#88 Tracy Silverman, electric violinist

Tracy Silverman remembers listening to music with his father as young as 2 or 3 years old and by 5, he had been totally smitten by the violin and started taking lessons. He practiced incessantly and eventually attended The Juilliard School. After that, he started playing in rock bands and began making electric 6 string violins. "I wanted to play violin so it sounded like an electric guitar because that is the voice of my generation." "Music is a language," Tracy says, "and I didn't want to be singing in an old-fashioned language." He says he had a "desire to touch people, to connect people … in a language they understood."  Tracy says music is "powerful enough that plenty of crazy orthodox religions ban it because it moves people." Rhythmic music makes people respond with their bodies, so something is going on there, he says, and when added with the human voice or instruments that mimic the voice, it is a "pretty potent substance there that can target your emotional brain." He believes musicians have an incredible responsibility when they are able to touch people deeply to open up something in them and that music can be a "real instrument for social good."