Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the album Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

“WOP” written by J. Dash, performed by J. Dash and Flo-Rida, from the album Tabloid Truth. Used courtesy of J. Dash.

“100 Man”, written and performed by J. Dash, courtesy of Slapdash Productions.

<music up>

J. Dash: “…entertainment-- the process of entertainment is so much fun that-- and it’s great that we get to share things that may have started in your mind, which is-- first of all let’s talk about that. That is the most mind-blowing thing to me about the entire process is the fact that I can take something that is in my mind that does not exist and nobody can hear and I can create and then give it to you and it can be yours now.”

Jo Reed: That’s composer, performer, and producer, J Dash, and this is Art Works the weekly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. For many people, J Dash is primarily known as the composer and performer of the hit song “WOP.” But Dash is a man of many talents—musically, he’s a writer, performer, and producer who crosses genres the way most of us cross streets—he plays blues, jazz, of course hip-hop. And he also writes scores for fil and television. Add to that, his other career as a computer scientist—which J sees as complimentary to his musical life. More about this later…

J is also a very active arts advocate—working with schools in both his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida and his current home in Austin, Texas. J Dash also does a great deal of volunteer work on the national level with the National Association of Music Merchants’ foundation, also known as the NAMM Foundation —at times advocating for Title 4 funding at Congress or helping students find ways to enter the music industry—J Dash shows up. How he harnesses his talent, energy and manages his time in so many different arenas is a testament to his ability to focus on the task at hand and move like the wind when he has the opportunity. In fact, that ability to move with lightning speed is origin of his name J Dash.

Jo Reed: J. Dash is your artistic name.

J. Dash: Yes.

Jo Reed: Tell me how you got it or chose it.

J. Dash: Well, I didn’t choose it; it was actually given to me by a friend when I was younger-- much younger and really just getting into music production and he let me use his studio, which was in his pool house. And I went out there and because I didn’t have a lot of time to spend in the studio but was real interested in it I would make music really, really quickly just so I could make as many mistakes as possible and I knew at a young age that’s how I learned; I had to fail a lot. And so the music that I made and as quick as I made it he started calling me J. Dash because of how quick I would get in there and make music.

Jo Reed: That’s a great name. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how when you have just a short amount of time how quickly you can get things done, how much necessity really can push creativity.

J. Dash: Right. It also helps you realize how much time you waste when you don’t need to so-- <laughs>

Jo Reed: When did you start playing music and it was the keyboard, correct, piano?

J. Dash: Yes. So we had a piano in my house growing up and my sisters both took lessons and when I was around four years old I would hear my sister practicing on the piano and I didn’t really get up there and play a lot but I could hear mistakes she was making and at four years old I climbed up to the piano and started playing Beethoven’s Fifth by ear—and my mom looked at me like I was an alien. She was like “How does this kid know how to play?” and I was like “No. You’re doing it wrong.” And from then on they were like “Okay. This kid has a gift” and so I got into piano at that age but not from a family of musicians at all by any means. And so I-- it was almost a blessing and a curse for me because it sent me on this journey of music discovery with no direction and I think that kind of opened the doors to so many other genres. I wasn’t necessarily pigeonholed into what my parents liked or what was being force-fed to me and so I found blues and jazz at a very young age and started playing that so around ten, eleven years old I was actually playing in smoky blues bars with a few friends of mine and we went by the name Thunder and Lightning, which was our very first band name, and ended up working our way to playing at a blues and jazz festival on Beale Street in Memphis.

Jo Reed: Oh wow! Excuse me, playing blues in Memphis, high praise indeed.

J. Dash: Right.

Jo Reed: I just want to go back for just a second, even though you didn’t come from a musical family your parents had to have valued music because you had a piano in the house and I’m assuming you also started lessons at a certain point.

J. Dash: Right. So I took lessons for a few years after the whole Beethoven’s Fifth thing, but they did value music. I remember my grandmother having a piano in her house and my grandmother was a sharecropper and lived in a very, very rural part of North Carolina and so in her shack there was a standing piano in there and every time I would go visit I would play around on that piano so music and instruments has always kind of been around but nobody really knew what to do with them. And so just having that there, having the access to it was all I needed.

