Disclaimer: This is transcribed using AI. Expect (funny) errors.
Mindy Peterson: [00:00:00] I’m Mindy Peterson, and this is Enhance Life with Music, where we explore the ways music can make our lives better and spotlight the resources you can use to enhance your life with music. My guest today is joining me from New York City. Kaila Mullady is the first and only two time winner of the Beatbox Battle World Championship. She’s won numerous other championships and performs all over the world, infusing beatboxing, singing, rapping and theater to push the boundaries of creativity and show just what the human instrument is capable of. Kaila was tapped to perform in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway comedy show Freestyle Love Supreme. In addition to performing, Kaila is an in-demand speaker. She’s developed beatboxing as a tool for speech therapy, and she advances her work in research through her educational company, the Academy of Noise. Welcome to Enhance Life with Music, Kaila.
Kaila Mullady: [00:01:00] Hi, Mindy.
Mindy Peterson: [00:01:01] Hi. Great to have you here.
Kaila Mullady: [00:01:03] So exciting.
Mindy Peterson: [00:01:04] Yes. Well, I’m looking forward to this conversation. As you know, Kaila, I learned about your work recently through a faculty member at one of the schools in Minnesota that I work with. Shout out to Laura Quaintance and the music department at Minnesota State Community and Tech College. Yay! When I call on schools for my job, my day job, I love hearing what faculty and departments are up to, what trends are happening in music education, what innovative programming they may be implementing or experimenting with. And when Laura told me that you were coming to work with her students and told me a little bit about your work, I was immediately intrigued. And I’m like, oh, tell me more. This sounds like someone I need to connect with and spotlight on a podcast episode. So great to have you here. Starting out, there are so many facets of your work and part of your creative process. You’re a speaker, educator, musician, an actress. You produce the American Beatbox Championships. How would you describe what you do when you meet somebody and they ask?
Kaila Mullady: [00:02:10] Yeah, that could be a tricky one for sure. Um, I you know, what I love to do is use the skills of my human instrument, right? So whether that be through improv, where improv is just theater that is completely made up, there’s no props, and you don’t need anything. Beatboxing. You know, I’m a musician, but for beatboxing, I don’t need to carry a drumset around with me or a bass guitar. So really, I’m just someone who loves art. I love all aspects of art, and more importantly, I really love using art as a way to empower people and use it as the medicine that it is in both personal lives, interpersonal lives, and communities all over the world.
Mindy Peterson: [00:02:47] Love that. And as somebody who’s a pianist and a classically trained pianist, I’m so intrigued by your creative process and your instrument because I love how you talk about the human instrument And you, like you said, you don’t have to carry anything with you. It’s it’s yourself. And as pianists, we’re kind of at the mercy of whatever. Piano is in the venue we’re playing in because unlike a flute or for sure. Your human instrument, your vocal cords, we can’t carry our pianos with us because they’re so big. Um, so I’m really intrigued by that. And being a classically trained musician, just the whole improv component of what you do is, is so intriguing. I’m always in admiration of people who can do that because I’m I’m a great sight reader. Put a score in front of me and I’ll play it. But ask me to improvise and I you’ll get kind of like a glassy eyed stare from me. So I love I’m always inspired by people who can really improvise. You’ve said that one of the most fulfilling parts of your career has been traveling the world, teaching workshops, promoting expression and leadership through music. From your perspective, how does music promote expression and expression in leadership?
Kaila Mullady: [00:03:59] Absolutely. Uh, my favorite thing about bringing music into schools, and my favorite thing about beatboxing is that beatboxing is completely free. So I started as a teaching artist in New York City when I was 19. And of course, we know that in today’s world, the first things that are getting cut out of any school’s budget is usually their arts or music enrichment program. Right. People are very heavy on the Stem programming. Now, thankfully, I think we the the tables or the the ways are changing to the other side and we’re really going to more of a steam approach. But the coolest thing about beatboxing is, especially when I was younger, 1920, I would go to schools where let’s say there was 20 kids in my after school program. They were the only 20 kids out of 500 kids that got a music program at all because their schools couldn’t afford it. So the coolest thing about beatboxing, when I would go and talk to these deans or principals of the school and they would say, sorry, we just we really cannot have this programming. We can’t afford to bring in any more musical instruments. I’d be like, uh, wait a minute. Actually, all you need to do is bring in one beatboxer. And if there’s a class of 25 kids, I’ll teach them how to become their own trumpets, their own drum sets, their own bass guitars. And then you could still teach them how to sight read or music theory or anything like that. But all of a sudden, instead of buying a trumpet, you just. You just turn them into the trumpet.
