Elina is a talented singer-songwriter out of Stockholm, Sweden. Not too long ago, she released her impressive debut single, entitled, “Wild Enough”. Wild Enough is a ballad about a woman who’s having self-doubts. She questions herself and wonders if she’s wild or good enough for her significant other. The dialogue is one-sided. So listeners never get to hear the man’s side of the story. But from the woman’s point of view, she makes it seem that he wants more than what she’s offering. Subsequently, she hints at dancing on tables and talking dirty in the bedroom but realizes she can’t be something that she’s never been. Even though she knows he wants more, that doesn’t stop her from wanting to prove that she is good enough. According to guitarist Eddie Van Halen, the instrumental dates back to 1983, “before I wrote “Jump” – it didn’t come out until about ’92, ’93 or something like that, cause nobody wanted anything to do with it.”[1] An early version of the melody appears in the 1984 movie The Wild Life which was scored by Eddie. Hagar has said that he was writing the lyrics to this song at the studio very late one night, and he heard Eddie in an adjacent room working on a piano melody. Hagar said he suddenly realized that “we were writing the same song,” so he walked into the room and began singing his words over Eddie’s music.

Hi, my name is Ryan Van Tuyl, and since 2004 I’ve helped thousands of kids learn piano, singing, guitar, bass, drums, and songwriting in schools all over the world. The programs I’ve created teach kids how to achieve their musical dreams and become better, hardworking individuals through learning to play and perform rock, pop, hip-hop, blues, metal, and jazz music. Graduates of my programs have attended prestigious music colleges and universities. However, these programs have only been able to exist in middle-to-upper-class communities, where parents can afford to fund music education for their children directly.

While all of this has been a fantastic experience, it has left out kids who attend schools in underprivileged, more diverse communities without funding for modern music education. Schools and districts in these areas lack funding for the equipment, teachers, curriculum, and support necessary to facilitate rock-band-style programs like the ones I’ve created.

My mission was to tackle this head-on and bring these exceptional programs to students in economically challenged areas, so I sold my music schools and am launching The Van Tuyl Music Foundation to forever change music education. Our foundation will directly provide the funding for the equipment, instruction, curriculum, and support necessary to facilitate these programs.