Jairus Sharif’s Musical Meta-Reality & Some Sounds That Impacted the Way I Move

Introduction and Interview by Jesse Locke

Jairus Sharif. Photo Credit: Samantha Thompson.

Jairus Sharif goes deep. Digging through the most obscure pockets of the blues, dusty sample-filled hip-hop, and revolutionary free-jazz, he has developed a signature approach to improvised music on his debut album, Water & Tools. For his upcoming Soundwalk on Sunday, December 18th, presented by New Works Calgary, the alto saxophonist will bring listeners to his home in the South East neighbourhood of Albert Park / Radisson Heights, guiding them through the contrasting sonic environments of his personal stomping grounds. 

Beginning at the Barlow / Max Bell train station, where platform ads haven’t been updated since 2008, Sharif will provide the first of several stark transitions by exiting onto the hill overlooking Deerfoot Trail. “It feels like you just came out of an urban cave and can hear the buzzing of the city, even though you can’t see what’s making any sound,” he explains. Every July, Max Bell Arena is used by Calgary’s Chasing Summer festival as a venue for big name DJs and visiting artists, but in colder months its connecting train station remains a time capsule disguised as a commuter space and a transitory shelter from the elements. “I noticed a lot of the Soundwalks were based on rivers and nature, but I didn’t really grow up around that,” says Sharif. “I was more of a concrete guy, so it felt like a good addition to do something more urban.”

From here, Sharif’s Soundwalk will continue through the field where he formerly attended all-ages shows in the Radisson Skate Shack, which has now been augmented with a community garden and several playgrounds surrounded by houses. “I want to walk through the neighbourhood so people can see it’s a working class area on the come up,” he says. “There’s a lot of pride of ownership from African and Filipino families and first time buyers. It’s important because it’s an urban festival space that used to be known as a derelict area. Now people are starting their lives there with three-year-olds running around outside.”

In advance of his Soundwalk, Sharif has prepared a guide to his musical meta-reality, stepping through 10 artists, songs, and albums that have inspired his creative journey.

Part 1: Just Livin’

1. Luniz - “I Got 5 On It” (DJ Aphrodite Remix)

I lived under DJ Rob Faust in my bedroom growing up. He’a classic breaks DJ and would play Amen Break after Amen Break, so I would fall asleep to that. He let me come up once or twice to screw around on the turntables. Rob tried to show me the finer points of mixing, but I was nine and I just wanted to scratch. Through that, I somehow got onto this track by Aphrodite. It’s a classic turntablist track and I remember it hitting me so hard. I think Rob gave it to me on a tape, but I might have downloaded it from Napster of Kazaa. 

That track sent me off on this beatboxing mission that’s still part of my life today. It was in the era of The Matrix and it made me feel like I was in a fast moving digital underground. I loved the internet, which is a weird statement to make, but the wave had just come. That’s the first track I can remember changing the way I moved. I thought a lot about it and felt very into it. I still beatbox when I walk, even if it’s really quiet. I just do it alone, chopping up every step and heartbeat, and this was the first beat that I mimicked. Listening to it again when I started making this list, I can still remember the breakdown and how it feels to beatbox to it.

2. DMX - …And Then There Was X

I remember my mom taking me to A&B Sound and telling me there was a new Backstreet Boys CD. I ended up buying DMX’s album …And Then There Was X instead. The people at the store told me I had to get my mom because there was definitely a parental guidance sticker [laughs]. 

There’s a track on there called “Here We Go Again” that has this totally meta-reality intro. A young kid approaches DMX and tells him he wants to be hard-headed, and DMX tells him he has a lot of lessons to learn. Then the whole song is DMX talking about growing up, being in foster care, and having dogs as his friends. He paints this picture of being alone and sleeping outside downtown. Living in Victoria Park, I could just feel that. I saw people sleeping downtown with their dogs all the time. It was the first large-scale connection I had to where I was living. Plus DMX sounded super cool and the beats sounded amazing at that time. I was a little 12-year-old, but now I knew about this guy and his life. That made a huge impact on me.

 3. Quasimoto - The Unseen

Then came the streetball era. There was a group from Vancouver called The Notic who were responsible for graphing all the moves in that NBA Street game that came out. In their mixtape video, which was Canada’s answer to the AND1 mixtapes, they had a song by Quasimoto called “Low Class Conspiracy” from his album The Unseen. I don’t really have memories like this, but hearing it is one that I can rewind for life. I didn’t know what was going on. It was Madlib in around 1999 or 2000 fucking up the MPC, being a mystic with the tool. When I listen to that album and that track now, I can still feel it in the same way.  

