment which would enliven people, empower people, as opposed to an environment which would let you escape from life.
In terms of the ideological contradictions, or the ideological opinions, I didn’t buy into that from the beginning. I knew that the Muslim community was very sensitive to it. But I attributed that more to cultural approaches to music. For example, people would come to me and would say western music sounds very aggressive. And yet I would listen to music from Uganda and it sounded very aggressive to me. Culturally, some of the rhythms and the loud chanting, it was very aggressive. So it was all very much peoples’ cultural educations and that didn’t scare me.

Q. For seven years you did music in the traditional a capella nasheed style (singing without any musical instrument). Why the change now?
A. I started that way because the recordings I was doing at that time, I was aiming specifically at children. So I wanted to keep them very simple, rhythmic and very lyric-based. They were educational songs and I was also aiming directly at the diverse, multicultural community of Muslims specifically in Canada. And I knew that culturally speaking, people had very different opinions about the permissiveness of musical instruments.
So I thought if I were to use a very traditional approach, just lyrics and percussion, people will… they won’t focus on the debate, they’ll just focus on the words. And that’s sort of why I began that way.
Ironically I recorded all those songs with the guitar, but I just took it out of the mix when I released it.

Q. What about the general reaction to you picking up your guitar again? Did anyone object?
A. Oh yeah, but nothing heavy duty. People have been very kind. They would send me letters, messages or emails and say “brother I don’t know if you know or not, but you’re going to hell because you play guitar!” and I’d say thank you a lot for the advice. But they were only saying it out of love. When people are certain of their own ideological opinions I think they mean it out of love and sometimes they mean it out of a need for their own validation. And there is a fear that now they’re challenged and suddenly out of that fear they feel the need to instruct or correct you. So I’ve tried to be patient with that.
The people who are genuinely confused, I try to give them a very clear answer. People who are genuinely upset, I try to remind them that they need to be tolerant of different ideologies. For people who want to condescend or judge, I try to remind them that I only believe that there is one being that has the right to judge me and that is my Creator and so their fear tactics don’t work with me.
For the most part I don’t run into too much hassle. The only trouble I run into is when I am invited to an event and where people will say to me “Oh yes brother, whatever you want to share is great” and then 10 minutes before the performance they say, “by the way we’ve had some complaints and you can’t play the guitar, you can’t play the drum.” And I find that frustrating only because it’s a form of censorship. They know my website, they know what I do, they should know better than to try and monopolize my art.

Q. You’ve collaborated with quite a few artistes including Zain Bikha from South Africa. How did that happen?
A. Beautiful. We both had a mutual friend in England, Yusuf Islam. I was invited to his studio, I was aware of Zain’s music, Zain was aware of my music but neither of us had met. We all have a soft spot for children and education for children. Coming together it wasn’t just as artists but as people who had a love for children and trying to see songs come alive more than we had any interest to market them, create a new music industry or seek any sort of support or validation from the community, we really just wanted to create songs that young people could identify with.
Zain and I really clicked and since that time we’ve been working together.

Q. All three of you are considered pioneers in what you do.
A. Yeah, so we all started around the same time. There were plenty of spiritual songs drawn from the Quran before that time but most of them were in Arabic or in Urdu and there wasn’t really much in English. And the three of us did sort of, apart from each other, begin distributing songs.

Q. Considering that you don’t speak Urdu or any of the local languages, has language been a barrier for you?
A. Just where I live. I don’t do much artistic work. That just seems to be the way it is. When I’m home I’m primarily writing/recording. The language isn’t a barrier for me. When I’m in the bazaar or with the neighbours, they’re very patient with my broken Urdu. And if I just keep my mouth shut and wear shalwar kameez everyone thinks I’m Pathan and they’ll ask me where I’m from in Pashto and I’ll say “Canada” and they’ll say “Kandahar?”

Q. You also started your own record label Enter into Peace. Tell us about that?
A. Well it started out as a publishing entity because I’ve always felt very strongly about artistes holding on to their work, not allowing other people to monopolize it or use it to make money off them in commercial ways.
So when I started my first publishing entity back in the early 1990s to really secure the rights to my work. It makes distribution a lot harder because it means I have to actively be on top of who’s distributing. It’s a lot easier now with digital distribution. When you run your own independent label, the networks don’t really take you seriously, because it’s a very “who you know” sort of business.

Q. What inspired the name Enter into Peace?
A. Yusuf Islam, who had explained to me many years ago that “Islam” means “enter into peace” and I thought “what a beautiful concept”. So that’s why when people ask me if I’ve converted, I tell them it’s not about conversion it’s about the meaning, to embrace the concept of peace into your life.

