Harvard student Amin Toofani went ridiculously viral when he dropped a mind-bending acoustic guitar performance at the university. You wouldn’t think one man with a guitar would cause such a commotion, but Toofani’s original piece “Gratitude” did just that, along with the swag he performed it with. The young fella trolled the audience at first by haltingly playing his guitar, before turning the guitar the right way around and then wowing with a gorgeous and buttery-smooth flamenco performance.
Toofani certainly put his 10,000 hours in on the instrument, as he then treated the audience to a masterful performance that blended classical guitar, folk music, and even some comedy thrown in. Beyond his six-string skills, Toofani is so confident that he just had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand. He soon had the crowd clapping along and cheering at whatever wacky things he came out with, like combing his hair in the middle of the performance.
Toofani’s show-stopping guitar recital was originally uploaded on YouTube on February 18, 2016, where it gained 31 million views. This kind of reach for a previously undiscovered musician is just insane and really goes to show how unique and impressive his approach to the instrument and performance is. Toofani’s performance became somewhat of a phenomenon online, inspiring YouTube covers, analysis videos, and coverage from around the world.
Beyond appreciating Toofani’s skills, commenters added some cheeky observations such as “This guy is the cool version of us who only exists in our mind” and “The guitar itself didn’t know it could be played like this.” Toofani’s original song “Gratitude” has become his signature piece, and he also wowed the audience with the song after his speech at TEDx San Francisco. The uploader, with a flair for the dramatic, declared Toofani in the video title to be the “world’s fastest guitarist.”
Now, you might think that after becoming such a viral phenomenon, Toofani would lean into his music career and become a hit original artist. However, the talented musician instead went down a very different path in life. Nowadays, Toofani is the CEO of T Labs and the Chair for Finance & Economics at the NASA-affiliated Singularity University. Toofani’s website is largely devoted to his work in tech, although he did also comment on his surprise YouTube fame. On the site, Toofani wryly noted that “Last time I checked, Google Search ranked me as the world’s best guitar player. This is incredibly inaccurate and bemusing. But it has also made me a ton of new friends from around the world, for which I’m grateful.”
If you would like to hear more from this talented guitarist, please visit his [website] for more incredible music.