Mindy Peterson: [00:05:18] I love that.
Kaila Mullady: [00:05:19] So it’s a little bit of what you said, too, about the idea of being able to create your own, create your own things. People can sight read, people can read other people’s music. But what we do and what I’m really passionate about is finding out what do people have to say in their hearts and souls? What is their own message? So with beatboxing and kind of the first step that we do with my organization, the Academy, we really believe that the first step to speaking up is making a sound, making any sound at all for these kids. It’s really nerve wracking, and a lot of the programs that we do are with kids that are, you know, elementary school, middle school, high school. As you know, I was in I work with college students as well. But as you grow up, that is a very sensitive and vulnerable time. These kids, you know, they want to be cool. They don’t want to make the wrong mistakes. They don’t want to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. So a way that we can kind of do that is to get them just confident enough to really find the power of their voice. Right. I really believe that, you know, for every student, but, you know, even especially young girls, if you’re confident enough to walk into a room and go or make a silly sound in that way later, if you have to say no or you have to speak up for yourself and really be your own, you know, self-advocate, that becomes a lot easier than making these drum sounds is to find out.
Kaila Mullady: [00:06:35] So a lot of the work that we do in the academy in noise is we go around, we we teach beatboxing, we teach the history of beatboxing and the incredible arts and the routes in which it came from hip hop culture in New York City. Um, and then what we’ll do is we use a loop station, and a loop station is a machine that records your voice. So that’s really fun for the students because it’s flashy and it has buttons, and they’re allowed to press this tactile thing that is lighting up all around them. Um, but after we teach them beatboxing, we will record a song using their voices at the beat. So they’ll become the drums, they’ll become the high hats, we’ll get them singing. And then the real fun part of it becomes, now what do we want to say? Okay, we got the music in, right? We kind of got them, uh, as icebreakers using their voice in this new way. Now, what do we want to write a song about? And what we find with beatboxing is in our class.
Kaila Mullady: [00:07:27] It’s a lot of social emotional learning, right? Give it. Letting the kids decide. What do you want to write about? What’s the message? And making them work as a team to create the song. And at the end of the day, it’s really special because when we’re done with our session, they have this amazing song that they recorded that all of their voices are in, um, with their own ideas and their own thoughts. So really, I love using beatboxing as this tool to make better leaders of the world tomorrow. People that are more confident in their voice, people that will be, um, proud to Proud to stand up for themselves and not afraid to stand up for others. You know, a lot of the work that we do is also anti-bullying. How do you use your voice for good in these situations? Um, and I found people that walked into the class being so shy, like, afraid to make a peep. And by the end of the session, they’re laughing and they’re having fun. And, you know, they’re pressing the button and hearing their sound over and over again that they created and feeling it in a musical way that lets them know that their voices and the choices that they make are very impactful and important to them.
Mindy Peterson: [00:08:26] That’s really cool to hear. And as you were talking, I just couldn’t help but think about the movie Inside Out, to which I just watched. I know it’s been out for a little while, but I just watched it a few days ago for the first time with my daughter. My daughter’s 22. We watched the first Inside Out together in the theater when she was young, and I remember at the time as a parent thinking, wow, this is so great how they’re showing both children and parents what is going on inside all of our heads with our emotions responding to different situations. And I remember when my daughter first saw Inside Out two, she texted me or called and she said I was just laughing, watching this girl who’s going through puberty and just watching her interact with her mom and thinking, yeah, that’s probably what it was like for you in some ways. And you were talking about how kids in school, whether it’s middle school, high school, college, it’s a very vulnerable time. And I can totally see how this beatboxing and music in general can really help build confidence in students, give them a voice and help them come out of their shell. Which I know is something that you talk quite a bit about in the process of your you’re speaking in front of students and with students. So that’s really cool.
