Events, music, and libraries? Oh my!

Calling all music lovers, you’ve got a community waiting for you at the Cossitt Branch Library! Two of our newest Innovators-in-Residence, Tonya Dyson and Ty Boyland, have spun up their programming and found wonderful opportunities for overlap.

Dyson, Innovator-in-Residence (“IiR”) for event coordination and self-described master of “the art of music engagement,” views her role as more than just educational sessions for students: “essentially, I’m looking at it like it’s community building, but it’s all centered around music; whether you’re a music maker or a music lover, we’ve got something for you here.” Boyland’s approach forms a naturally symbiotic relationship with Dyson’s. As the IiR for music production and business, Boyland aims to allow interested Memphians to pursue a fully-rounded musical education to jump-start their own career within or around the music industry. “In this day and age, if you just do one thing, you can’t really do anything,” Boyland advised, “people are looking for the full package, so that’s what we’re trying to give them.”

While their respective IiR programming is still in its early stages (keep an eye out for Dyson’s “BUILD-A-BLOCK [PARTY]: Neighborhood Activation” sessions starting April 28th), both Innovators have been part of the MPL family for almost a year. You may have caught Boyland as a panelist focusing on AI music creation at last year’s PodBox Podcast Festival, and Dyson has been helping MLF to curate interesting and out-of-the-box events. In addition to the events she already steers, she helped MLF coordinate our annual Cocktails and Conversation event this past October! Dyson’s expertise in event logistics, permitting processes, and legal requirements isn’t limited to past library events; she plans to impart the same skills she’s shared with the library to her program participants as well, so they can take steps toward monetizing their own careers.

Both Dyson and Boyland have spent their careers amassing a massive network in the Memphis music scene, and now they hope to share those networks with the community through the Library. In fact, Boyland believes it’s integral to his position as Innovator:

I believe that Memphis traditionally has done a great job at cultivating and building great musicians, but then what do you do? That’s where I can come in. I’ve built this huge network and I can connect everyone inside of it, [...] I can instantly activate my network and start placing people. That’s where monetizing your art – or even just finding new opportunities – comes from.

Boyland has many years of experience networking his way into monetizing his art, going all the way back to working on Craig Brewer’s 2005 film Hustle & Flow – a relationship that he has continued cultivating to this day, as he recently lent his producing talents to Brewer again in Crosstown High’s production of 12 Angry Jurors this past November. Network building is integral to Ty’s programming, and he’s happy to absorb you if you’re willing to let him. “I tell [my students] all the time: my network is your network. When I hand you off, if you stay ready, you never have to get ready.”

Dyson hopes to cross-pollinate her own network with Boyland’s – and the rest of the MidSouth community – through her role at the library. She’s known the local music scene like the back of her hand for years, having cut her teeth singing for her local church and her family’s juke joint growing up. “Eventually, I began to funnel a lot of that information and knowledge that I had learned growing up into creating the things that I didn’t see readily available in Memphis. From there, I formed a small ecosystem of people who could also do the things I could do.” That led to her work coordinating large, Memphis-based events like Memphis in May, where she learned the core skills she’s now bringing to her event-planning classes at Cossitt.

Dyson hopes to spin her programming out into a quarterly reception concert that her students will plan and execute themselves, aided by Boyland’s producing skills. “I would also love his help in figuring out the next piece of how we would use the music, where that would live in the digital space, and what it would look like in the real world as far as how we sell it to people.” Clearly, monetization as a benefit to your pursuit of musical education is a core tenet of both Dyson and Boyland’s approach to mentorship. “I think that a lot of people have become jaded with the music industry, because it’s like they have all this great music but they’re not really benefiting from it,” Boyland suggested. To combat this, he aims to focus much of his programming on “what happens in the middle:” copywriting their songs, finding sync opportunities for their music, and selling the digital rights to their work. “All of that is pivotal to what I teach. When [students] realize that they can make money passively from this, [...] that’s why I’m doing this.”

You can’t monetize your music if you don’t have the foundations, but don’t fret – Dyson and Boyland have you covered there, too. With a plethora of new instruments (2 keyboards, 10 acoustic guitars, an acoustic drum kit, two amps, etc.), Dyson is partnering with Boyland to form an ongoing musical education series where participants may check out an instrument and an instructional video to use at the Cossitt Branch Library with the end goal of pumping more talent directly back into Memphis’s music scene and building a massive musical community. That’s the inextricable benefit of libraries, in Boyland’s view.

I really feel like libraries are a great place for discovery. You’re discovering knowledge and information from books, you’re discovering what the city has to offer from engaging with the other people, but, specifically for music, you can discover a lot about yourself. Libraries help people find their village. That’s just the culture at MPL: each student helps teach the next how to succeed.

Through their partnership with the Memphis Library Foundation, Dyson and Boyland have cultivated a culture of collaboration. “I’m really looking forward to building a deeper relationship with some of the other Innovators,” Dyson expressed, “learning how we can collaborate, and finding a way to mix our expertise together to further enhance what we can give back to the community.” Her collaboration with Boyland is already off the ground, but who knows what other overlaps the Innovators might find? Ultimately, they all share the same goals of cultivating Memphians, growing their expertise, and building a community through the Library. “Being able to go different places, being introduced to new young people that like music but haven’t discovered that they love making it yet, seeing that light switch go off… I just wouldn’t ever give that up for anything,” said Boyland. We hope that neither you nor your fellow Innovators ever do. For our part, we sure won’t.