Tay Zonday

Born Adam Nyerere Bahner, Tay Zonday is a graduate student in American Studies at the University of Minnesota. While growing up, his parents discouraged him from listening to popular music, giving him piano and voice training directly; his mother's experience as a stage kid and Juilliard student shaped her belief that the life of an arts professional led only to struggle and poverty. Later, after randomly collecting MP3s through Napster and other downloading services, he found his only interest in music was creative, not as a consumer; he continues to ignore popular music and insists he only listens to his own music now. Bahner chose his stage name at random, after querying Google and getting no response (four months later the search term returned 700,000 web pages referencing "Tay Zonday"). On April 22, 2007, Zonday uploaded a video for his song "Chocolate Rain" to YouTube.com, making the lyrics and melody available to users through a Creative Commons license. The video, cheaply made in his living room, shows the charismatic Zonday playing an electric piano and, paced by an off-camera drum machine, repetitively singing a catchy melody, with slight variations in tone and stance, for almost five minutes. The Creative Commons license allowed any YouTube user the rights to use the material for his or her own productions. At the time, Zonday felt he was uploading an unfinished work, and wanted feedback from the online community about his creative effort. For first two months that the video was available, it quietly attracted an average viewership; only when Russ Houghton of U.K.'s SKY-TV uploaded his version -- "Chocolate Rain" (ORIGINAL SPOOF) -- did the audience seriously begin to grow. Houghton's rewrite of the song, adding humorous topical (read: anti-George Bush)...