Finding Strength In Your Stutter

Transcript

Maya Chupkov:

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I’m Maya Chupkov and I'm a woman who stutters welcome to Proud stutter a Show about stuttering and embracing verbal diversity in an effort to change how we talk about it one conversation at a time.

Welcome back to Proud stutter. Our co-host for today is my very good friend Andrew Menigat, welcome to the show Andrew.

Andrew Menegat:

Thanks for having me.

Maya:

Our Guest is Stevie Soul, an award-winning beatboxer vocalist and multimedia producer from Detroit, Michigan welcome Stevie.

Stevie Soul:

thank you for having me.

Maya:

Before we get into your stutter. I wanted to ask about how it was growing up in Detroit which has such a rich music history and if that had any influence on on you, yeah, I mean, you know Detroit is a beautiful beautiful city feel like it's a bit underappreciated these days. I mean it probably goes without saying that the Motown era in Motown music in itself really influenced me so much and a lot of things happened here, you know techno house techno music kind of started here and there's a lot of musical, you know, a lot of elements of rock and roll. So there's a lot of it's a pretty big musical history year and around a lot of awesome inspiration all the time.

Stevie:

And did you grow up in the city or outside the city or?

Stevie:

Up in a city called Redford Redford, Michigan, which is just outside of Detroit. Cool.

Maya:

Yeah, I I know a lot of friends that live in or near to Detroit and a lot of them are artists and just very creative people. So let's talk about your stutter. You had a love and passion for music very early on in age. Can you talk about what it was like growing up with a stutter and how music played a role?

Stevie:

In and all that, you know growing up when I would try to say words. I would always get caught up on the first letter and could never push the full word out of my mouth. And so my my older brother's name is Billy. So I would try to say Billy and I'd always get caught on that b and you know people that started we all have those certain letters and certain words. I really get us and B was a tricky one for me. So I would attempt to say Billy but but

in these these sounds kept coming out in the beginning in the example of bees. There was this sort of bass drum sound so I noticed that with the several other words and letters. So I just kind of took these these sort of strange sounds and arranged them into beats and patterns and that helped me understand set a sentence structure in helped me kind of understand my internal Rhythm. It was just my little technique of working through a word and working through my stutter and through that I discovered that I I could be box that I had this little Edge, you know, I started I didn't really know exactly what beatboxing was when I was younger, but I knew I loved music I loved recreating and singing Jingles on TV and commercials like that. I would hear

So there was something there and it just kind of all clicked and I was able to kind of take a lot of those sounds and arrange them into those beats and patterns and mimic other instruments that I would hear on TV or on the radio. And that again was just my little personal way of working through my stutter and that's how I discovered. I could beatbox was kind of through the struggle and really helped me with my timing and my pacing through conversations in school because as you know, you know communication is everything and

All of this was happening around Middle School, which was just a very judgy time for people. So I discovered I had this really special thing and by beatboxing I was able to like put on little shows and performance is for people to sort of take attention away from the stutter. And that was my I guess my trick my thing that's kind of what I did to to deal with the stutter privately. It was the thing. I could look forward to it was just this thing that I loved doing. I definitely covered my stuttering as that was younger as a young guy. The last thing I wanted to do was point out. Imperfections it just wasn't something I felt comfortable doing and it wasn't until I got a bit older and my dad.

He kept encouraging me to like Live Your Truth tell people about your stutter and that just helped me feel more comfortable and confident with sharing my story and then eventually even to like to these days. I'm very open about talking about my stutter and it was just such an important part of my childhood and and how I got to where I am as an artist as well.

Maya:

I love that answer. That was amazing and I think when you were Doing like the the repetitive consonants. I was like, oh my gosh, that is like I can hear the bead boxing kind of an inspiration as you were saying that and I think it's just such a like such a cool. connection of points because so much bead boxing has to do with those those repetitions and as I've been getting more into Sound and Music I always thought I didn't really have an ear when I when I would sing in choir I

I was often. I often wouldn't sing full out because I knew my pitch wasn't as good as others. And so I just always thought I like music really wasn't my strong suit until I found editing podcasting and now I'm starting to find out that maybe I do have some like maybe my ear isn't as bad as I thought it was and so I just think like there's so much. creation and music that we can really use to spread more awareness about stuttering and to really make it okay for certain sounds to be accepted. So I'm wondering if that like resonates with you and it's like you're stuttering experience has made you tap into that.

