Kia Walker places her blue violin underneath her chin. She smiles, as she so often does, says a sentence or two, partially in song form, as she often does, and then straightens up to begin. Her soft ringlet curls fall just slightly onto her forehead as she looks down at the instrument. She moves her slender fingers over the string at the neck of the violin while the other hand glides the bow across the strings. In a flash, the bow is moving quickly over the strings, stirring up white resin dust on the strings, neck and bridge of her instrument. Her fingers slide from string to string. They glide in unison, almost dance-like. This instrument has become natural to her. It is second nature.

In Walker’s studio, piles of thin books line the walls and shelves. They range from beginning music books to more difficult levels, some are duplicates — meant for students. There are pieces of artwork around, all of which revolve around music. In each window sill, signs with quotes about music or God sit. The studio is quaint and bright with natural light pouring in. Just outside, through the window is the bustle of downtown Fayetteville. Walker continues to play, drowning out the faint noise of the city that can be heard just outside. She is in her own world now.

Walker puts down her instrument and rearranges herself. Her makeup is always done and she can usually be seen wearing long, dangly, bright earrings. She loves her jewelry. She loves people. She loves teaching. And most of all, she loves music.

In various corners of the room, instruments are displayed. At the entrance is a cello, held by its stand, and in the room next to it is a piano and a guitar. These are not for show. Walker plays all of these instruments and uses them at The Blue Violin Music Education Center — her music studio where she gives lessons for piano, violin, viola, cello, guitar and voice. Well, almost all of them are played. In the corner of the entire studio stands bright red conga drums.

“I don’t play the drums. I bought those drums because they are pretty,” Walker laughs. “I just thought it would be a nice little splash of color.”
Walker began her life with music singing as a 7-year-old. Around age 10, she started playing the violin when Cumberland County came to her school to introduce orchestra. She remembers even at those young ages, being in love with music. She tried her hand at writing songs, including one she gave to her orchestra teacher.

“I thought she was going to be all impressed. But she said, ‘Kia, your song doesn’t have any rests in it,’” Walker laughs again and then shakes her head. “She said, ‘your song has to breathe.’”

And so did Walker. For about 18 years, Walker put the violin down. In high school, she took piano lessons that she paid for herself. She remembers driving herself to her piano teacher’s home. Her mom, a single parent, was busy working, taking care of Walker and her younger sister.

“I just wanted music that badly,” she said.

Eventually, Walker went off to UNC-Chapel Hill to study psychology. But music still was her first passion. During college, she got lots of offers for credit cards. They would come in the mail and she would look them over. She decided to get her first credit card and make her first big purchase.

“I bought my first piano. I put my piano on my first credit card,” she said.

The piano that she bought still sits in her studio and she uses it to this day to help teach her students. Occasionally she’ll sit down to play it for herself.
Walker returned to Fayetteville to finish out her last years of college at Fayetteville State University. She eventually met her husband, Skip, at his recording studio in town. She would come into the studio to sing and record songs — both that he wrote and that she did.

“I started noticing that I was falling in love with him. After our recording session, we’d end our sessions at the Waffle House. I would get the scrambled eggs with cheese,” Walker sings the word scrambled eggs with cheese.

Walker continued on to take a job doing special education at an elementary school for Cumberland County Schools. At the end of each day, Walker would return home exhausted.

“I noticed I was too tired after teaching all day … I was too tired to practice. I thought maybe if I began doing music as my job I could practice too. I wanted to be fresh enough to practice. I wanted to play the piano or the violin.”

Walker looked outside the window for a moment and smiled. This portion of her life is where she picked the violin back up. She picked up other instruments too. She began to combine her first passion with one of her other passions.

She transferred into teaching music. This is where her life made sense to her. On the side she learned to play the organ and played for a church in Massey Hill. This is a job she still holds to this day. This position taught her some great life lessons that she carried into her later projects.

“I was not that good at it. I was learning that you don’t start being good at it until you practice it for a while and give yourself the time to get good at it. To this day, I have that job. Some songs I smoke them. Some songs I don't,” Walker laughs a loud, infectious laugh and shakes her head.

Walker went on to get a Master's in Divinity Church Music from Campbell University Divinity School. For Walker, faith is very important. She said she has been a Christian for a very “long, long time.”

“As I have become older, seen life and experienced things, my faith has become much stronger. Sometimes I’ll just sing to the Lord.” Walker sings a little bit in a normal sentence. Her life is part musical.

This year Walker began an online TV show for her music that she named “Music Life.” She says she wants to show the parallels between music and life and life and music. For her, there’s no separation of the two.

“There are life lessons that come from playing an instrument. I was really slow at playing the cello because it’s a big instrument. There’s a parallel there. Sometimes in life we don’t want to face the big problems that we have in our life, we want to play the small instruments. We want to play things that are more familiar to us. We don’t want to try new things.”
Walker stops for a moment. She looks around her room, the place where she learned so many lessons in life.

“Music Life is highlighting those areas in life where we learn to … there’s a saying, be patient everything is difficult before it is easy. Playing cello is difficult for me. Playing the violin was difficult for me at one time. It’s easy for me now.”

Walker continues to the piano and plays a song, on the same piano she bought with her first credit card in college. Her head bobs as she moves through the music. Rain began to patter outside but nothing distracts her from the song at hand. She trips over a part and starts over. This correlates perfectly to the first episode in her show. Walker is having each interviewee pick a focus word for the session. The first one is practice.

“If you mess up, you go back to the beginning and start again. Same thing with life. You aren’t going to get it all right the first time but if you keep perfecting what you do, and perfecting who you are, and excellence is your goal … you will get there.” Walker smiles and then packs up her violin.