Profile – Jaro
From the page: Let's start with the basics: Jaro has always loved music with soul .
“Soul runs through all genres of music. I began to notice this from an early age while listening to my parents dusty records and cassettes hidden away in the attic. At that age i couldn't put my finger on what i was hearing.. but once i turned 30, everything started to make sense about the beats and rhythms i was consistently being drawn to over the years.”
Starting out in his early teens as as a Hip Hop Dj, Jaro helped throw parties in local community halls and rented out sound systems with his friends. Later he would install his own sound system in a popular warehouse location and rent it out to other Djs during the week in order to pay it off. The space was known simply as its physical address: 421 Meredith (a 3,000 square ft location which later became Emerald Cafe).
“It was totally underground for the city, nobody had much money at the time so we went off a shoe-string budget. But sometimes limitations are part of the overall harmony that is achieved when things are being created. We always catered to straight up music lovers, who didn't mind that ââ,¬Ëoerough around the edges' aspect to our warehouse parties and club events. At the time there was a lot of club promotion being catered to a more corporate industry crowd that we saw going on in the city, but thankfully steered clear from that. Some people forget what its all about and start to believe that its all about just making people dance, but my friends and i would always try to stay true to our roots, focusing on the soul and musicality of our chosen beats.” Jaro later went on to host a weekly club residency called Piecemeal at legendary nightclub The Night Gallery with various Dj's + Vj's on rotation for a full-spectrum weekly audio/visual beat feast.
Jaro owned and operated a record store called Phonics at the corner of 17th Avenue and 4th Street in Calgary Alberta for numerous years, until finally selling his shop to a friend in an effort to move cities.
“Phonics was a great spot for aspiring Dj's and promoters to connect together in a casual environment of crate digging. I met a lot of people involved in the entertainment business with all sorts of motives and intentions, so it was easy for me to sift out who was really in it for the right reasons; which peeps i wanted to associate myself with at the time. I was always open to new concepts and ideas coming from fresh young minds regardless of how much experience they had under their belt. You can spend years practicing in your room and by the time you hit the street with your talents you are way ahead of every other guy sporting a conventional Curriculum Vitae with years of experience in the business. Being that way myself, i was always more interested in what others have passionately dedicated their lives to rather then how they had made money from it. People spend a lot of time on things that don't necessarily generate any money and in truth spend money directly out of their pockets in order to witness and experience a little heaven outside of their own head; it's how we all get started in the beginning.”
Back to the future, Jaro has stepped off the beaten path and is beginning to utilize the internet in order to sculpt and define himself as a musical artist and Dj.
“I don't really like the word ââ,¬Ëoeartist', i think its a loaded term and has pretentiousness associated with it. I try to stay youthful in everything i do which might give the impression of art from the perspective of those who are coming of age and immersing themselves in mainstream pop culture. A lot of my compilations and mix trilogies are not very radio-friendly nor do they necessarily fit in with the current underground culture. I guess you could say my beats are catchy in a unconventional way, but you need vision to see and hear that, which is unfortunately a rare thing these days. People get comfortable with generic sounds and conventionality and hence are easily alienated by anything that doesn't fit into a limited musical vein. But that to me is counter-productive because it merely helps to maintain permanence in something that is naturally boundary-dissolving such as music. This aspect of psychedelic (or boundary-dissolving) is currently my main focus because i can now look back into my early years as a Dj and see that it was the only ââ,¬Ëoeconstant' going on, so its time to pay homage to the soul or true creative energy that propelled me into this in the first place. Who knows where it's all going?? Lately i've been dreaming of a futuristic angelic aspect to the psychedelic dimension of sound that is starting to make sense to me. People might read this and think “yeah Jaro, smoke another one” but i believe our culture and society is expanding exponentially (due to a sudden technological growth), and that creative people and their endeavors may start to show signs of a paradigm shift and hence bloom in new unexpected ways
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