My much loved brothers and sisters in the Dzogchen Community, who over the years have always made me feel your love, appreciation and support, I am writing this article to basically tell you two things: first of all, that I could have no greater good fortune in my life than to meet the Master, and that every good thing in my life comes solely and exclusively from following his example and teaching. Chögyal Namkhai Norbu also taught me to make peace with myself and my being an artist and a leader, and at a time when I thought that being an artist and practicing Dharma were two irreconcilable things, he taught me that everything in life can be spiritual practice.
The second thing is that, in my life experience as an artist, I have learned that true success consists in being satisfied with yourself and in harmony with what you do. Though making art a job depends a lot on the approval of others and the industry that runs the system, I have learned to always do it my way, without any dirty games or following negative fads and trends, achieving extraordinary results relying mostly on my own strengths and those working with me.
I express myself in different ways: I am a songwriter, a singer, an entertainer, a musician, an MC, a DJ, an event organizer, a radio speaker, and also a professional educator who uses music as a therapeutic tool.
Where can I start? We were at the Yellow House at Merigar laughing and joking with the Maestro. At one point, Enrico Dell’Angelo said, “Jaka, tell the Master how you compose your songs!” And I replied that there are songs that arise by thinking, rehearsing, studying, correcting, and others that flow spontaneously, as if someone dictates them to you, lyrics and melody, in a flow. At that point, the Maestro, who up to that point had been listening to me without, apparently, showing much interest, raised his head and looked me straight in the eye. Since then, I have shown more and more interest in cultivating that state, even during the creative process, in which all expectations cease to exist and all judgment is momentarily suspended.
One of the songs that came about this way is called “Just Love”:
Love is the cure, it is the answer,
and when everything collapses, it is only what remains.
Love is not just a relationship between two people,
and what we call love is only a misunderstanding.
True love gives and asks nothing in return,
love is much more, much more than a feeling:
it is like a spring without interruption,
with the strength of a mother and the courage of a lion.It is at ease among pleasures as well as pains,
and savours good smells as well as bad
where there is selfishness there is no love
and it is not me who says so but the heart
for me, love is not jealousy,
love is the answer, love is the way!
After many years of not performing this song live, in 2023 in Trapani, Sicily, I played it in front of 10,000 people dedicating it to a friend of mine who had been killed a few days earlier, near Trapani, out of jealousy by her ex-husband. At the end of the song, I let out a long, heart-wrenching scream that shocked the crowd. I believe that music should be authentic and serve to stir consciences, to elevate, to spread values that can help us be better and more respectful of ourselves and others, and promote uplifting behavior rather than glorify destructive.
The musical genre I practice most is called Reggae, which inspires positivity in me. I belong to the first generation of Italian artists who first began singing Reggae, Rap, and Raggamuffin (i.e., Jamaican Rap) in their native language. I think Reggae is a mystical and spiritual music, sensual and earthly, connected to nature and roots. I love many different genres of music and collaborating with artists from different genres, without limitations. For example, I have collaborated with artists from the Dzogchen Community such as Roberto Cacciapaglia on two tracks called “Music Paradise” and “Piano Paradise”: an extraordinary encounter, just as extraordinary as when Roberto, during the teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Livorno, introduced me to Franco Battiato, who has always been my favorite artist. In fact, for me, music is healing and therapeutic. Music conceived solely as entertainment has never interested me much; instead, I am interested in music that expresses the culture of a people, that transmits positive values, that inspires us to be better, that opens the heart.
For this reason I’ve always used music as a therapeutic tool and worked for many years in the suburbs, holding rap workshops on the street. We had a camper van with a small recording studio inside and would meet young people for a drug prevention project using music as a tool for contact and education. I’ve also held songwriting workshops in primary, middle and high schools, as well as universities. I also worked for many years in gypsy camps and immigrant reception centers although my greatest satisfaction comes from working in juvenile prisons.
I was the first in Italy to use Rap and Raggamuffin to do workshops in prisons, starting in Florence in the early 2000s and continuing until today. In the last few years I have held meetings at the famous “Malaspina” juvenile prison in Palermo. These workshops have a strong emotional impact. I use a method called “Maieutics,” because by helping the boys to bring out what is inside, you help them to understand their emotions and get them to reflect on them. Music thus becomes an opportunity for self-knowledge, but also knowledge of the consequences of one’s thoughts, emotions, words and actions. Emotional education through music. During these workshops in addition to freeing the voice we also work a little with the body and body expression.
I really like dancing and moving – it’s liberating – and during my concerts I’ve always danced like crazy. But then I discovered that there could be another way of moving as well. When the Master presented the Khaita practice it was a wonderful discovery for me. At first I didn’t understand it and would run away or arrive late, and every time he would look at me as if to say, I see you!
Then when I moved to Tenerife in 2016, I spent a year in close contact with him every day, as his bodyguard, and I started dancing Khaita every day. At first, I danced just to make the Master laugh, because everyone went one way and I went the other, but then gradually thanks to his constant encouragement, I began to get into it. Every single day he would say to me, “Well done, you’ve got rhythm,” or “you’re good” even when I wasn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life than I was during that period. We danced for two hours a day or more in front of the Maestro, and the joy I felt was indescribable.