Kaila Mullady: [00:09:43] Yeah. And what you’re talking about, the emotions are really cool. Uh, another aspect of beatboxing is in a way, it’s very meditative, right? Because you’re actually listening to yourself and your sounds, probably for probably for the first time in a way that you’ve never had before. Since we were babies and you, you know, you first recognize that you have a voice. We don’t remember those times anymore. So beatboxing is a way to really get in tune with yourself and a lot of it as well, whether these kids know it or not or not. Uh, you know, a big a big thing that we say here is that we’re, we’re sneaking vegetables into a fruit smoothie. A lot of people have never seen beatboxing before. So when they see it, they’re like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. This is amazing. But then they don’t realize that we’re actually doing all this background work with them and with beatboxing as well. The breathing patterns that they do and being in touch with your breath to help calm them down. And and also just that meditative aspect. I think for a lot of people and especially kids, the idea of doing yoga or meditating to help, you know, bring their emotions down or kind of come back to this center point. For me, when I was a kid, I was jumping all over the walls. I’m a beatboxer now. Imagine me when I was, you know, in middle school, you could not shut me up. I was not going to sit there and quiet and, you know, hum and chant and all those things. But beatboxing is a cool way when you’re sitting there and after you leave our classroom. It’s cool because now you have this thing with you. It doesn’t cost anything. You know, your parents don’t have to buy anything or whoever’s there. So now you just left this class with this skill set that you could always have. And by tapping into that, you’re tapping into yourself and really getting in tune with your body in a new way.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:13] I can imagine. Well, and your peers think it’s really cool too. I mean, who whoever is able to make those sounds is going to really attract some attention from their peers. Like, whoa, how’d you do that? That’s really cool.
Kaila Mullady: [00:11:28] The lunch table is going to be the hottest spot in school to be at, you know.
Mindy Peterson: [00:11:30] Sure. Well, and the other thing I was thinking as you were talking, too, is just the educational value of teaching kids to really listen. Because if you’re learning to play a trumpet. Yeah, there’s definitely skills that are involved in that. If you have to actually read the music and create the trumpet sound with your own vocal chords and your own body, like that’s next level in terms of really having to listen and replicate what you’re hearing. So yeah, that’s a really another cool aspect of it.
Kaila Mullady: [00:12:00] Yeah, I heard this quote this one time that was pretty interesting around music that I was like, music is the only space where a hundred people can be talking at the same time and still be listening to each other. Oh, right. Whether that’s through a trumpet or you’re singing. Right. It’s like 100 people are making noise. You know, they are communicating through this thing, but you’re still listening as a whole and as a group. That’s really wonderful.
Mindy Peterson: [00:12:20] That is, I haven’t heard it expressed that way. But you’re totally, totally right. And not only are they all listening to one another, but the experience is bonding them all together at the same time. Yeah. So yeah. Really cool. I love that your work using beatboxing as a tool for speech therapy led to a partnership with New York University. Tell us more about this partnership and the curriculum curriculum that you’ve developed.
Kaila Mullady: [00:12:46] Yeah. So actually, when I was, you know, when I was young, I come from like a huge Irish family. So I have like a million cousins. Basically, there’s a million melodies running around. And when I was younger, this really kind of came about because one of my cousins that I used to babysit all the time, he had apraxia and he had some speech differences, and so he would come home from school every day when I was babysitting, and some days, about three days a week, he would have one of his speech pathologists come over and, you know, like, what kid, after you’re already in school for six hours a day, no kid wants to come home and do two more hours of schoolwork. And his brother and his sister didn’t have to do it. And even if they were doing homework, it didn’t matter. He did not want to be there. So there would be days where he shut down. There would be days where literally he would run from the table. There would be days where he just wouldn’t say a peep. So I don’t know, as his babysitter, I kind of felt like, you know, I had this responsibility to get him to sit in on the sessions. And I had been beatboxing since I was like, I don’t know, in fourth or fifth grade, since I was like 8 or 9, I started beatboxing. And so he already already loved beatboxing, and sometimes we would do it do it together. So then when we sat at the table, if his speech pathologist held up a card that said baseball or bat, he would try to say it a few times and then we’d go, okay, why don’t we try to beatbox it, right? So instead of just saying baseball, we’d say baseball. Baseball bat, right? Because when I’m beatboxing, right. If I’m like. Right. If I’m beatboxing, I’m just talking but articulating the letters of my speech, right?