Jo Reed: When did you discover blues and jazz and do you remember who you listened to that just sort of made your head explode?

J. Dash: Oh, my gosh, so many people but I’m glad you asked because recently-- very recently the guy that really got me into blues piano and New Orleans style recently passed away, Dr. John. He was a guy that I idolized as a kid; I remember sitting there playing “Wild Honey” from his live CD, on repeat to try just to learn the intro,

<”Wild Honey” excerpt plays>

and so I would sit there for hours trying to learn how to play Dr. John. And I actually recently got to meet him at the jazz festival in my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, and we actually spoke for a while. He told me the story of how he got shot in his pinkie in Jacksonville. I mean we connected on so many levels; it was great. We actually stayed in contact a bit after that and he recently passed away, but I would listen to Dr. John, Pinetop Perkins, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, you know, anything-- Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bonnie Raitt, anything I could get my hands on was what I was listening to and that was at eight, nine, ten years old.

Jo Reed: I know this is a really tough question but can you describe how you felt when you were playing piano?

J. Dash: Umm, yeah. I think you have these different stages of playing most instruments where it’s ups and downs of “I hate music <laughs> because I don’t get this thing” or “I love it” but I know when you really connect with music it’s like learning what your real name is. Does that make sense?

Jo Reed: Yes.

J. Dash: --like this is who I really am and the feeling of getting goose bumps from something that you do-- it’s a distinct thing because you can hear something and get goose bumps, that’s why most people love music, but when you make something that gives you goose bumps it’s different if that makes any sense. I mean it’s just-- it’s amazing and so it’s a drug; the endorphins flow and the dopamine hits and it’s-- you are addicted to it at that point.

Jo Reed: You, as you mentioned, you moved to the production side still playing but you also moved to the production side pretty early on.

J. Dash: Right. I was 14 years old when I heard a song by Timbaland called “Up Jumps da Boogie.” I was like “Yo. What is that?” because I had heard hip-hop, I had heard urban music before, but I hadn’t heard it that way. Timbaland is a producer that came from Virginia and it was Timabaland & Magoo and Missy Elliott and they-- just the bounce that the song had I was like “I don’t know what that is but I want to do that for the rest of my life.” <laughs> It was that moment I was like “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, I don’t know how he did it, but I want to do that.”

Jo Reed: Well, and of course, you’re very well known for “WOP,” which was double platinum if I got that right. Is that true?

J. Dash: Yeah, it just recently went double platinum in December.

Jo Reed: That is the song that just keeps on giving.

J. Dash: Yes. I hear that a lot absolutely. The thing about “WOP” is it didn’t have a lot of money behind it, it wasn’t pushed by a major label, and so different people discover it a different times and it is probably the most organic song that I’ve ever seen in my life just because it had no financial push but purely viral. The spread of the dance just makes you feel like you have to do it and so it continues to grow because different people are still discovering it and it has yet to really go global.

Jo Reed: It’s extraordinary. I want you to tell me the story behind the making of “WOP,” but I also want the year you first composed it because people are still talking about it and still working with it.

J. Dash: Yes, and I originally composed the music for “WOP” in my dorm room in college in 2006.

Jo Reed: Woah. And here we are; it’s still going.

J. Dash: It’s still going.

Jo Reed: What’s the story behind it?

J. Dash: So a few friends, it was me, it was Fleezy, Chello, we used to do this dance, and we had no name for it but we would do it to other people’s music when we’d go to parties, right, and it was one of those things where we were just having a good time, having fun; when other people saw the come-on if we were feeling it we would do it and other people would be like “How do you do that dance? I want to learn it.” And so we were like “Man, we need to put a name to it” and I remember Fleezy said, “Hey, man, you need to just make a song for this dance” and I was like “All right, cool” so I got my mike and my little laptop at the time and made the beat for it and just called it the “WOP”-- and the rest was history. We made a tutorial video of how to do the WOP. I had a few of my friends that were dancers, they made a video for it, and that just started popping off. Now really when I made the song I-- honestly I kind of put it out there and forgot about it; at this point I hadn’t had any records that was a hit. And I’m no marketing genius so I didn’t know how to push a song like that, I just kind of put stuff out and keep moving, and I went back and I looked at a YouTube video we put out from months before and it had a half a million views and I was like “Uh oh. I have no idea what to do now.”

