Dark Angel: A Conversation with Jashim Rodriguez | Beatriz Golovan del Pino
May 18, 2022
Jashim Rodriguez | image: Cuto Reed
Since the release of Jashim Rodriguez’s first single “Summer 19,” they’ve put out track after track, collaborating with artists such as Juanny Depp, Paul Marmota, Berlin creative house Mother Loading, Eurowitch, Mexican music collective N.A.A.F.I., and photographer Andres Navarro. I met with Jashim over Zoom while they were at their family farm outside Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. A few days later, I ran into them on the dance floor at a Kamixlo show. A week after that, they would fly off to DJ a party in Mexico.
Jashim, or Jas, was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and grew up in the Indigenous and Afro community of el Chocó. Homeschooled until the age of 8, they spent lots of time learning the AutoCad software used by their father to rebuild houses for displaced communities in Colombia. “I'm pretty comfortable with technology, software, figuring out gear and stuff like that. I'm not afraid to experiment and have fun with it,” Jas tells me. On top of creating music, they work as a motion capture technician in Montréal, developing games like Assassin's Creed and the Tony Hawk skateboarding series.
The more I found out about Jashim Rodriguez, the more impressed and confused I grew by the trajectory of their musical career. If you are interested in beginnings and how underground artists infiltrate the industry, check out what this otherworldly, experimental, futuristic reggaetonero has to say.
—Beatriz Golovan del Pino
Beatriz Golovan del Pino
I first became aware of you through the ANGELTIX [queer, LatinX] parties you threw here in Montréal. What was the transition from working as a video game developer to DJing, throwing parties, and creating your own music? Were you always musical?
Jashim Rodriguez
In Colombia, my mother told me that I started whistling before I started speaking. When I was young, I was in the drum section of the Sea Cadets in Colombia, so I guess I was always comfortable with a beat. When my family immigrated to Canada, I was put into alternative education and I listened to a lot of hip-hop, I think because of the story element. I was a refugee and didn't fit into traditional education, so I felt a little isolated and hip-hop was the only music I found that was really talking to me about how hard life is. So when my best friend in Montréal started making electronic music and asked me to rap over his beats, I said OK, and we used autotune and I started singing. It felt natural. I've always been comfortable with musical gear and tech stuff, so when I started singing I also started learning music software and how to make beats.
BGDP
Can you talk a bit about the ANGELITX parties you hosted in Montréal?
JR
My friend and I wanted to do an EP, and I was like, if we do an EP, we have to do shows and get used to the crowd. How am I gonna get hired if I never did anything? So I started throwing and DJing these dark, hybrid perreo parties called ANGELITX in this bar on Saint Denis called Bar La Shop. I was so shy and the first party I threw people were like, “What the fuck,” because I was mixing reggaeton with electronic music: the YTs were mad that I was playing reggaeton and the Latinos were mad that I was playing electronic music.
I was a baby then, and I remember overhearing someone talking to their friends and saying, “eso no se es reggaeton” [“that's not reggaeton”]. I swear, that first party I almost cried, and I was like, what did I do? But then the second party everyone came back, and I was like, okay, so you want to be here. Then when I went to Mexico, the DJs there were doing that style a bit. Mostly reggaeton but they had more alternatives, like mixing techno with cumbia.
BGDP
Do you find Mexico's music scene more experimental than Montréal's?
JR
In Mexico, Latin music is the base, so if they do anything alternative, they add electronic music to it. But here the base is electronic music or pop, so when I added Latino to it, only a few people really fucked with it in the beginning. Before ANGELITX, I only knew of the CRZN (Corazón) parties for the queer Latinx community, and now in Montréal I feel like we all created something really, really dope. Like new young Latinx people can get excited and feel like they actually belong, because I feel like I belong. Now I have gigs in communities where I feel comfortable playing what I play. It's different playing in Latinx spaces because you know how they're gonna dance and react to the songs that we know. Now every time there is one of us playing somewhere, all the community is there, and I'm just so happy about it. It's so important to us, and I'm just like...I love it.
Jashim Rodriguez | image: Cuto Reed
BGDP
You are also a part of a collective called Chimbites?
JR
Chimbites is an artist collective started here in Montréal that is about wealth redistribution with a focus on queer LATAM [all Americas south of the U.S., including Cuba, Brazil, etc.] initiatives, including offering work opportunities to disenfranchised individuals and communities. Chimbites hosts concerts and art events featuring queer LATAM artists with the intent to raise awareness and provide fundraising for artists who don't have the same access to resources. I know that if I was back in Colombia I wouldn't have the same opportunities I have here, so yeah redistribution of wealth is really, really important.
BGDP
Your first EP is titled Cuando aprendí a hablar [When I Learned to Speak]. Other than your use of reverb and vocal layering, the songs sound pretty different from one another. One track could be described as low-fi, another as reggaeton, and another as punk. What brings these songs together?