Mindy Peterson: [00:14:29] Sure.
Kaila Mullady: [00:14:29] Commonly when we teach beatboxing, uh, you know, a good phrase is boots and cats. Boots and cats and boots. Or I teach them as letters like p t and k p t t. So really, with my cousin, we would sit there and kind of find how to articulate the letters in a word to make it sound like a drum sound. Then shortly after that, I met my mentor. His name is name is Kid Lucky in New York City, and he showed me a style of beatboxing called beat rhyming. And that’s when you sing or rap or beatbox at the same time. It’s like bip, bip bip bip…
Kaila Mullady: [00:15:11] So once I started working with him, I was like, oh, this is amazing. Like, the words and the beats can really come together. So I took that style that he did of beat rhyming. And I decided, uh, you know, when I was doing a lot more beatbox battles, I wanted to use it in battle. So I needed to make it more technical. So I would try to take every single, uh, letter of the alphabet and really make it a beatboxing sound. So from there, I started being a teaching artist in New York City, and one of the classes I did was at the Lavelle School for the blind, where we were working with kids who had all different visual impairments, but they also were on the spectrum, different spectrum of autism and different cognitive abilities as well. So we used beatboxing in that class. The class was originally a music therapy class, which they loved, but because of this beat writing background I had, we started making it a speech therapy class, and what we were finding with the students that we had there was incredible. They loved it. I had a student that was incredible at beatboxing. Like really? When he would beatbox, he would be like, boom, boom, boom, boom…
Kaila Mullady: [00:16:13] Incredible. But when he spoke, it was really difficult to hear what he was saying. And, uh, when we came in, I wasn’t exactly able to know what each student was dealing with because we came out as in as an outdoor vendor. But when he was beatboxing, every sound and every letter was so sharp. So one day I sat with him and I said, you know, Remi, you hear how your beatboxing is so strong, right, man? And he’s like, yeah. And I was like, and you know, you get a little frustrated because when you speak, people can’t understand what you’re saying, right? And he was like, yeah. And I was like, okay, what if we imagine that everything we’re saying, we’re beatboxing it, right? Why don’t we try that that beat rhyming. And then for the rest of the year when he was in was in my class, he’d be like: Goodbye, Miss Kaila.
Kaila Mullady: [00:16:54] And he was hitting the the syllables like really hard when he came in the next summer. That was towards the end of the year when he came in after the summer. It was incredible, like the way that he was speaking. Uh, just his level of excitement and confidence when he spoke to he was a little bit more shy in class. He didn’t want to speak up as much. He came back as like, a different person. So it was a little difficult at first to get schools involved with us, because as soon as they heard anything about beatboxing or speech therapy, they immediately were like, this is never going to work. Um, we emailed countless schools we had meetings with. Yeah. And luckily, uh, there were people at NYU and they were really excited about it. And then when Mark Martin and I, Mark Martin is an American beatbox champion as well, we are the founders of the Academy of Noise. And we actually really got together by doing this program at the Lavelle School for the blind. So when we decided to do the Academy of Noise, we really met with Christine Schneider, who Schneider, who was in incredible vocal health professional, and Tom Burke, who is an SLP. And we partnered with Aaron Johnson, who is at the Langone Vocal Center. And what we ended up doing was we got a bunch of beatboxers. We had like 12 Beatboxers some of the best in the world across different ages. We gave them Endoscopies. We had to stick cameras down our down our noses and into our throats so that we could see what was happening with, you know, when you’re beatboxing.
