A musical journey in the digital age

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

good evening everyone my name is joel

sonny

and i am a violinist and an online video

creator

firstly i want to thank psg college for

inviting me to present at this wonderful

tedx event

i want you all to imagine something you

post a video of yourself

doing something that you love on youtube

and then the next morning you wake up to

see yourself on the front page

and you see your name and you see your

face

next to a million views

and then you actually wake up now this

was a dream that i had in high school

and i went to school that day quite

annoyed that i was woken up from such a

perfect dream

but today i’m here to tell you how i

turn that dream

into a reality except the only

difference is

that it wasn’t overnight and instead of

one million views

currently my music has been heard and

seen

by over 25 million people around the

world now let me tell you a bit about

myself

i was born in south india in a place

called kerala

and i was brought up in england and now

i live

in sydney australia now i had an amazing

grandfather

who happened to be an incredibly

talented violinist

and he really liked being in front of

the camera

in fact this is the very picture of him

that made me want to pick up the violin

and here is a picture of me practicing

the violin

after a few days of lessons now i had

around one and a half years worth of

violin lessons

from my lovely violin teacher caroline

and

since then i’ve been playing on my own

for around eight years

and i play everything by it i also

learned a lot about

music from my older brother who taught

me how to play the piano

in fact we grew up together playing in

church

and why am i telling you all of this

well essentially

if you want to find out where to start

pursuing your dreams

you have to find out what you are

passionate about

mine just happened to be music i believe

that taking the first step

is the most important thing when it

comes to succeeding in

anything so high school was where i met

my good friend

william and william was the person who

encouraged me to start my youtube

channel

and by encourage i mean annoy me every

day

for two weeks until i made one so i

finally gave in

and on a random day in 2016

i upload my first cover now i was hoping

this cover

would blow up but of course that didn’t

happen

and it ended up getting 50 views and two

comments

one of which was from my mom what i

learned from this process

of taking that first step was that i

really enjoyed

making videos and sharing my talent with

others

so i would then continue to make videos

and post them online

on and off for about three years i

wasn’t taking it too seriously

and i wasn’t getting many views but i

was enjoying

every second of it except one aspect

which was my main obstacle the

discouragement

now unlike what you may think this

discouragement did not come from people

online

but surprisingly it came from people i

knew in person

people who i would call friends and this

is the ugly side

of taking that first step towards your

dreams not everybody is going to support

you

and unfortunately this fear of what

others may think and say about

us is what often prevents us from even

trying

to take that step in the first place now

these comments from the people i knew

hurt me at first and was even quite

humiliating

at times but if you want to come with me

to the next step which i’m going to talk

about

you must with everything in you ignore

them

and keep moving forward so the next step

is when opportunity meets preparation

now let me take you back to 2020 only

for a second

i promise let’s go back to the time

when the lockdowns first began i

remember it being such a horrible time

for everyone people were hoarding toilet

paper

people couldn’t see their loved ones and

most of all

we were all isolated and disconnected

more than ever before

but at times like this i’m extremely

grateful for social media

because what i saw was a massive surge

of creativity

in musicians everywhere and you’d expect

nothing less from musicians who are

trapped in their homes 24 7.

and something else that we saw was that

everyone was consuming online content at

a greater rate than before

due to the need to be uplifted and

entertained

so around this time me and my friend

marcus were already filming

music video covers around sydney and at

night time

so that nobody was outside i remember us

filming and uploading

this one video that i was very proud of

but it didn’t end up getting

that many views and normally this would

not concern me too much

but then came those people who would

make fun of me

and they would say things like joel

nobody wants to watch your videos

you’re not cool enough and so on

and they’d basically try everything they

could to discourage me

but this time it did get to me a little

bit and

i was so close to deleting all my videos

and closing my channel all together

because for the first time i had felt

like a failure and i began to ask myself

why was i even doing any of this lucky

for me i didn’t do that

and instead exactly one month after

those people had said those things

i upload the video that would then

change

everything for me now currently this

video sits at around

2.5 million views on youtube

and my channel has been growing ever

since

and these same people who were once

making jokes about me

were now the ones saying congratulations

but more important than

any of those things was the astounding

response that i got from people

around the world i got many comments and

messages telling me that my music

had helped them with their anxiety their

depression

panic attacks and even help people get

to sleep

and there was one comment that stood out

to me and it was basically

this person who had a heart problem

and their doctor or cardiologist