Jo Reed: I was just going to ask you, “That’s great but what do you do?”

J. Dash: Honestly, you-- I had been fortunate enough to have done an interview with a magazine called Ozone magazine and one of my friends that I kept in touch with his name was Malik Abdul and I was, like-- I called him because I knew he was connected in the music industry. I had no manager, I had no people, quote, unquote, right, and so I was like “Hey, man, this video has half a million views. I know it could do something. What do we do?” and he was like “I got you,” and from that point on he was my manager and not just my manager but my best friend and I mean really helped me take the song to another level and continue to help it grow and reach more and more people. And at that point other people started uploading videos and it just-- it went viral on YouTube, went viral on Vine, Miley Cyrus was dancing to it and it was on “Good Morning America,” and then it went viral again so it just took off after that.

<“WOP” excerpt plays>

Jo Reed: And then there was the official video, which is fabulous, with Flo Rida. You were in the video. Tell me how the making of the video went.

J. Dash: Man, the video was so much fun-- it was-- just because the energy of the song itself is so great and I mean the meaning of the song is “without prejudice” so you have all different types of people—

Jo Reed: I’m sorry. That’s what WOP stands for, without prejudice.

J. Dash: Correct, without prejudice, and so you have people from all different backgrounds, old people, young people, black people, white people and everything in between just-- kind of just out having a good time. It was a blast to make. We shut down some streets in my city and so everybody was like “Oh, who’s that? What are they doing?” shooting the video so it was a big deal for me being from where I’m from to finally have the recognition of “Oh, man, this guy’s doing something” so it was a blast.

Jo Reed: Tell me how you compose. Walk me through that process. Do you do it at the keyboard? Is it music first, words first, an idea? How does it work for you?

J. Dash: Inspiration comes to me in different ways at different times so being a producer as well as an artist and now a film composer I kind of draw from different places but the majority of the music I make I’ll kind of sit down and I’ll start with the music first but every now and then I have an idea with lyrics and I’ll start with the lyrics and kind of build music around it, but as a person that produces a lot, you know, a lot of times you’re just sitting there and playing with stuff and failing constantly because you’re like “Well, that doesn’t sound very good at all” and then you finally get that spark; you hear one sound that’s just like “Oh, man, I can build around that.” And you just tweak and tweak and continue to build and then the lyrics kind of drop in after that.

Jo Reed: You went to college; you majored not in music. What did you major in?

J. Dash: Computer engineering.

Jo Reed: Okay, now…

<laughter>

Jo Reed: Tell me how you got there.

J. Dash: Honestly, it was one of those decisions that was like “Music is in me,” right. “Although I am always going to be around music I want to learn how to do other things” and I remember in high school I took a class with a man by the name of Wayne Balcar, Mr. Balcar, and I reached out to him recently because I said, “You’re the reason why I love computers as much as I love music.” I fell in love with engineering and I really think there’s a strong tie between technology and music, and I hope that more studies are done around that because I think there are a lot of programmers that make amazing musicians and vice versa. And I don’t know if it’s the orchestration aspect of it or what it is but I fell in love with computers before I went to college and I said, “I really want to learn more about that and I know it could, you know, if nothing else provide me a living.” But I just had a passion for it but I went to University of Florida majoring in engineering but I was always involved in music. So a lot of people don’t know this: I was in an African drumming troupe for years while I was there and so I played a dundun and it was-- we’d do West African music; it was me and Mohamed DaCosta and a few other guys and we would travel around and literally play West African music and I also brought that element into my first performance as a solo artist. It was in the O’Connell Center in front of 20,000 people and I was opening for Lil Wayne—

Jo Reed: Holy moly.