Kaila Mullady: [00:18:19] We put myself and Mark Martin in MRI machines to see what’s happening. So now we have the most comprehensive, you know, recordings and of how all of these beatboxing structures are made. So what we’re really hoping to do now and the work that we’re doing, you know, we’ve already seen it in confidence in helping people with speech therapy. We worked with some local practices, but what we really are working towards now is having a list that we can work with SLPs. And if there’s something that you’re working with with your student, we can be like, okay, if you need to work on work on this. These are the sounds that you should work with on with your students just to make it fun. So it’s really exciting time. It’s really amazing. And I’m sure a lot of people that you’ve talked to through this podcast to see how music changes people’s lives. And I feel like finally, you know, when we started this work, um, ten, 15 ish years ago now, people really needed that science backing, which I totally get. But sometimes it’s hard to like. The only way we got into NYU to begin with is one person said yes, and we said, can you just come into the classroom, please? If you just saw what was happening, we promise you, you’re going to understand what we’re talking about. And actually, that day that we had somebody from NYU come in was the day that we had that breakthrough with my student about speaking, and she saw him be like, oh.
Kaila Mullady: [00:19:38] And it was almost that he kind of understood in that moment why we were that vegetables in the fruit smoothie. He was like, oh, broccoli. Oh, broccoli is good for me. I get this now. So yeah, yeah, we, you know, and all the work that we do, it’s really to make people more confident, and especially when you work with people, um, in the speech therapy world, you know, it’s it’s could be children, you know, up until you’re around eight years old, everybody really needs some sort of speech development work after that, then we could look towards more cognitive issues that might be they might be dealing with. But, you know, even I remember kids in my school that they would get pulled out of the class during the day to go work with their speech pathologist. And sometimes that’s going to give you a feeling that you are not at the same level as other kids, right? You have a deficiency in this way that you need to work on. So when we come in and we share beatboxing with them now, all of a sudden they could do stuff with their voices that nobody else could do, and they could go back into that classroom. And it’s what you talked about, that confidence piece where now, instead of feeling like they’re deficient in something, now they have a superpower.
Kaila Mullady: [00:20:39] Now they can make music and they can now it’s giving them this confidence to feel like, you know, they really have control and they have what they need to make their make their voices be what they want it to be.
Mindy Peterson: [00:20:50] Yeah, they’re the fun, cool person to have around. Now all of a sudden, because they have these skills. Yeah, I’ve had people on the show before talking about, uh, different speech conditions. Like one example that immediately comes to mind is stuttering and how music therapy is so effective for stuttering. And people who have a stutter can sing fluently. Yeah. And so it it was it’s a little surprising to me that you ran into some obstacles with. It makes perfect sense to me that beatboxing would be really helpful in this way. When you’re talking about doing the Endoscopies and the MRIs, was that to establish the scientific basis for why what you’re doing works?
Kaila Mullady: [00:21:30] Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we’ve actually we’ve done research where we worked with a smaller practice where we offered free beatboxing classes to about eight different families in New York City. And we did about that for like 13 weeks. So that was our first thing to really test out what we were doing and see how see how their speech improved their confidence in it. So that was the first one that we did. And we did that with an organization that unfortunately isn’t around anymore. But it was called Beat Global. Okay. And yeah, now the work that we’re doing is really about getting all that we can, all the research that we can behind this and really now creating tools for speech pathologists to use. We don’t think that beatboxing is, you know, the cure. That’s the only thing that people should do. No. It’s like when you have a tool belt, you know, you have a hammer, you have a screwdriver. Beatboxing is just one more thing, that it’s the ruler that you can put in your tool belt, that if you have students that you want a little refresher, you need a little palate cleanser or people that are or students that and I shouldn’t even say the younger kids.