The meta-reality of that album is two different people from two different walks of life. I knew it was all Madlib, but that made a big impact on me. In this song, he takes the break and rewinds it over and over again at the start, and that’s what builds the whole beat. Looking back at it now with a bit more knowledge about music, it’s so advanced. It’s restructurism, like some Anthony Braxton shit.

Attached to that song on the same album was the song “Come On Feet.” It samples Melvin Van Peebles, but it’s not slick, and kind of self-deprecating. I didn’t know anything like this existed at the time. I was coming in green. I still feel like a tiny percentage of the way I move as a human is because of walking around listening to those two songs over and over again in the headphone era. What a revelation. 

Part 2: Fameless

 4. Wu-Tang Clan’s first six albums

I lived a block away from Fameless, which was this hip-hop store with breakdancing stuff and graffiti spray cans. It was on 1st Street by Cherry Lounge, and I was in Vic Park just around the corner from there. My style was walking to The Source and hanging out there, then walking to Fameless and hanging out there, just to be around that energy. I started breakdancing at the park in Mount Royal Village at ages 8, 9, 10. Something was telling me this was the culture for me. I loved turntables and watching the DJs at Fameless. I was a little cute kid so I had access to all this shit. They let me spin around in the middle of the circle and put my hands on the records. I remember them being pretty nice about it.

Through Fameless came the Wu-Tang Clan. The people there were happy to just go “You like that? You need to hear this.” It was the first Wu-Tang album, and then the first five solo albums. Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… and Cappadonna’s The Pillage were huge for me, but I didn’t know the subculture. I would go to Fameless, pick stuff up, and then I was a kid again. It wasn’t like I was a hip-hop kid necessarily. I was just kind of in it, and they were really open.

5. KMD - Mr. Hood

Fameless is also where I bought KMD’s Mr. Hood and MF DOOM’s Operation: Doomsday around the year 2002. The first album was pre MF DOOM and the other one was his first or second solo record. That KMD album is all meta-reality. They’re using vocal samples from ‘learn to speak english’ records to create a story. It’s a super intense story, but it’s fun to follow. It was their rebuttal to unenlightened thinking. It was them going “here’s some ignorance, and here’s us battling it.” It was all recorded in their neighbourhood in places like the barbershop. 

6. J Dilla - MPC3000 CDs

Part 3: The Hound Show & Norton Records Informed One Man Band

7. Joe Hill Louis - The One Man Band

The biggest thing at this time for me was going back through all of the music that had been sampled on these beats that we’ve all come to know and love. I had the internet and was pretty good at getting on IRC to find this shit, or dirty old Usenet links like ‘50 compilations of psychedelic music that you need to hear.’ That was the best, man! I wish I had an old bookmarks folder that I could look through again now.

Once I discovered that music, it led me to Norton Records and Crypt Records, who were reissuing all of that stuff. One of the biggest things for me in that era was The Hound Show on WFMU. The Hound was an underground a-lister in New York’s rock scene in the early ’80s all the way into the ’90s. He was a writer and adviser putting compilations together with Norton and stuff like that. 

That’s when I started working warehouse jobs and convinced my boss to let me be a one headphone in guy. I seriously listened to 350 three-hour long episodes of The Hound Show. He truly respected shit that people overlooked. The really actual cool shit was the most underground rock & roll, the dirtiest of the blues, the most stripped down. The stuff where you could easily point out the flaws but miss the energy. I listened to that almost exclusively, and barely even listened to hip-hop. It was all trash rock, early R&B, and garage from ’62 on.

I got a guitar and was copying some stuff I was listening to, and my aunt told me I was playing the Bo Diddley beat. That let me understand the James Brown change, the one, and even the energy of Little Rchard flipping gospel. Who knows what kinds of drugs were flowing at that time – lots of pharmaceutical happy pills. My aunt got me onto The Cramps, and I sample hunted them to find all of this ’50s and ’60s stuff like Joe Hill Louis. It was all about the music, not the social standing. It was about energy, not overthinking as much, and I found that super freeing. 

8. Billy Childish & Dan Melchior - Devil in the Flesh

I started playing as a one-man band and was digging through the blues. One connection that I made at that time was Billy Childish. There’s so much of his stuff, but it was mostly post-Milkshakes, more in the half track era. Billy Childish & Dan Melchior’s Devil in the Flesh was super stripped down, and I loved it. 

 As much as I like to put race aside and not make that a part of my draw, it all goes back to things like watching videos on Rap City. It’s not just the colour of the people, but the colour of their surroundings. The downtown, the rust, the people on the streets. That just felt familiar to me. Through The Hound and Billy Childish, I found people who really, really cherished the music. I remember a quote from Billy Childish where he said he only listens to music by dead people and reads books by dead Russians. There’s a certain refreshing thing about saying “I like what I like.” I wasn’t around in the ’80s when these guys were doing their thing, but what they liked at that time seemed to me to not be popular. 