J Dash: --and I opened up by playing the dundun by myself on stage, which was amazing because the people didn’t know how to take it or how to feel about it, and then when I started rapping after that people just went crazy. And so I love drawing from different elements that my diverse music background kind of helps me change things and not necessarily give you exactly what you expect.

Jo Reed: So, even though you were performing and doing music in college, did you study any music in college?

J. Dash: Yeah, I took music-theory courses while I was in college. Not for a minor or anything but I was like “Hey, I’m here, not only will I take engineering but I’ll take music courses as well,” but because I wasn’t in the College of Music I would have to sneak into the piano labs and I wasn’t getting the same formal education that other people were getting so I would literally sit in a room next to a room where somebody was practicing, and listen to them practice and figure out what it is they were doing and so little stuff like that-- I wanted it, I wanted it really, really bad, and I would do whatever it took to get it.

Jo Reed: Now you work as a computer scientist as well--

J. Dash: Yes.

Jo Reed: How do music and computer science work together for you? Do you feel that you’re accessing different parts of your mind, of your creativity if you’re doing music or if you’re doing computer science or do you feel that it’s all coming from the same well?

J. Dash: I think that under-- an understanding of computers in today’s music industry is vital-- and I think the better you understand them and how things work the better you can make your things sound. I try not to get too caught up in the technical stuff when I’m being creative because it can-- you can sit there and agonize over how a wave-form looks and how it’s being rendered out and what effects you put on it and when you put them on there. And you can agonize over it for forever but I try not to mix the two, but I know that the computer background helps me move how I move in today’s music industry.

Jo Reed: As you mentioned, you’ve started scoring films and one film you scored, which is just a devastating movie, is “83 Days.”

J. Dash: Yes. Can I talk about that film for a second?

Jo Reed: Oh please, please do. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about it.

J. Dash: Awesome, so “83 Days” is a film about the youngest person in U.S. history to be put to death by the electric chair so-- in 1944 and it’s a 14-year-old kid named George Stinney Jr. He was wrongly accused of killing two little girls, right; he was arrested, tried, convicted and executed in 83 days. So in 2014 Junior was exonerated and 70 years after he was put to death, and this project, the “83 Days” film, is just 30 minute-- it’s a 30-minute proof of concept really designed to attract funding for the full-length feature film which is already scripted and budgeted at 3.9 million so it’s still a smaller-budget movie but it’s a really, really important story. The short film has already won ten awards, had 15 nominations and one of the awards it won was for best score.

Jo Reed: Congratulations.

J. Dash: Thank you so much.

Jo Reed: Tell me how you scored that film. What was the process? It had to have been I would imagine a very difficult thing to do-- because of the subject.

J. Dash: Yeah, it’s difficult to watch and so really you try to approach it as objectively as possible and say-- really stay in constant communication with the director and say, “What is it that we’re trying to make our viewers feel at this point in the film?” because you know as well as I do that music completely drives the emotion of a film. And so it was-- me and a friend of mine, Ryan Slate, actually sat down and started talking about how we were going to basically paint these landscapes of emotion because at the same time you want them to feel different depths of emotion, not just one thing. It’s not just sadness; you want to feel a hint of anger and sometimes a bit of levity depending on where you are in the film. And so it’s-- it was really interesting to me because it was the first film that I had basically scored myself but the process is really you sit down with the film itself and you try things. You understand the emotion once you communicate with the director and understand what he’s trying to get across. You just sit down and play until you get those goose bumps, until you get those feelings that you know that you’re looking for.

Jo Reed: It’s such a collaborative process that--

J. Dash: Absolutely.

Jo Reed: --and writing songs I would imagine is much more individual and less collaborative, or I could be wrong but that’s the way I’d think it would work.