Kaila Mullady: [00:22:28] We’ve also done this work with patients that had gone through strokes and also Parkinson’s, and we’re kind of losing their ability or trying to regain their ability for speech. And people who are 60, 70 years old loved it just as much as kids who are, you know, ten, 12, six years old. Yeah. But our goal is just to create tools for people and make it something that’s fun and also give it to something that beatboxing. You can practice on your own. You know they don’t need. If this is a tool that they have, they don’t have to go through flashcards. They can put on their favorite song. And it doesn’t matter what genre of music you like, put on reggaeton, put on the oldies, put on Motown, rock and roll, and you could just jam along to that. And it’s something that you can lose yourself in. You know, it’s great to have something that if you could practice for an hour instead of it feeling like you’re, you know, painstakingly going through something, let it just be something that’s fun and easy for people to, um, you know, utilize within their practices.
Mindy Peterson: [00:23:19] Yeah, absolutely. Love that. Well, tell us a little bit more about the Academy of Noise and what it offers. I know you offer lessons, you offer some kind of assemblies. I think you call them workshops. So tell us a little bit more.
Kaila Mullady: [00:23:32] Yeah. So, you know, we have personalized one on one sessions with people or, you know, especially with people who are working on speech goals or something like that. But we go into schools and we do large assemblies, you know, sometimes 100 kids, sometimes 700 kids, where we get everyone in the room to beatbox. Again, we tell that history of beatbox. Talk about the beatboxing pioneers like Dougie Fresh or Rahzel or Buffy, and then we invite them up to beatbox with us and make some make some noise. And we also do breakout workshops in schools where we really do that songwriting element. So whatever these kids are kind of wanting to discuss or talk about, you know, we have a session where we come in, we make music with them, we write a song with them. And really, that’s just about the confidence building self expression, you know, the leadership and really them working together as a team to write some music and have something that they could share with the world at the end of our sessions.
Mindy Peterson: [00:24:25] Okay. And I know on your website it says that all assemblies and workshops are available in person or online, so that’s great to know too, for people who may not be nearby New York City, where you’re based out of. But also, as I mentioned in the beginning, I learned about your work because you were actually on site at a school in Minnesota. So, yeah. Um, Yeah. Available in person and online. You mentioned that you started beatboxing when you were like 8 or 9. How did you get into beatboxing?
Kaila Mullady: [00:24:54] Oh my gosh. I feel terrible for my mother. Mindy, you don’t understand. I was the kid that literally, she would come home every day from work, and all of the pots and pans would be in the kitchen floor because I turned them into drum sets, or I would take old tissue boxes and I would rip the tissues out of them, so they would be all over the ground, and I would put rubber bands around them and make little rubber band guitars.
Mindy Peterson: [00:25:14] So how did you get this idea? Did you see something on TV that inspired you?
Kaila Mullady: [00:25:18] Yeah, I mean, the drum set with the pots and pans that felt a little bit more like, you know, a five year old could assume that hitting it with a wooden spoon would make a noise, but I’m sure the the tissue box thing came from some TV show. Okay. Yeah. But, you know, I always loved music, and music was always really a part of me. And beatboxing. I remember I saw like a commercial when I was a kid, and it was just kind of around, like, I grew up in the 90s, so, you know, hip hop in the in the 90s was amazing. I grew up not too far from New York City, and, um, but there is one moment that I really remember it was a Twix commercial, like the candy bar, and there was this beatboxer. His name was Rozell. He is like, if we had a mount Rushmore, his face would be on it, a beatboxing. He had this commercial where he was like, uh, he was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, snap into a Twix.
Kaila Mullady: [00:26:06] Right? And he was making all the noises and I was like, this is so cool. And this is going to annoy my whole family. Like, I should definitely do this, right? Um, but yeah, it was just a way for me to always have music around. I was always hearing music in my head. And, you know, really what I’m passionate about with this work as well is just giving kids an outlet. When I was a kid, I went through a lot of hardships. There was a lot of animosity in the house, and, um, there was a lot of pain that I didn’t know where to put it. And when. My uncle first taught me how to play guitar, when I was probably like eight or 9 or 10, he put a guitar in my hand because he saw that I was a kid that was making tissue box guitars everywhere. Yeah, that saved me. Truly. And even through high school, I took, um, you know, I took a theater class, and I took. I didn’t really like. I wish I was more like you in a way that I could practice music and learn music theory. I’m doing that now as a 30 something year old. But when I was a kid, I. I didn’t like that. I didn’t want people to tell me how to make music. And there was also just things going on that I could not talk to people about. You know, I had a very big mask on. I was definitely class clown, but on the inside there was a lot of turmoil, and my way to release that was through music. So at the even if we don’t talk about how it makes people more confident or helps them with their speech goals or anything.