Stevie:

The type of music that may not be the norm yet if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's this inherent temple with stuttering and so that you to your point. There's like something there and I and I I I'm really grateful I discovered that when I was young enough to understand timing and Temple because as a producer as an artist that has helped me a lot and as a beatboxer, I'm a lot of times expected to keep the time in a performance. So like the same way a drummer would be able to keep the timing stuttering really gave me like I always joke like they gave me like a supernatural ability at a really age to understand timing and Temple and pace and a lot of like mechanics and technicals that that pain from my stutter. I'm still dealing with it. I still deal with it. So I'm there's this there's this constant metronome or Tempo in my brain always clicking away and I'm just trying to like ride that way and kind of ride that Melody and ride that timing.

Andrew:

Stevie you mentioned when you're in Middle School it was you I think you use the word imperfection. And you said your dad helped you a lot along the way what was it like just with the classmates where there are any particular classmates that sort of helped you and were you know similar to the way your dad was helping you

Stevie:

you know, I didn't know many people that stuttered growing up or beatboxed. So I was a kind of on my own in that sense and I was a little bit shy and embarrassed. There's no doubt. I mean but my way of kind of countering that was performing and I think when people realize that I beatbox to that gave me that a connection to people and in that age and I remember tapping on the desks and beatboxing and math class while other kids would sing and rap along and that collaboration and that feeling of like laying a beat down and someone wrapping and singing over top of it was just like the most magical feeling ever and it almost like all my fears to sort of like fade away when I was in the middle of a performance and you know other kids are walking.

Up and they're all huddling around and that whole kind of thing so kids started embracing me and encouraging me that they'd always say do that thing you do because like beatboxing. I don't think people I didn't like branded this beatboxing. I would just like bang on the desks and like sing songs and stuff like that. So they always want me to do that. And that was that feeling I'm always like chasing that feeling and that's why I love collaborating and live performing because you know, just there's just something beautiful about collaboration and always just kind of brings me back to that warm fuzzy place where I got started and

And kind of found my voice, you know now they say like a lot of times it takes an artist a long time to find their voice. Well, it's with someone who stutters it takes even longer like not even their voice, but even their sound it took me a while to figure out my saw was always

Kicking around different genres and styles and ideas to see what felt right for me and it just took me longer naturally because I I stuttered and I had I was dealing with that as well. So once I got it, I really just kind of lasered into that and sort of this raspy R&B Blues kind of palette of sorts and really just kind of ran with it and try to make make the most of it.

Maya:

Yeah, that's really awesome that you were able to find something that you could really use your stuttering to your advantage and also find something that Brings you Joy and and happiness

Stevie:

like it took me a long time to find. kind of my footing as far as my career goes, I was really unhappy for a long time and I think A lot of it had to do with just me not being able to be authentic and and myself and it just like a lot of just a lot of hiding. I think who who I am and how I talk was. definitely a big factor in trying and finding my footing career-wise and

Maya:

I I actually want to shift to Andrew but because I I liked your question about how it was like stuttering and the classroom because I know you you've been a teacher for a long time and I'm just curious what year experience has been like as a teacher with students that may have some speech. Differences.

Andrew:

Yeah, you know, I think before your podcast to be honest, I'd never really thought about it. You know, we all have habits and I think one of my habits was for sure just to you know, create an environment as best I could where a student can trust me. And so if I couldn't understand a student I would you know, ask them to repeat themselves or maybe you know, we're gonna pause for a second and take a deep breath together, but that relationship, you know differs from student to students. So what I did to create that environment so, you know that individual could communicate their their voice

Maya:

Yeah over your experience teaching. Did you ever encounter a student who stuttered or had a speech didn't difference. There's there's definitely a student in this most recent year that had a stutter

Andrew:

we had our speech pathologists at the school observed the student and that was one of the things that came up in one of the actions we took and you know with this experience one of the things that came up was, you know, is there a possibility that there was trauma involved the individual when prompted could slow their speech?