What’s more, what the Maestro was doing with those songs corresponded exactly to what I had always tried to express in my music. For example, love for one’s homeland and its positive values, because as a Sicilian I have always tried to overturn the stigma of Sicily as a land of the Mafia and talk instead about the generosity, goodness and honesty of our people. Rinpoche said he wasn’t very interested in cheap love songs, and even though I have written a few sensual songs, most of the time I prefer to talk about unconditional love or respect between people, writing songs that glorify the beauty of wisdom and the happiness that comes with it.
This type of content is not only found in my records but also in my live shows and in my life. I’m not interested in singing about things I haven’t experienced or know about. My shows are very energetic. I come from the school of punk, the’ Do it yourself’ school, from the street, from the culture of popular festivals, from a long apprenticeship. I don’t see the distance between the stage and the audience. For me a concert is not a performance but an exchange of energy, and I’m not there to show how good I am at something, what interests me is communicating with people, not staring into space but looking people in the eye when I sing. So for me, every concert is a party that involves everyone, to the point that people sometimes come up on stage with us to dance, as happened during one of my concerts in Arcidosso [Youtube: “Jaka at Merigar 30th Anniversary”].
I’ve composed hundreds of songs and dozens of albums, but I never consider a song is “mine” but more that we are energy channels through which things flow. Music has an energy that goes beyond words, and I sing in Italian, Sicilian, English, and Jamaican. I think I’ve done tens of thousands of concerts and DJ sets in my life, playing everywhere in Italy from north to south, but also in London, New York, Paris, Barcelona, from Kiev to Jamaica. Perhaps it is also thanks to my energy and experience that many great artists have always invited me to sing with them during their concerts, and I have performed duets with true international legends such as Alton Ellis, Max Romeo, Luciano, Morgan Heritage, Eek-a-mouse, Alborosie, Macka B, Michael Franti, Dub Fx, and in Italy with artists such as Piero Pelù, Boomdabash, Roy Paci, Frankie Hi ng, Alma Megretta, Sud Sound Systems, Africa Unite, and many others.
To sing live like that you have to have some ability to improvise because you never know what song you’re going to be invited to but you have to get on the stage and rock it. This is the hard school I come from: good from the start, no time for another opportunity, giving your best in the present moment, no second chance.
I am happy when I sing if I even get to one person’s heart; it doesn’t matter if it is in front of 30 people in a remote place, or 30,000 like it happened to me on the main stage of Rototom Sunsplash or at the Olympic stadium in Rome. Going out and playing live over the years has helped me create a very intimate, direct and sincere relationship with my audience. The support from my fans is very strong and when I launched a crowdfunding to self-produce my album “Il suona dell’isola” (“The Sound of the Island”), we gathered 15,000 euros in donations in two months because my support is not based on fame or publicity but on real human relationships. I am not a superstar, just a normal person. More than once someone with tears in their eyes has said to me, “Jaka, I was going to kill myself but your music saved my life!”. That’s real success for me.
Then I came into many people’s lives thanks in part to Controradio/Popolare Network, an alternative radio station that is very popular in Florence, Tuscany, and around the world via the web, where I have broadcast daily as a speaker for many years. Today I still host “Bongoman,” my program specializing in reggae music, which is one of the longest-running formats in global radio, on air for 34 consecutive years, using language that has even been the subject of a thesis.
One last beautiful story: a few years ago, during a retreat, a practitioner from the Community threw a wonderful party. The Master and some of us were invited to this party. When we arrived, we crossed an enormous garden and entered a beautiful old house, belonging to a noble family, decorated with paintings and precious objects. In the center of this beautiful living room sat the Master in a very comfortable armchair with a relaxed look on his face. We performed a little Khaita dance for him and the hosts, then the Master asked Roberto Cacciapaglia to play something on the piano, and Roberto played some beautiful music, and the atmosphere in the room was very pleasant but a little formal.
At one point, the Maestro looked at me and, with a simple nod of his head, invited me to sing something, knowing what to expect. I went to Roberto and asked him to play three simple major chords on the upbeat, and I started improvising rap rhymes, and it was as if a hurricane had suddenly swept in and turned the situation upside down in a paradoxical way. The Maestro began clapping his hands in time and laughing, and in no time at all the atmosphere became exhilarating and everyone began clapping their hands and responding in unison to my back-and-forth exchanges. The session ended with the Maestro laughing hysterically and looking at us knowingly. From that moment on, everyone at the party became a little more relaxed and at ease. For me, this was the most satisfying moment of my life as an “artist” and, probably, the moment when I understood most clearly that there is no point in taking yourself too seriously, because the illusory game of life and that of art coincide.
And even today, my rhymes continue to flow like a source of light with no beginning and no end:
I love those warriors who share the path with me
they go forward in life in their sincere way
they bring peace where there is war, light where it is cold
color where it is dark
I love my enemies, I can’t help it
Because I know that if I hated them, I would be no different from them
LINKS:
www.youtube.com/iljaka
www.instagram.com/jakaworld
www.facebook.com/JakaOfficial