Kaila Mullady: [00:27:23] Giving people an outlet to express themselves and express the things that maybe, um, kids or even adults can’t find the words to say or don’t have the confidence to say out loud. Yet music is the medicine of that. So at the end of the day, when I go up and I do these workshops or I do these assemblies, my ultimate thing is music was such a lifesaver for me, and if we could just give a way for it to be more accessible to people, that’s what’s super important. So I don’t think that when I was, uh, you know, eight and I started beatboxing or, you know, when I was in middle school and high school, you know, I would be at the back of the bus and kids would be rapping, so I’d be beatboxing or at the lunch table or at recess. This is not something that I thought would ever be my career. Um, but I just fell so in love with it and so down the rabbit hole. And I love it for myself. And the expression that I get to create. And I love seeing how it helps other people, uh, become another tool for their tool belt. So, yeah, I it’s just something that when I think about beatboxing, I it’s like living and breathing now. It goes back almost as far as I can remember.
Mindy Peterson: [00:28:30] Uh, it’s always so fun to meet somebody like you. Who, I’m in a conversation with them, and I’m thinking, this person is just doing what they were born to do. You know, I mean, you can just see your level of passion and enjoyment. And I love how you’re so interested in giving back with the skills and the talent that you have to in terms of speaking with students and making the world a better place with the talent that you have. You mentioned the Twix commercial. I loved seeing on your website some of the commercials that you’ve done. Those are really cool. How how did you happen to get into doing that kind of work?
Kaila Mullady: [00:29:06] You know, I think it’s what you were talking about. I think I’m just on the right path. I know that I think giving back, you know, like, I really feel like the more that I’ve given back, the more opportunities have come to me. But, you know, I started as my mentor kid lucky. You know, when I was 19, I would come into New York City. I literally had a broken back because I jumped off a cliff when I was 19 for fun. It just didn’t end very well. But I would have. It sounds like an old story, like when you would talk to old grandparents and they’re like, back in my day, I walked to school and the the, the hill both ways in the snow. But when I was 19, I would go into New York City with a back brace on and street perform and basically stay in New York City until I made enough money to go back to Long Island. And slowly but surely, you know, that went from like doing open mic nights to maybe getting one gig and this and that. And, you know, I’m not really sure how those opportunities came along and, but I just feel like, um, and even doing like a Broadway show, putting my two favorite things together improv and beatboxing. Um, I’m not really sure how these things happen. And I think, um, questioning it too much isn’t a good idea. So I just try to, you know, stay in the flow of things and take whatever opportunities they come. But I’m really excited that, uh, you know, on a kind of more intimate scale, I should say, going into schools and working with community members or on a larger scale, you know, doing a big show or doing a TV show or a commercial. I’m really honored, and I feel very grateful that I get to be able to spread something like beatboxing.
Mindy Peterson: [00:30:43] I love that answer, and it sort of answers a little bit what I’m going to ask next. And that is one frustration that I hear from the music educators that I work with, whether it’s K through 12 music educators or college level faculty, is that students parents are discouraging them from studying music because they, quote, can’t make money in music. So you’re living in New York City, which is known to be an expensive place to live, and you’re making a living doing what you love. What would you like to say on this topic to young musicians and their parents?