 I love it when Black music isn’t idolised or fetishized, just loved. That’s how it felt at Fameless, with breakdancing, and with skateboarding. There weren’t many Black people in our age group, especially doing random stuff and running around the streets. I’m not saying there were zero, but it was nice to feel that connection from my perspective. These people really loved this stuff, and they wanted to relate to you that they loved it, so I picked up on that super quick. Even hearing Lemmy talk about Little Richard felt super genuine, when everything else felt like marketing. I cherished the energy. 

Part 4: Post-Whatever…

9. Gary Bartz NTU Troop - Harlem Bush Music

My dad Jay Marshall died and I met a bunch of his friends including Evan Van Reekum. Evan was the guy who really helped me make sense of that, because they were friends. Evan didn’t drink and neither did my dad, but they both liked punk so they would jam – Jay on upright bass and Evan on Telecaster. 

Evan gave me a chance to DJ with him because he had a residency at the Bourbon Room. It was all soul, mostly 45s, for five hours. I would go help him out. I already knew my way around the turntable, but not DJing and spinning for people. He was doing his life transition and didn’t really want to DJ in that place anymore, so I ended up slowly taking it over from him. That set off the next period of time for me until COVID, basically.

I spent a lot of time digging through soul comps. It was 10 hours per week DJing in the club, and probably the same amount of time outside of the club honing in and listening. I raided Recordland, found all the cheap boogie stuff, and just poured over it. I found this compilation series called Pulp Fusion, and on there was this track by the Gary Bartz NTU Troop called “Celestial Blues.” That was the first time I perceived somebody playing the saxophone with no consideration for the audience. At the time I had never been exposed to that kind of thing outside of short snippets on samples. Gary Bartz was just wailing from deep down. I used to love playing that in the Bourbon Room and seeing how people reacted. Some people would be like “oh shit” and be super into it, and others would struggle through their conversation. 

That song really triggered something in me. I got that compilation, brought it home, and played it for me and my partner. There are lyrics in it where he sings “we must get closer to the essence of life,” then says how you do that, and basically goes “once you see it, there’s no turning back.” I found such a connection to those words and the way they were sung. It was the blues with some thinking and meditation behind it. Some calm. The blues without so much strain. After listening to that track probably 1,000 times, I got an alto saxophone. 

10. Angel Bat Dawid - The Oracle

It’s all free-jazz after that: Joe McPhee’s Nation Time, William Hooker’s ...Is Eternal Life, Steve Reid’s Rhymatism. Hearing that stuff made me realize why I like Madlib so much. His music is basically free-jazz plus one-man band, so I consider myself to have come out of the Madlib school. He was a big connector, but the top of the spiritual heap that I got to with that stuff was Milford Graves. A close friend told me to watch the documentary Full Mantis, and I’ve never looked back. I got Milford Graves’ Bäbi, and watched all of the YouTube stuff. During that little mix, I realized that I like some of the deep shit [laughs].

 My aunt used to always say “Jazz is the music that goes on forever and nobody sings. I’m cheap rock trash.” That was her thing. She was a Night Gallery person in the ’80s. Anything labelled as jazz was never for me when I was growing up. But later on, getting into all of this music popped me out into working at Recordland at a time when International Anthem was everywhere. I found Angel Bat Dawid’s The Oracle and then I wanted to order everything else they were putting out like Alabaster DePlume and Rob Mazurek. That opened me up further to what was happening in Chicago, connecting me to the Art Ensemble, Anthony Davis, and Anthony Braxton.

That led me to buy the book Forces In Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-Reality of Creative Music. Once I read that I became fully engaged in what I’m doing now. The thing I love about Anthony Braxton is that he’s a fully developed intellect but doesn’t come across as an academic. I’m sure he can run circles around academic people, but he explains things in a way that I can understand. That book takes place on the road, so there’s meta-reality, and then reality. It doesn’t feel like the author Graham Lock is an outsider looking in. He really wants to be cannonballed into this shit. He loves it. Anthony Braxton is a good example of someone you can take a very far view of and guess about what he’s doing, but it’s something else to have a conversation with him and deal with the person that he actually is. Graham Lock does a great job of that. 

With basically everything we’ve talked about, I can feel the timeframe. Not just what the artists are going through, but what’s going on. It’s what I find fascinating about the blues, jazz, and hip-hop. It’s not the colour of people’s skin, it’s the fact that it’s coming from this culture that constantly has to redefine itself just to break even. It’s always going to be interesting to look back to see what people did to make that happen. After reading the Anthony Braxton book and learning the term meta-reality, I thought of the Wu-Tang. You can feel everything: the streets, their emotions, what they did yesterday, what they like. I think that’s what ties a lot of this stuff together.