J. Dash: Well, it depends because I think that a lot of great work comes from collaboration as well. I just actually partnered with a company called The LABZ, which is a startup that’s kind of based around the collaboration process of music, and it’s all done online so think Dropbox mixed with DocuSign, which at the end of the songwriting process generates a split sheet for everybody that’s been involved and it’ll literally go line by line to say who wrote what and make sure everybody gets what they need to get-- but it fosters this air of creativity because you’re not worried about how somebody else does business; it’s already taken care of for you. And so a lot of times you’ll be collaborating with something and because they bring a different background to the table you’ll get an idea that you never would have come up with yourself and so it becomes, again, this orchestration-- this thing that becomes greater than you. Right?

Jo Reed: Yeah. What about when you perform, which is so different from literally writing music and from computer science too? How does it feel when you’re out there? It must be so widely different.

J. Dash: It is. I honestly take the approach of-- I try not to get nervous when it comes to performances because I feel like I’ve already put in the work and so really it’s just-- I get excited because I get to share what I’ve been doing with different people at that time. And so for me I like to visualize the entire show from start to finish before I ever step on stage, and so I have to see it happen before I can do it or else it’s just not going to go right, but I feel really comfortable on stage to be honest just because it’s fun and entertainment-- the process of entertainment is so much fun that-- and it’s great that we get to share things that may have started in your mind, which is-- first of all let’s talk about that. That is the most mind-blowing thing to me about the entire process is the fact that I can take something that is in my mind that does not exist and nobody can hear and I can create and then give it to you and it can be yours now. And I know that sounds crazy probably but it’s-- that is amazing to me is that it is as amazing as people that are writing books and basically capturing an entire culture in time in a block of words. Right? We are able to do that with music and audio and capture the feelings of a culture and the emotions-- the in-depth emotions that you can’t necessarily say with words you can capture in music sometimes and so it’s just-- it is amazing to be able to share that gift with other people.

Jo Reed: Yeah, and you’re right about the giving it to you. As soon as you said that, I was thinking about how many songs that I think of as my songs--

J. Dash: Exactly.

Jo Reed: --because of how I heard them, what was going on in my life when I heard them, how they spoke to me in a very particular way-- and I feel like they’re mine.

J. Dash: I think that’s a really important distinction too that artists kind of need to understand, or creators: is that the process of creation is yours and yours alone and the feelings and goose bumps that you get while you’re creating the music are yours to own, but as soon as that piece of music is done it’s not yours anymore; it is for everyone else, right? The feeling that you got creating it that’s what was for you. Does that make sense?

Jo Reed: That makes perfect sense. I’m really interested in the difference between you’re on stage and performing live as opposed to recording in a studio where you can do various takes but on the stage you get your once.

J. Dash: Right. I think that in the studio is where you get it perfect, right; it’s where you can make as many mistakes as you want. And you know what? I make mistakes sometimes on stage too. I have fallen off my fair share of stages <laughs> so it happens, but I think the key is to be just as vulnerable with people as you are in the studio and I think that you should be vulnerable; I think you should open up and be able to share who you are because I think at the core we’re all the same, right? I think that we all have the same emotions. That’s why music can be so relatable is when the artist actually opens up and gives you, “this is actually the experience I had; this is what I felt when this person said this or when this happened to me.” That’s why people connect with you so once you understand that whether it’s in the studio or on stage as long as you’re vulnerable there really is no difference regardless of whether you make mistakes or not. I think that what people realize is they can tell when you’re scripted, they can tell when you’re not being real. Right? And so as long as you are open and honest and vulnerable with people I think that that’s what takes you to that next level and what really removes the differences between the studio process and the actual performance process.

Jo Reed: You have been giving your time to the NAMM Foundation. Can you first explain what that organization is?

J. Dash: Absolutely. So NAMM is the National Association of Music Merchants and basically, for those that aren’t aware, anybody that makes any equipment or does anything around the business of the music industry or the products involved in music creation and performance they’re usually in NAMM and so I travel with NAMM every year to Washington, D.C., to just talk about how important music is and arts are in education. And so we were going there to actually advocate for Title IV funding. I believe it’s at 1.3 billion dollars now, which is a small drop in the bucket when it comes to the entire budget but at the same time can transform the lives of children, which I think is really, really important. And I know-- I just know the effect that it’s had on me and it’s me doing everything that I can to make sure that other kids have that opportunity. So not only do we do that on the national stage but I’m partnering with Korg as well as Strait Music here in Austin, Texas, to put together a day of service where we basically partner with a school and help to transform their music department and just going school by school to try to drop that into as many kids as we can so doing what we can on the ground as well as at the national level.