Q. Are you planning to collaborate with any of the artistes you’ve worked with professionally?
A. I am working on a collaborative project with a few other artistes. One of them is Idris Phillips. He’s produced and composed most of the music. I’m doing most of the lyrics and the vocals. Zain Bikha from South Africa, he’s written some incredible songs, very unlike what he’s done in the past. So that’s what we’re working on over the next few months as well. It’s kind of like three way collaboration.

Q. What about your own independent solo projects?
A. I’m working on a new recording now. The actual process will be starting in September. It’ll be my first album recorded in Abbottabad. I’ve been nomadic for the past 3-4 years which is very hard considering my job entails that I travel already. So being at home is very important to me, to finally have a place to land. I really want to utilize that environment. And it seems so ironic because when you hear what happening in the northern areas of Pakistan and we’re so close to it.
Just up the road in Mansehra, a couple of weeks ago, a store that sold CDs and music items was destroyed and so a lot of people overseas are like “are you nuts?” It’s going to be very exciting to record it in Pakistan.

April 15, 2008

Canadian born traveller, writer, troubadour, social activist and multi-instrumentalist, Dawud (David) Wharnsby has contributed “The Truth That Lies Inside” to a new compilation by renowned singer and BBC Radio 2 “Good Morning Sunday” host Aled Jones.
Wharnsby has an extensive and internationally celebrated 12 album catalogue, most released through the US-based label Sound Vision, but his recent, Out Seeing The Fields, is through a partnership with Dubai-based World Music label Beloved Musika – home to Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens.

Other artists on the 2CD Jones compilation include Alison Krauss and Sarah McLachlan.

Royalties from many of Dawud’s musical recordings feed a private family trust supporting the Al-Imtiaz Foundation and school, located in northern Pakistan. Other funds raised through Wharnsby’s many albums support the Small Kindness charity set up by artist and peace activist Yusuf Islam.

(Article originally posted at: http://fyimusic.ca/industry-news/talent/carlys-back-bruce-plays-lovelace-and-mileys-big-bucks)

First Published in Illume Magazine, 2006
by Hesham Hassaballa

I was looking forward to this evening for weeks. Dawud Wharnsby Ali, Muslim singer and songwriter, was coming to a small, private event outside Chicago for a celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. I have always loved his work, and I have also enjoyed following the transition in his music. At the end of the event, a friend of mine mentioned to me that when seeing Dawud sing and play his guitar, one can tell that he was really in his own element. I completely agreed and commented that our religion is one of the primordial nature of humanity, or Deen ul-fitrah [natural accountability]. It is just inconceivable to me that Islam would simply come along and ban outright something which has been part of every society and every culture since the beginnings of human history.
__________________________

How did you get into Islam?

When it comes to “islam” —  I look at the word as the verbal noun it is: an action word. I see islam as something someone does, not something someone “belongs to”. I believe that “religion”, as the world commonly knows it today, is a divisive factor in community. When I was about 15 years old, I renounced a belief in the importance of “religion”, seeking rather to find answers to life’s questions. My spiritual quest has always been to bring me closer to my purpose in life, a better relationship with the force that brought me into existence, and how to relate to fellow human beings.

When I was 17, I started reading scriptures from around the world and the more I read the more commonality I saw between them all. When I discovered the Qur’an at the age of 20, it seemed to be the most organic in its message.
I got out of “religion” and got into life. To this day, I renounce a trust in the institutions of “religion”.

How did you get into singing and songwriting?

When I was a young boy I really enjoyed writing stories. School was difficult for me, as I have a
lot of trouble with spelling and grammar. My teachers had to find alternative ways of helping me learn efficiently. Regardless of my difficulties, I loved expressing myself through writing. It was always a very powerful tool.

I found myself drawn to the lyrics of songs I would hear on my parent’s radio or my sister’s record player. Usually the songs had very powerful messages that sometimes affected me very deeply.

Between the ages of 7 and 13 I tried several times to write my own original lyrics to songs I enjoyed. In the tenth grade I had a wonderful teacher who exposed me to many different types of poetry and I started to write more frequently. By the age of 17 I had written my first song with original music and lyrics.

What is the process for writing a song-lyrics and composing?

Writing a song, starts with just being open to the world around me and allowing myself to be impacted by life experiences.

The next step is to carry a journal and pen with me at all times. Life, thoughts, experiences and emotions pass by quickly and if we are not in the habit of recognizing their beauty and ugliness, then capturing them to preserve them or deal with them, it is easy to forget them or push them deep into our minds.