And I forget how the speech pathologist really was framing it. But when whatever she was doing that individual that student could change the way they were. communicating and was able to speak more clearly without the stutter and so

Yeah, that just became one of those things that in the education field. Is that something now I should be looking for, you know, the possibility of there's been trauma or is trauma happening for this child in the school outside of the school and both settings. So it was just sort of this. Big moment for me as you know that what do I do with that? And how do I What are the processes who do I need to go to doing to talk to to make sure a student is you know feel safe in the environment of the school and is getting the support they need.

Maya:

Yeah, and I think that's a really tough. Scenario one stuttering is so like nuanced and like each person is has a different Journey when it comes to their stuttering. So like one approach might work for one student, but then it might not work for another student and I know there's so many different ways speech pathologists are taught and so I think there's still a lot more we need to do in order to one prepare our speech pathologist to help with all the nuances around stuttering. one area is just like exposing students to different exposing students to different forms of expression. So like with Stevie like yours was music and beatboxing maybe another one is painting or like all of these different things where it's like you don't net necessarily have to Communicate using your your voice. I think there's so much potential there of true of like really helping students feel a certain way through these different areas of expression and for you Stevie, it was music and beatboxing and really channeling that stuttering Rhythm that you had towards music. And so I'm wondering if you can paint us a picture of how you got it to that point of Transition,

Stevie:

I had some great teachers that really encouraged me and helped me through kind of worked with me really intimately and I just gave me that.

That's special nudge or that feeling that kind of just really helped me and you know, it's a big confidence. It is really like a big confidence game. I think I started in middle school. I think running around the time. I got to high school. I was like sneak into the computer labs and start searching human beatbox and starting to learn that maybe this was an art form. This was a thing that I could take take more serious because this I already know people are asking me to do it. It was something personally I loved and and you know how I didn't know anyone that be Boxster really in the music industry even at that point. So I didn't know it was like a viable thing. Could I even be a performer how would that even work? But just like anything like any other industry music industry. You kind of got to carve your own path and find your own angle. I kind of had that luckily by the time high school came around I had this purpose and this thing that I had this desire to want to learn more music and want to perform and wanted to do it. So yeah, I remember going to human beatbox.com and okay player and there's a guy called Lee Jay. I don't even know if he's still beatbox.

Of any more and he might be from the from the Bay Area actually, but I remember like obsessing over this video. He did he did this like intro where he kind of introd himself every time and so it just gave me a lot of opportunity and I had two older brothers that also you know, they picked on me a bit but they also really encouraged me and supported me and taught me a lot. I have an older brother Billy who I mentioned earlier with with the stuttering he was seven years older than me and he was a music producer and a DJ. So I was already kind of exposed to that I'd go down into the basement and all you know him and all his friends were down there.

You know making songs and recording and I just remember kind of like sitting down there mesmerized by the whole process and thinking why I can't wait till they give me a shot or whatever else and sure enough they did and it was less about my stuttering. I think that like the main thing was when it was less about my stuttering and more about my performance and my art that's when I knew I was on to something and that was we really more personally for me was kind of met the world because I just was trying so hard to get out of that.

I don't see right. I just it was like everything was like clouded by my stuttering and my my confidence and everything. So I just the fact that now I have this thing that I love and I'm passionate about and people are recognizing me for it. Just gave me this extra boost to just want to keep going and keep doing it. You know, someone told me that to plug a guitar or sorry plug a microphone into a guitar Loop pedal. So I would like Luke my voice and that opened up. Oh, that's when everything changed for me because before I could only I was only able to like perform with what I could physically do with my mouth at one time, but now I'm able to like Loop myself and that just and that's still stuttering. It's so met a stutter. Like I'm I can't believe it. I'm like, it's just so weird that I'm looping myself and it's all it's very reminiscent to me stuttering. So it's almost I'm listening back to it like but at a certain point it was just beautiful so I can just lay drums down and then add a guitar on top inside.

I could keep that going but that guitar on top and then a base and and that I could sing over top. So I just saw that it really it was almost like I opened up sort of this like Pandora's box of like now. This is like it almost was the next step for me. Like you knocked I could perform and beatbox to a small group. But now I'm able to like produce music and create songs and sketches and skits. And that just really helped me again just like a further my love for the craft and and my understanding of the whole thing steady.

