Kind of an ugly but related anecdote about learning piano: I know someone who grew up in Tennessee, and started playing around on his family's piano in his teens. He liked jazz so that's what he tried to teach himself. At one point his grandma said he can't keep playing like n....rs and enrolled him in lessons like parent talks about.
Surprisingly, that's how most jazz musicians learned to play, for the past century: Take the formal lessons that you're supposed to take, then sneak out and learn jazz yourself. White parents were conflicted by the racial biases in music, but even black parents wanted their kids to learn "proper" music as defined by the academe.
My parents had no idea that jazz was my main musical interest.