Many of my friends who are composers and musicians think “musically” – that is to say, they think in “sound”. I am much more of a writer, poet and lyricist. Most of the songs I have written — almost all — were written as poems first, then set to music afterward.

Can you chronicle your journey and why you made those choices? Was it a change in your views on music?

My views on music have never really changed. I’ve always seen music as a tool for social change.

The first songs I tried to write when I was thirteen years old were a cross between hip-hop and funk. The first few recordings of music I produced when I was in my late teens were of a more Celtic-Folk nature, music from my own heritage.

My first solo album was released in 1995, a year before I started writing percussion only nasheed. When I began to write children’s songs inspired by Qur’an, I recorded them all with guitar and you can easily see they were inspired by my Celtic background, with harmonies inspired by artists like Paul Simon and Laura Nyro. I chose to release the songs without guitar as a way of ensuring my diverse audience would be comfortable with the material.

The Qur’an has been around for over 1500 years and has been embraced by individuals from countries all over the world. This has resulted in many opinions about how it should be interpreted. A small number of people who follow the Qur’an —  primarily in places like North America, The United Kingdom, Arabia and South Africa — hold the view that musical instruments are “unlawful”.

Living in North America, I thought it was best to keep instruments out of my CDs so families would feel comfortable listening to the songs.

10 years and almost 12 albums later, I felt it was important to be more honest with myself about my own personal opinions of music and its usefulness. There are also the majority of followers of Qur’an who don’t have a problem with music and who do not consider it as unlawful, thus I felt it was important to share something of value with them as well through some newer music and songs. Audiences in Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan, Austria, France and now even in the USA and UK seem to really enjoy the development of my music — which now has the added dimension of a richer instrumental sound to enhance the lyrical content.

That said, I am working on two new albums right now. One for adults called Out Seeing The Fields and one for children called Hi Neighbor! Salam Neighbor! which features vocals and percussion so I would never dream of doing one or the other.

Do you think your music can help defeat extremism?

My intention is to use music as a tool for social change. It is always a prayer of mine that the work I produce will help, in some small way, to better the world or provide others with hope in themselves or trust in The Creator’s mercy to us all.

Extremism comes in many forms. Some people are extremely capitalistic, extremely reactionary, extremely lazy, dogmatic, pessimistic, hopeful, fearful…I believe, extremism is not always bad — depending upon what sort of “extremism” one allows themselves to indulge in. As a human race, I believe we should be extremely good neighbors, socially conscious, passionate about justice, fairness and truth.

Is my music a reaction to the negative religious, political or capitalistic extremism or we see in the world around us? Yes, sometimes. A song like Prophet For Profit stands up in the face of narrow minded pseudo-religious leaders who think they have the God given right to speak or kill on my behalf, as much as it is a slap in the face to narrow minded pseudo-democratic political leaders who think they have the God given right to speak and kill on my behalf.

What are your inspirations for your songs?

Inspiration comes from many places — experiences, places, people, books, and the work of other artists. As a writer, it is important to keep one’s senses open to the world around and then trying to capture those impressions to a page. Writing is sort of a game or puzzle to me — playing with words and concepts to present something new to listeners.

Blue Walls and Big Sky: was this before you started singing for Sound Vision?

Blue Walls and the Big Sky was produced in 1995, the year before I released my first recording of spiritual songs for children with Sound Vision. Collectively the songs were very personal to me, they told the story of my spiritual quest. They were arranged on the album in the chronology they were written, as I studied faith and observed the world around me. Songs discussed my feelings of growing older, leaving home, relationships with my parents, struggles with honesty, the demons one faces when escaping to alcohol or sexual promiscuity as a way of seeking self worth, frustrations with organized religion/institutionalized education, and also beautiful aspects of life: faith, childhood and friendship. If one listens carefully, one will hear a few references to Allah and I think even the phrase “Alhamdulillah” finds its way into one of the songs.

The album is very much a document of my spiritual journey during those early and formative years of my life; it is the one album that seems to touch people the most. It is really true to who I was back in those days, and in many ways it is really true to who I still am.

What are your upcoming projects?

Out Seeing the Fields is a collection of 12 new songs I produced recently with composer and pianist, Idris Phillips. We’re excited about the material and also to be heading out on tour this coming summer.

Hesham A. Hassaballa is a Pulmonary and Critical Care physician currently practicing in the greater Chicago area. He is the author of the essay “Why I Love the Ten Commandments” and co-author of “The Beliefnet Guide to Islam.” He is now an Associate Editor of Illume.

First Published in Emel Magazine ~ Issue 6 July/August 2004
To access the issue page, click here

Dawud Wharnsby Ali is a musician with a difference.  He pioneered the development of Islamic nasheeds, is an audio director for US multimedia company Sound Vision and a leading educational consultant in Canada. Shaheen Hafeez took the opportunity to talk to him about his life, works and much more!

