Jairus Sharif is an experimental jazz musician from Calgary. He started in music as a hiphop turntablist and DJ and later played in garage rock and blues bands before discovering avantgarde jazz through samples on some of his favourite early hiphop records. After being exposed to the music of South African saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, he bought an alto saxophone and began to teach himself the instrument. He released the »Q4DB« (Quest 4 Deep Breath) series of EPs, followed up with the EP »Mega Optics« in 2021, before releasing his full-length debut »Water & Tools« in 2022. His new album »Basis Of Unity« is a raw and noisy DIY spiritual jazz album in an early 1990s hiphop production.
skug: Can you start by telling me what »Basis Of Unity« is about? What was your initial motivation to make this record?
Jarius Sharif: I began making recordings for »Basis Of Unity« during a time of seemingly inconsolable grief. I wanted to make music that I felt would resonate with the audience that enjoyed my previous album, but approaching from that perspective proved fruitless and disheartening. I started recording music as a form of relief through meditation, with improvisation sessions sometimes lasting hours. Through that process, the recordings heard on »Basis Of Unity« began to take shape. Part of my practice involved listening to unmixed tracks within days of their recording, and in that space, I began to notice real relief that I had not yet experienced. I was listening to myself search, and it was easier to meet the searcher with new findings.
If I would call your music »spiritual jazz in a 1990s hiphop production«, would that make sense to you?
Yeah, I can get with that recipe, maybe throw in a little skateboarding and some self-determined DIY ethics and that’s a good stew for me. You were the first person to ever request an interview when I started this journey, and like I said back then; I like to do what I want to do, and this project has been an excuse to do my best and take care of the people I love, which now includes me.
You described the sound of your record as raw and noisy.
While creating the new pathways in my mind that led to where the summonings were recorded, I of course needed to create a sound that reflected the imagined environments. I found those areas full of static, unstable, and lacking in what I thought of as clear renderings. But luckily, I’m enthusiastic about so-called distortion, noise, blur, etc. and began to find energy in the exploration of signal-to-noise ratios and what true clarity of signal means to me. Accuracy, as I had previously understood it, is of little concern to me, and I’ve found that clarity in spirit has a high level of distortion as one of its most desirable traits.
On »We Be« you work together with Malcolm Mooney from Can.
Malcolm was curated to do a performance in our hometown by our mutual friend Matt from Astral Swans, who also asked me to perform at the same event. I opened, so Malcolm watched the performance and invited me to sit in for his. Of course, I said yes, and since then, he’s been someone I’m happy to call a friend. I was fortunate to perform in his band, the 11th Planet, in 2024.
Why do you still prefer working mainly solo?
A great man once told me, »You gotta study ya self too.« I do enjoy working with others, but this project is still about personal allowance and the lessons are still unfolding as a solitary practice. Being self-taught, it’s very interesting for me to explore creativity in any way I see it, at any given time, for any reason, for any length of time etc. So being able to do the work on my own is beneficial to the growth of my singular approach.
Player: https://jairussharif.bandcamp.com/album/basis-of-unity