Jo Reed: How did you become such an advocate for music education?

J. Dash: Honestly, I think-- whether it’s music education or not, I think that the advocacy is just kind of in me and that was put there by my parents. So being able to be empathetic and think about things that you have benefited from, how can you share that? I’m of the mind state that nothing is really my own and so if I have benefited from something, I want to make sure that everybody else has access to that and one of the things that they should have access to is a quality education that includes arts and music. So I just want to make sure that I do my part in ensuring that everybody has that, because there are a lot of kids that don’t. I remember visiting a school back home where it was one music teacher that was basically shared between two or three schools and so kids weren’t getting that-- and when it comes time to cut budget- budgets what do you think is getting cut first? It’s usually the arts program and-- but it’s already been proven-- I mean it’s-- the numbers are there and coming from a man of science <laughs> it’s already proven that arts and music help improve test scores and there are numbers to support that and drastically improve those. So if you want the kids to have a quality education and be able to soak in information, a lot of times music and understanding how music works unlocks that part of the brain where they can better understand math and sciences and things like that. So I think it’s just as necessary as those core courses and to me in my mind it is also a core course as well.

Jo Reed: I’m with you on that. I’d like you talk a little bit about the significance of hip-hop as a serious, serious cultural movement that really has been embraced around the world that just has to be taken seriously as an art form.

J. Dash: Right. So I mean that really goes back to what I was saying earlier that, at our core, I think we’re all the same and we’re all-- we all have the same emotions and I think that hip-hop, at its core, is another way just like any other genre of expressing the views of a particular culture that you would not otherwise get. Hip-hop exists because it needs to, right, the same way any other genre of music needs to in order to express how a culture feels and it just opens up the world to, “hey, we want to let you know what’s going on over here,” right? But at the base of that are again being really open and honest, even when it comes from places of anger or exposing wrongs that are happening in neighborhoods, it is exposing people to “hey, this isn’t right; how do we fix that?” Or, at the same time, being able to connect with individuals that you wouldn’t otherwise connect with. And so I think that that key is what is causing hip-hop to be this global phenomenon, this thing that every culture can sink its teeth into because the emotions at the core of it are so relatable.

Jo Reed: And, just tell me finally, what is next for you.

J. Dash: Oh, man. So, August 12^th. I’ll be releasing a single called “A Hundred Man.” The song is basically about how we as individuals can be perceived as different people-- so who you are at home and who you are at work, you believe you’re the same person, but you are different people to the people that are around you, and it doesn’t make you any less of who you are, but it just talks to the-- how multidimensional we are as humans. It’s almost a form of code switching; it’s almost a form of switching personalities at different times but it’s-- it all makes up who you are.

< “A Hundred Man” excerpt plays>

And so that song will be released on all streaming platforms on August 12^th. Again we are continuing to push “83 Days” to get full funding so we can actually tell the full story in the feature film, and then also more advocacy that I’m doing here in Austin, Texas, where I just moved actually more recently as well as continuing to build up the music-production community. So I put on an event back home called JAX Beat Battle where I would fly in different music producers and give music producers the opportunity to show their stuff to celebrity judges and actually connect with artists and things like that so I’m going to start more of that here where I am now in Texas.

Jo Reed: I look forward to “83 Days” being a feature-length film and thank you for all your work truly.

J. Dash: Thank you so much, and anything I can do to help forward the National Endowment of the Arts, you know I’m here. I got you.

Jo Reed: Thanks, J. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

J. Dash: Thank you.

<music up>

Jo Reed: That’s recording artist, computer programmer and arts advocate, J Dash. You've been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. You can subscribe to Art Works wherever you get your podcasts, so please do. And leave us a rating on Apple because it helps people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.