Jashim Rodriguez, Cuando aprendí a hablar, EP, 2021
JR
It’s when I learned to talk musically. The EP is different tracks I recorded over three years. There's actually a lot of mistakes on it. Some tracks were left out, and the label I worked with left out some of the final mixed versions. The intro for the album isn't on there, for example. The intro is on Arca's mixtape Mutants Volume 3: Seed. Arca was doing a compilation of mixtapes to launch emerging artists and raise money for POC and queer communities, and I was part of it and Montréal artist MimiVirus is on it too. The track “Summer 19” was the first song I wrote and did the production on.
BGDP
You also made a music video for “Summer 19,” right? And you have some other videos for tracks like “Mimosa Booth,” “818,” and “Cadenas.”
JR
Yeah, “Mimosa Booth” is together [on the same video] with “They Used to Call Me Anthony.” That's the first video I directed, and I had a huge crew working on that in Mexico. The first part of the video was made with the creative house from Berlin called Mother Loading, then I used different artists from Mexico I’d met last year when I was invited to play this fashion thing called Portoglam with DJ Rosa Pistola. Two of the people organizing the runway for the show said they wanted to work on a project together, so they styled the second part of the video. The technicians and camera people were all from Mexico.
We filmed it while we were staying at this Narco house. It was crazy because when I arrived in Mexico I didn't know anyone. I got off the plane and I went to a café on the beach and I was like, Okay, I have to find a hotel, y'know? So I sat down at the café and then this waitress came and we kind of fell in love. She’s part of the voguing scene in Mexico, and she introduced me to a lot of artists. In Mexico, everyone knows everyone, like in Montréal.
BGDP
Do you want to talk a bit about some of the other videos you filmed in Mexico, like “818” and “Cadenas”?
JR
“Cadenas” is written by Eurowitch. It's one of the first songs I recorded, but we never put it on the EP. I was in Mexico and filming “818” with people like DJ Cachorra, Mi$Sil, and SugarBaby, and I was playing through tracks on my computer and my friend really liked it. She works at an art gallery called Ladron, and she said we have to film “Cadenas” at the gallery. The gallery shows graffiti and alternative art from Mexico. A week later we were filming the video and some designers from New York flew to Mexico to give us clothing for it, and we shot after an art opening. Everyone was just so down for it.
BGDP
I think what surprises me the most about you is not just how much you collaborate but how quickly you seem to make connections wherever you go. It's not like you are paying all these people to make videos with you, right?
JR
The cameras and people that edit and do tech stuff I always pay, but, yeah, for now it's mainly artists and friends who are down to help me in these projects, and I'm still a baby. In Mexico, we were at this house with Lao [founder of N.A.A.F.I.], and this one girl was taking me around and presenting me to everyone there. I hung out with Tomasa del Real for a week and Mi$$il, who plays with Tomasa and La Zowi, and people like that. I'm really lucky. In Mexico and here, I’m getting opportunities to work with so many dope artists. Some of them I listened to before I ever started making music. It just makes me so confident that I should keep making music. In the beginning, I was actually supposed to go to Mexico for only two weeks, but then I made friends and stayed for three months.
BGDP
On Cuando aprendí a hablar, there’s a track called “They Used to Call Me Anthony.” The lyrics stood out to me from the other tracks because they sound dark. I was wondering if there was a story there?
JR
It's a huge story. I had to leave Mexico because I had a brain stroke, and I got scared because where I was staying there weren't many hospitals. This was in summer 2020, and when I got back to Montréal, I got an extra job at my friend's queer porn studio managing OnlyFans accounts for performers. The day I did the interview for the job, it turned out the guy giving me the interview had Covid, but he didn't know it. So I got Covid and got sick. This was in the beginning when people were really scared and were talking about how you could maybe have covid for months. I was one of the first people in our Latinx community to catch Covid, and after I quarantined only a few friends came to see me, even outdoors. People were afraid y'know?
I was living at this apartment on the fourteenth floor, and I was super lonely looking at people walking below and imagining what it would be like if I was sick permanently or imagining what if I had to wear these giant masks that singled me out for having Covid. So this song came from imagining all that and feeling isolated. In the song, I say, “Camino por la calle y me da curiosidad, por que la gente anda sin hablar, caminan por las calles me miran y no quieren hablar,” which is basically about walking the streets and wondering why people are walking without speaking and why they are staring at me and not wanting to talk to me. I was imagining trying to protect myself but also existing from afar, apart from everyone else. Sometimes, also because of how I dress, people stare at me, especially in the countryside. So I guess the song is also about rejection. I say, “que miran de ellos me matan al pasar,” and it's about how people don't realize their stares also kill me. Yeah, that's a sad song. I love that song.
Jashim Rodgriguez | image: Cuto Reed
BGDP
Those lyrics stood out. The track right after that one, the last one on the EP, “Friendly Ghosts/All in My Head,” surprised me because it's like a punk song.