Andrew:

What are you hope? Are there any feelings or thoughts that you want your audience to or that your music to evoke in your audience?

Stevie:

When they're listening to your dream music in depending on the context of a performance. I often share my stuttering story and then sometimes I don't because when someone will look me up it's once you look up kind of look me up and read my Bible then you quickly realize that that I stutter or sometimes. I'll save it for the end of the performance. I'll do this whole kind of mesmerizing thing and in it's all with my mouth. That's I think that the last thing people assume is that I have a stutter. So I always kind of wait to kind of reveal that but you know, I just want I just like building awareness about it and just normalizing it I guess if that's what I can do. That's I mean more than enough because you know, everyone has varying. Degrees of stuttering and how in how their stutter is it just sort of like this the Spectrum. I learned that a pretty young age that I can't just because this process worked for me. It won't work for other for other folks and and even when I you know, try to teach other kids how to beatbox or other folks that stutter if there's it's it's it may not be as easy for them or they don't have that kind of internal. You know, how high like you mentioned you don't have an ear not everyone has like a musical year of sorts and that may not be the best way for them to come to kind of, you know to kind of work through their stutter but I will say it's really fascinating. Usually what if I do share my story about stuttering at the end of every performance. There's at least a set of a couple parents that come up to me and say they're they're kids are stuttering their kids are dealing with stuttering and you hear a lot of from or kids will come up to me and tell me that they're stuttering or they're that it's so it's just it's just a fascinating you just never really know who's dealing with certain elements. And so it's just been really cool to see how I I can maybe give them a new perspective on it because I learned like I said that you know, it's not for everybody and my process it won't be for everybody. But at least they can just maybe look at it through a new lens.

Maya:

Yeah, and isn't it just the best feeling when you discover a new stutter?

Stevie:

That's either like senior show or like was touched by Something that they heard on about you, you know, like I just feel like that there's no better feeling than that and it reminds me of like I'm so happy I said I told the story. So Andrew how that's your point. I'm like, yeah, I want to tell sometimes there's it's not there's not a great context to like stop if I'm doing like a up B fast sat like to stop and shit of my life story does not like inappropriate contacts. But any chance I can I try to just for that because I feel like it's it's you know, that's sort of my it's my truth. It's it's one way to kind of this normalize and and help push that narrative out.

Maya:

I I share that urge and that wanting to find a lot of opportunities to normalize stuttering I try to do that as much as I can in my day job where I'm exposed to a lot of different types of people and I get invited to speak at conferences and every opportunity I have whether it's meeting a new group of people or speaking to a big you know big Crowd of people. I always try to at least mention that I stutter either at the beginning of my talk or however I can and actually the most recent work conference. I went to I did. Preface my talk and said that I stuttered and someone approached me afterwards and said, oh I stutter too. And so now we talk we email and we're in kind of the same space and it's really nice to have other. people who work in the same kind of issue area as you to also know that they stutter because it just helps you. Keep going and know that you have you have people who understand you which leads me to my next question.

What was the journey like becoming a successful independent artist?

Stevie:

and producer so sort of a high school. I started putting sets together traveling and Performing and I quickly realized that the best way to Showcase my talent and Present myself is through video because like as a beatboxer, it's good to hear me and kind of physically see me. That's really The Sweet Spot when it comes to kind of selling myself so as but as an independent artist, I had to kind of do everything. So I quickly realized that video was like the future not only for me as a performer and as an artist, but really, you know as a marketing tool for for kind of everybody. So I really became really obsessed with video production and video it was because of how it helped me and how I thought it could help small businesses and sort of other things. So I was it and that was always something that I was kind of hyper aware of when I would watch commercials and see the way music was integrated into films. Like there was just something about film that was like to me the ultimate art form. It's like all of these elements coming together and perfect harmony to tell a story. So I always wanted to get involved in film and and video and

