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Grammy-nominated artist makes music with vegetables in video gone viral

Remember when you were a kid and your mother always told you not to play with your food? Apparently that never quite sunk in for Jonathan Dagan.

In the video posted on YouTube, the 31-year-old musician and producer from Brooklyn, New York, who also goes by the stage name J. Viewz, heads to the grocery store, picks up a variety of fruits and vegetables and chops them up. Then, he uses them to cook up a rendition of Massive Attack’s 1998 song “Teardrop.”

“When I did it, I didn’t really have any thought behind it,” Dagan tells the Toronto Star. “It seemed like a fun thing to try out.”

In the video, a carrot is made into a high hat, grapes chime and eggplants thump like a bass drum.

So how does it work? Dagan hooked up the veggies to his MaKey MaKey circuit board, which allows you to hook anything up to a computer keyboard.

“When I touch the grapes, the signal goes directly to the computer through the MaKey MaKey, which is plugged into the computer through the USB,” Dagan explains. “This sends a signal to the computer, where I assigned this specific circuit of the grapes to a specific sound in the computer.”

“I'm really intrigued by the combination of acoustic and electronic instruments," Dagan tells Mashable. "I started to be obsessed with the 'organic' element in electronic music, sound wise. From there, involving real organic 'buttons' made some funny sense.”

Since the video was uploaded on Feb. 16, it’s already been viewed more than 400,000 times.

And his unique talent hasn’t just been noticed by people online. Dagan, who was nominated for a Grammy for best recording package in 2011, was also approached by America’s Got Talent.

“The day after I posted it, I got an email from them asking if I was interested doing the vegetable thing on the show,” he says. “I said thank you so much, but I’m afraid not.”

After dropping his beets, Dagan took his eggplant and made baba ghanoush. He later received a message from his mom on the J.Viewz Facebook page suggesting, “Why don’t you put aluminum foil around the eggplant when you roast it?”

Thanks, Mom.