JR
Yeah, right? I was in love with this person, and she ghosted me twice, so I decided to write her a song. I was at my friend Philippe's place, and they’re really punk, so when we were recording at their house I just sang, “I met a friendly ghost last night and I regret it,” and my friend asked me to try to scream like I was a little child. I did two takes and it turned out.
BGDP
On some tracks, like “Cadenas” and “Mimosa Booth,” there are also high pitched, child-like voices. Is that you?
JR
Yo, that's all me! I can sound like a baby. I can go really high. Like really, really high. Now I'm doing vocal training because I have my first live show this summer. For my next project, Rainbow Warriors, I'm working with Universal for distribution and marketing, and I have two more tracks left that I have to write and then record it all. For this next project, I'm definitely still going to use grain effects, robotic voices, and work on developing those higher voices.
BGDP
What's Rainbow Warriors going to sound like? Will you still be mixing Spanish, French, and English? Is it going to be more reggaeton, pop, punk or what?
JR
I'm still going to mix those three languages. I think I always will because I use all three in my everyday life. This next project is going to be mainly reggaeton, pure reggaeton and alternative reggaeton, but not pop or rock. I'm also doing some drill-reggaeton songs and some really, really sad songs. I want to add more traditional Colombian music like cumbia and vallenato, but it's complicated because they usually have a band playing along with the singer. I don't really have a traditional music education, so if I want to do it properly I have to go back to Colombia and spend a lot of time there. For Rainbow Warriors, I'm going to release two singles this summer and the full album in September. The album cover is made by this dope artist from Mexico Andres Navarro who did the photos of Bad Bunny for the Billboard Awards.
BGDP
Does it take you a long time to create a track? Obviously not all recorded and mixed, but from making the beat and writing the lyrics and all that, could you create a track in a day?
JR
I can create a track sometimes in thirty minutes. On my album right now it's half me and half my friends that are making the beats. If Juanny Depp sends me a beat, I just take out my mic and mumble on it. Sometimes I have lyrics prepared, but usually I mumble and murmur over the beat, then I close my eyes and the words come out of that mumbling. It's crazy because after I had my brain stroke I recorded a lot of beats. I was so out of it in that period, and I was at the beach composing music on my computer because that's all I could do. Many of the beats I have saved from that time are really tropical.
BGDP
So when I first heard of you, you were Baby Yas, then Prince J, Jashim, now I'm starting to see some dark-angel imagery on your social media. Is this another artist moniker coming out?
JR
The dark angel is starting to come out. I think I started to think of dark angels because of my friend Juan, y'know, my best friend [RIP]. The dark angel is like his spiritual force. It's very strong. Juan was like my sibling. Our families both came from Colombia and we were best friends here in Quebec. When he passed away a couple of years ago, it was the first time I had death so close to me since I was very little. It was in 2020, when I had the brain stroke and caught Covid and all that, so because of that I started going into my dark side, reading about demons and the demons we carry. So if you're dark, you can still be a type of angel, like the yin and yang. I'm trying to separate wrongs from rights and embrace that I have a lot of darkness.
BGDP
You work as a motion capture technician and I saw that you are also developing a project with Concordia University. Can you talk a bit about this side of your life and whether you have plans to mix animation with your music?
JR
I was asked by Concordia's Center for Oral History and Digital Storytelling to make a video game that's part of their Ethical Encounters Symposium. I'm collaborating with four other artists to raise awareness about the negative effects that Canadian metal mining corporations have had in Antioquia, Colombia. It's a big ongoing project and as a Colombian-Canadian artist it is very meaningful for me to be able to use my technical skills in video game design to draw attention to this issue.
I'm busy right now, but I would eventually like to mix VR and CGI visuals to make my music more immersive. For example, I really admire what Zora and Alan do with Fractal Fantasy. To me, they are such an inspiration—shout out to Zora if she ever wants to produce one of my tracks! My dream-dream would be to create holograms and VR technology that could be used in therapy. When I was in Colombia, my dad and I used to practice different forms of therapy with the communities there, stuff like meditation and astral projection. Music is therapeutic too, and for now I just want to keep experimenting with it, learning and putting weird sounds together in a comfortable way.
Jashim Rodriguez is a nonbinary Colombian multidisciplinary artist born in Bogotá and based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada. Co-creator of the ANGELITX dance parties and a prolific musical collaborator, they are also a video game programmer and innovator. Their debut EP, Cuando aprendí a hablar, was released in 2021, and their first full-length album, Rainbow Warriors, will by released in September 2022 by Universal Studios Canada.
Beatriz Golovan del Pino is a Russian-Cuban-Ukrainian multidisciplinary artist based in Tiohti:áke/Montréal, Canada. Using writing and performance art, her work explores queer and migrant experiences of dislocation, creating hybrid communities, and navigating intermediary space. She is currently completing her Master's degree in Creative Writing at Concordia University and is the recipient of the Steinberg Graduate Scholarship.
The photographs above appear courtesy of Cuto Reed. To Cuto, grateful acknowledgment.