Dawud embraced Islam ten years ago. His journey, like many who convert, began with a journey of self discovery. “I was never so much ‘interested in Islam’, so much as I was interested in trying to find out about God; I wanted to discover my purpose in life, and a way to better the world I share with others.”

It was in his late teens that he began reading many scriptures and stories of the prophets – ideas about God and the role of human beings on earth. “What I read in the Qur’an, and what I learned from the words of Muhammad, Jesus and others really struck a chord with me, so I chose to implement the wisdom I found.  I don’t feel as though I ‘changed’ to any new ‘religion’, rather, I just grew as an individual: I matured spiritually.”

However, for Dawud the journey did not end there. He states very clearly that he is still trying to find out about God, the prophets and his purpose in life. “I believe the proverbial ‘search’ doesn’t end until we die”.

Music has always played an important role in Dawud’s life; he began writing poetry and music at the age of 17 and began performing publicly a year later gaining his inspiration from a broad spectrum of sources, “In those days I was influenced by a lot of folk, R&B and rock music from the 1960s (Bob Dylan, Paul Simon) and 1970s (Pete Townsend, Cat Stevens, Jackson Browne), even some early Rap music from the early 1980s (Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, early Run D.M.C.) It was actually through those early Rap albums where I first learned about the word “Allah”, as some of those hip-hop bands used to thank “Allah – The Creator” on their album jackets.  Their music was socially conscious, motivational and rhythmically aggressive.”

As his spiritual learning progressed his music began to reflect this. His first major change was to leave the music business, which he describes as being “heavily focused on making money and this ruins friendships, intentions and makes you bitter. It is also hard to be honest- artistically and spiritually – in such an environment. I was tired of trying to compete for success and fight for fame, it made my art feel cheap and my faith feel insincere.”  Once Dawud was free from the constraints of the music industry he was able to see the gap in the Muslim community for some kind of artistic, spiritual and cultural expression. He began to concentrate his efforts on addressing this need, “I came up with the CD A Whisperof Peace, it was a simple and sincere effort on my part and I offered it out tothe Muslim community with no fear of it turning into a ‘business venture’.”

The intention behind his nasheeds remain simple: Dawud wants his music to have a positive impact on the listener and to inspire a greater understanding about Islam. “It was my agenda ~ value our faith, value our opportunity to grow and better ourselves as believers and citizens of the world. Singing to and for myself and Muslims, I can be more explicate in my lyrics, drawing directly from Islamic sources. Some of my music is naturally a little bit more sensitive to the opinions and feelings of a broader audience – still Islamic in its essence, but more ‘holistic’ and ‘organic’ than dogmatic.”

A Whisper of Peace became a huge success, which Dawud followed up with a number of equally successful albums including Road to Medina. His song The Veil from that album attracted a lot of attention as it dealt with the controversial topic of hijab (head covering). Dawud was well aware of the debate that surrounds this issue and was cautious in writing a song about it.  After much persuasion from Sound Vision he wrote a song, which originally was for a documentary they were producing entitled Hijab: Act of Faith. His only condition was to be advised by a Muslim woman.“ A good friend of mine, Zahra Duran, agreed and sent me a poem she had written which became the thematic basis for the song.

Despite all this, Dawud still has strong feelings about the emphasis placed upon hijab compared to other issues facing Muslim women today. “We spend so much time defending the Qur’an from attacks that it’s sexist, we rant and rave about how Islam gave rights to women over 1400 years ago, but our sisters are still not in position of leadership within our community. Our sisters are still praying next to the shoe-racks while the men have plush carpets beneath their lazy foreheads and our public women’s shelters are full of Muslim women fleeing from abusive husbands and dead-beat dads. The sad reality is that our community does display sexist attitudes to women. Writing a song about Hijab seemed pretty shallow to me in light of the other issues surrounding women that we Muslims are too self-righteous to face.”

His worst fears came true when his song started to become a sort of “anthem” for Muslim women who wear the hijab. “I began to see some Muslim women looking down on others for not covering, or many Muslim men judging sisters who wear hijab differently from those who don’t.  A sister shows up at the mosque one day without hijab and she is treated rudely; she shows up the next day with hijab and she is treated like a queen. Such a scenario is a blatant treatment of the woman as an object, no different than the judgements we see made in secular society of women’s appearances. In the end, it is not about the piece of cloth. It is about the relationship with God, and I know I don’t want anybody judging me so I don’t think it is right for us to judge each other.”