Kaila Mullady: [00:31:17] Yeah, you know, it’s true. Beatboxing is my full time career, and everything that I love to do is my full time career. And, uh, I’m I’m very successful at it because I worked hard. And I have to say, my when I told my family that this is what I wanted to do, they were like, uh, ready to call the priest and be like, this girl needs an exorcist. Like, what is going on right now? Like, she’s out of her. She’s lost her marbles. She’s out of her mind. Right? Um, and I think that if you have a passion, nobody knows what’s right for them more than you do. And yourself, you know that. You know when there’s that feeling in your stomach that you’re not supposed to be somewhere or you’re supposed to do something, that’s your calling. And I do believe that people have a true purpose in life, and they have a calling in life. And it’s about finding your your innate gifts and also leaning into the things that you’re curious about to learn more about or to be adding to your tool, to your toolbox or your tool sets. But, um, I would say people should have hope. People should be able to dream. You know, you don’t have to kill a dream. And also, I think that we put so much pressure on the young kids when by the time they’re 17, we’re asking them, what are you going to go to college for? Probably take out a lot of money, right? And this is going to be the thing that forever, you’re going to do for the rest of your life. That is insane. That’s crazy. You know, these kids, they don’t know yet what they want to do.
Kaila Mullady: [00:32:40] They’re so young. I think for parents knowing that we have time, your your kids have time to make mistakes and try something new and try something again. Um, I would just say you never know what’s going to happen. You truly don’t know. And for anybody out there, not even younger kids, if there’s something that you have a dream for and you have something kind of in your in your heart and in your intuition that’s speaking to you, you got to just go for it. You really my life right now, I could never imagine in my wildest dreams that this would be my life. And the only way that I got here was to listen to my intuition, listen to my heart and work hard. You know, don’t. Don’t wait for things to happen. Make your own luck. But, you know, there’s so many opportunities nowadays. And if anybody out there, you know, if you’re a parent and you want to talk about this more, or if you’re you’re somebody who is considering really going after a dream, feel free to reach out. To me, my journey was a lot of self-belief, and faith was what had to get me through. You know, as someone who started street performing in New York City and like being on a street for like eight hours and making $6 to where I am now. So, um, yeah, anything’s possible. And I really believe that. And, you know, you know what’s right for you. You can’t let other people’s expectations or what they want for you stop you from going after what you want.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:02] Great input. Well, you have tons of resources on your website. I’ll for sure include links in the episode notes to your website, to the Academy of Noise. I know on your website you talk about some of your speaking, that you offer your lessons. You teach lessons on topics related to beginning beatboxing, advanced beatboxing, and speaking and performance coaching. Uh, is there anything else that you want to make sure listeners know about the resources on your website, or about beatboxing as a tool for education?
Kaila Mullady: [00:34:36] Yeah, I just think it’s so much fun. Give it a try. I promise you, it’s going to be an unforgettable experience that will leave your community a lot better and a lot more more confident in themselves.
Mindy Peterson: [00:34:49] Mm. Love it. Well, Kaila, this has been so fun. If I was educating in a school setting, I would want to hire you immediately. So inspiring to hear what you have to say and just your energy and passion. As you know, I ask all my guests to close out our conversation with a musical ending a coda by sharing a song or story about a moment that music enhanced your life. Is there a song or a story that you can share with us today in closing?
Kaila Mullady: [00:35:14] Yeah. Um, you know, I don’t normally do this. Normally I just maybe, like, just do straight beatboxing, but I was thinking about it today on the topic, and I would love to share my first song that I ever wrote on a guitar and really just tap it back to what we were talking about before. Uh, as a reminder, always really to myself as well of why I started this and why I think music is so important. And, uh, you know, this song helped me when I was going through a bad time, and it really just gave me hope and made me realize that things were going to be all right. So I would love to share that with you all today.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:45] Yeah. And what is the title of it?
Kaila Mullady: [00:35:47] Um, uh, it’s called Mindy Peterson’s new favorite song. I don’t know, I’ve never I actually don’t have a name to it. It’s just something that I always play on guitar. Yeah.
Mindy Peterson: [00:35:57] Okay. Awesome. Love it.
Kaila Mullady: [00:36:01] Okay. This is, uh, Mindy Peterson’s new favorite song.
Transcribed by Sonix.ai