I didn't really know how to same with music didn't really know many people in that space and you know at that time consumer cameras were kind of transitioning like a lot of people could get a DSLR and they could start filming and the point and shoot camera. I was trying to figure out a way to get into video space as well outside of my music channel. Like I thought that I could maybe work for an agency. I had a lot of creative ideas. I wanted to really do that. Then I quickly realized that it really know how to do that. But the one thing that That I did know was sound think about this as a person as a beatboxer. My whole performance is me with nothing else pretty much like acapella into a microphone. So hundreds of performances that I've done if the sound isn't right. Then the whole performance sucks really and it's I as a performer have really no control over it and so I just became obsessed with the perfect sound as a performer because everything else could be perfect and I could just be performing into kind of a crappy mic and it's just the salad is awful in the experience is bad and that has happened way more times than I wanted to admit really so I noticed when I started tinkering with video, I realized in the video world. It was the same with video 90% of the time getting the perfect composition and the perfect Framing and everything's perfect. And then they'll take you know, five minutes to think about sound if you're watching something and it flicks up in the visual blurs or kind of tweaks out or whatever. It could be a creative choice and you can still Were roll with it because it's just visually it's kind of part of it. But if the sound tweaks or messes up, you're cool, you're instantly pulled out of it. And so that was something I was just constantly learning and observing and so my way of getting into film was like maybe I can start running sound on Productions and that could be my way of getting in to the film gain and kind of understand what aspects of video production I like and so I started doing that. And then I quickly realized that I loved producing.

Maya:

So how is video? producing different from just the sound producing?

Stevie?

Video producing consists of scheduling budgeting organizing getting everything together to make that production happen where music producing's a bit different. It's more of arranging and composing the actual music and bringing the elements together. But as an independent artist, I mean I had I had to do all that stuff for myself. So I really was pretty organized that was pretty good with a budget. I was you know, pretty disciplined. So I thought like I quickly realized that that would be a good role for me, you know in something. I really wanted to to kind of get into so sound was that way into it. So I I ran sound on you know dozens of now, you know, plenty of Productions and small commercial projects and Web projects until I was able to start filming and producing bigger projects a small group of us were kind of working as a department for a bigger company and nonetheless in 2017. We sort of rolled out into our own production company and all of those years of independently working on my own projects and running sound on. Other Productions really gave me a unique. Perspective and position at the company to kind of help to start growing that kind of small startup production company. You know now we're you know larger company doing sort of national campaigns and national projects and on balancing this world of you know, my video production and music

Maya:

Did covid impact you and your company and if if so how?

Stevie:

I got to say, I'm really glad that I kind of Diversified my portfolio if you will by working in video production because once covid hit of course live performances, we're out the window and that was a really tough two years. I mean, it's even still tough now things are kind of slowly coming back but a lot of people I knew booking agents. I knew were artists I knew or venues that I were a lot of things are the whole landscape is so much different. So as an artist now I'm tasked with kind of rethinking My Artistry and then also rethinking an age-appropriate content because as I'm in my mid 30s now and as I get older trying to do music and art and and content on the personal music side, that's kind of, you know age appropriate and that feels right for me as an artist at this point in my career. It is something I'm sort of working through as well.

Maya:

And what's the production company called?

Stevie:

Woodward original? Yeah. Is that a come on lay down me what he

Andrew:

former Street were my buddies and I used to live and where I met Maya

Stevie:

no way that awesome and no I know, you know Woodward's like one of the main streets in Detroit and said one of the first roads in like in the country, it was really where like Henry Ford rolled out the Model T and like pushed it down. So it's it's a pretty iconic. It's pretty iconic in Detroit and it's it's cool to hear that. You also have a connection to it's pretty iconic and say good I love it.

Andrew:

My before we go. Can we ask Stevie to drop a beat for us?

[Beatboxing Interlude]

Stevie:

But yeah, so yeah. Yeah and you know, you can check out my work at Stevie Soul calm. It's all there shows upcoming gigs past projects. All that good. Well, this was so fun.

Maya:

Thank you both so much for joining me and talking about so much cool stuff stuttering education teaching music all the things Woodward Street. Up. And yeah, I just I'm I just feel so grateful to you both.

This episode of proud stutter was produced and edited by me Maya chupkov. Our music was composed by Augusto Denise and our artwork by Mara Ezekiel and Noah chukov.

If you have an idea or want to be part of a future episode visit us at www.proudstutter.com, and if you like the show, you can leave us a review wherever you are listening to this podcast want to leave us a voicemail check out our show notes for the number to call in more importantly tell your friends to listen to until we meet again. Thanks for listening be proud and be you.