Dawud’s latest album The Prophet’s Hands is very different from his other offerings. The album has a more reflective mood, with strong insightful lyrics and soul stirring melodies. This was a conscious decision to reflect a progression in his personal and artistic expression. “I included songs which were aimed at making listeners think a little more deeply about faith in general. People of The Boxes for example, is not just a fable with implied reference to Jews and Christians, but it also points out that we who call ourselves ‘Muslims’ are also living in a box sometimes.  I wanted to help myself and the listeners realize our own faults too – to stop being so judgmental of others and to get ourselves out of the dogmatic boxes we have trapped ourselves in.”

Dawud’s ability to be introspective and acknowledge issues concerning Muslims is fundamental in solving the problems that trouble the community today. He uses his insight to address some of these concerns through his music.

The song Don’t Talk About Muhammad is a fine example of this. “There is a tendency in the Muslim community to play the victim and the target of media and political conspiracies.  Whilst I don’t dispute the media is unfair in its portrayal of Muslims, and that our governments have hidden agendas to protect their financial interests in lands where populations are primarily Muslim, I think we should take up the example of the Prophet and be more ‘in control’ of our reactions and our opportunities to make dawa [invitation] through personally instigating positive change in our local communities. We must reach out to our neighbours not with an agenda of conversion, but in simple acts of sincere love. We must stop blaming everybody else for our struggles and hardships and start to take action in our own lives through sincere efforts to improve who we are as individuals.”

His diverse interests and his extensive travels bring Dawud into the circles of a lot of people. These interactions are a great source of inspiration for his work, “I feel for, and identify with, individuals on their spiritual journeys – whether those journeys are hard or smooth. That is why I write about the young man who parties all night and finds it hard to get along with his parents; I sing about the Muslim girl murdered by her father and step mother; I write about the death of a close relative and the struggle of dealing with that parting; I write about conflict within marriage; difficulties being a good parent; religious hypocrisy; consumerism; sexual abuse; religious narrow-mindedness; these are all struggles that are very real within our community. Even if I have not felt these struggles first hand, seeing others around me experience such tests does effect me… the social repercussions of these struggles effect us all one way or another.”

Amongst his many projects Dawud has been actively involved in youth work. He is well aware of the difficulties facing young Muslims in the West where more and more Muslims are finding themselves torn between western government ideas and pseudo-religious spokespeople. “We all want to fit into a culture, a community; we want to find a home, security, freedom of faith and lifestyle but these days all those things are threatened. We don’t know whether the ‘freedom’ in our western democracies means ‘free of domination’ or ‘free to dominate’. Muslim youth are confused and searching for answers. Some are looking towards rigid traditionalism, others to more secular approaches. Many of us are left wondering what is right and what is wrong.”

His advice is simple: “start small, put down the book you’re reading and sit with your grandmother to learn her language and find out about her life’s struggles and her history, before she passes on and your history is lost; put down the TV remote control and stop letting pop culture define who you are and go for a walk through your hometown’s historical landmarks. Find your identity by actually looking for the things in life that appeal to you or stir emotion in you. If you just let your government, your local imam, even your local pop singer or nasheed singer, define what you should be, you will never be more than that. Look in the mirror and ask yourself, ‘Who do I WANT to be?’ Start there.”

So what does the future hold for Dawud? Summer 2004 will see the mainstream release of the album Vacuous Waxing, which he co-wrote with his friend Bill Kocher. It contains a collection of songs with a social conscience and features a broad array of guest artists from around the world. We can also expect a new nasheed CD that he promises will be very different from anything he’s done in the past. There are also plans to publish a book of poetry and an anthology of his nasheed lyrics. As you can see there is a lot to look forward to.

Kitchener-Waterloo Record, Saturday June 6, 1992
Brian Caldwell, Record Staff

Please don’t call them buskers or, worse still, beggars.

The musical folks hanging out in downtown Kitchener these days are bonafide “street entertainers,” duly auditioned and officially sanctioned to be there.

…So far, about a dozen groups and individuals have been screened and okayed by the (Kitchener Downtown Business) Association to perform on the street with their instrument cases open for contributions.

…For David Wharnsby, slight, bespectacled and pony-tailed, the sidewalk in front of the Walper Terrace Hotel is a step up from the bedroom of his parents’ home, where he practices with two other members of his band.

A part-time puppeteer who sings, and plays the guitar and the mandolin, he calls the street an “honest place” to find out if people like his music.  He watches for subtle signs, like a smile from people as they walk by.

“It’s neat because you can watch what’s going on around you.”  said Wharnsby, 19, “And if you do make mistakes once in a while, they’re not amplified too much.”

(Click images below to read the full scanned article.)