Early February, 2014. The weather\u2019s still cold and ambivalent. I\u2019m in a basement at York University, staring out the window at snow and people hunched against the wind. A seminar of past graduates of the English programs has just ended, and the crowd is nervously swarming around the panellists, hoping some of the success will rub off. The unanimous message of the day: this will not be easy.<\/p>\n
Eventually I corner a globe-trekking documentary filmmaker and ask him about his first steps as a journalist, before he had any name recognition. He leans over with a secret: You want to know how to be a journalist? Tell people you\u2019re a journalist.<\/em> Winking at me, he pops a tiny, rounded carrot into his mouth. If they give you the interview and you publish it<\/em>, he adds, crunching, then you weren\u2019t really lying, were you?<\/em><\/p>\n Thursday night, a week later. It\u2019s colder. I\u2019ll admit that wasn\u2019t the most convincing advice I\u2019d ever heard. But he\u2019s the famous one, so I took his word for it and now I\u2019m walking alone under the streetlights of Toronto, down a frost-leavened sidewalk on a dead-end road lined with empty factories. This is where Jaymz Bee lives, or so the invitation said. At the end of the street, a rusting chain-link fence half lost in vines and a clapped-out Toyota hold back the rush of the Gardiner. I turn down an alley, go through a dim, snowed-in parking lot and arrive at a blank, steel door with a piece of paper taped to it. I stand there for a while, thinking.<\/p>\n Behind the door there\u2019s a long, dusty, dry-walled hallway but I can hear faint music now. As I near the end and push open the last door, I\u2019m caught up in a swell of lights and sound, like I\u2019ve stepped onto a movie set. The loft is warm, candlelit and strung with blue Christmas lights, postered in pieces of pop art, and cluttered with interesting and eclectic furniture. A crowd of dashing people mills about, laughing and drinking, as hopping and acrobatic tunes bounce off the paintings. Overwhelmed, I smile as Jaymz \u2014 in a wild, purple suit and shock of white hair \u2014 shakes my right hand and welcomes me, slings a drink into my left, and introduces me to a group of young musicians. Then he\u2019s already gone, welcoming someone else.<\/p>\n What I know about jazz could maybe add up to a sentence or two, but still I work my way around the room, looking for openings to introduce myself, and try hopelessly to remember the accolades each impossible person lists off. As I wander, a world-famous bass player is chatting with the international talent agent and producer who is friends with the gorgeous, slender singer laughing beside the son of a Canadian master poet, himself a professional pianist and novelist. Suddenly there is a shift in the room and Jaymz is calling people up to the piano and guitar at the front. It seems random, how he picks, like I should hide in case his eyes fall on me. Live music begins; a singer picks up Jimmy Cox’s \u201cNobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out,\u201d and from an old standard she makes a masterpiece. For no one else but this small group of friends. The crowd cheers and claps at subtleties that I miss. I nurse my drink.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t have anything to say for myself. I\u2019ve just finished two undergraduate degrees in English and creative writing at a good school that should give me confidence. But for all my training I still don\u2019t have a job. Last year, Statistics Canada recorded youth unemployment in Ontario at 17% and 18% in Toronto itself. Nationwide, youth unemployment, month-to-month, ran at roughly half.<\/p>\n I\u2019m one of those youths. Of my friends who studied English with me, a tiny percentage do work that relates even remotely to their degree. Many of us are interns, but internships don\u2019t pay anymore. A 2013 CBC article cited the number of Canadians working without paycheques as between one and three-hundred thousand. Recently, the Ministry of Labour began a series of raids on unpaid internships in the magazine industry. The internship I got didn’t get busted, but it wouldn’t have helped because they never did have the money to pay me.<\/p>\n Nights like the one at Bee\u2019s party are tough. I\u2019ve been luckier than some students \u2014 my degrees were subsidized by throwing hay, milking cows, building decks, driving lawnmowers, herding goats and washing golf carts. But even without crushing debt, financial security in the arts world is not easy to come by. Right off, I feel a strong kinship with the jazz scene. The determined jazz artist might be a vision of the future for poets and writers in a world ever-more visual and less literary. Unfortunately, there just isn\u2019t room for everyone. As Jaymz reminds me at the end of the party, there are only so many people who can fit into his apartment. I don\u2019t expect to be invited back, not because of any grudges or cruelty on Jaymz\u2019s part \u2014 simply because there isn\u2019t room.<\/p>\n In school the advisors were missionaries, selling faith in their system. It is the Church of Plan A: a checklist of courses and a checklist of credits. You\u2019re paid for your work in grade points and told they will buy your cruise line to success. Then you\u2019re out, swimming, in a crowd of other bachelors, scanning the horizon for something to hold on to. And then someone like Jaymz comes sailing by with a flock of beautiful, talented women tanning on the deck and a CD player packed with spinning tunes. As if it were so easy.<\/p>\n He carries an incredible r\u00e9sum\u00e9 with him. For the record, Jaymz Bee is: a musician, an entertainer, a best-selling writer, a producer, an event-coordinator and a radio personality on Jazz.FM91 in Toronto. He has been: a night-club owner, an art gallery curator, a talk-show host and a director (commercial and music). He was the lead vocalist for the \u201crock-funk-jazz-circus\u201d Look People<\/em> for a decade (they received five CASBY nominations for Small Fish, Big Pond<\/em>), played across Europe and North America and then led a final show which was opened by a musical performance featuring adult movie stars. With his Royal Jelly Orchestra he has released eight albums and turned rock and rap megahits into cool lounge tracks. There\u2019s a \u201clounge-lizard\u201d cover of Nelly\u2019s \u201cRide Wit Me\u201d out there thanks to Jaymz & Co. Now he\u2019s in an alt-pop project called Bonzai Suzuki. He loves sailing and cycling and parties. Google his effervescent blog or website to see all of that \u2014 he tells the stories better than I would, having lived them.<\/p>\n There\u2019s the impression of him, suavely conducting his party in the glitzy suits, as a kind of trickster god who smiles devilishly at you while weaving a dream of the real thing. That\u2019s why I found his email in the first place, after finding him at one of his trademarked Jazz Safaris across the city. Maybe this would be my chance at stealing whatever secret he\u2019s put to work. He never sold out, never got stiff and lame or exploded into a celebrity supernova. All your life, as you half-jokingly apologized to relatives for having majored in English or some hard-to-explain field of theory or even jazz itself, you dreamed about this. Once the party ended, as I coaxed my old Buick back up the highway, I kept waiting for the lights and sound to fade and to find myself treading water again.<\/p>\n One of the things I was most interested in hearing Jaymz talk about was his approach to critics, so I led toward that in our interview. His works over the years are varied but almost always in some kind of liminal space, out in the border towns of popular tastes. He responded by musing on the nature of the industry, calling this an age of \u201cplenitude.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere seems to be an audience for any genre,\u201d he reflects, \u201cand so much music to weed through. Being an artist today is more fun than ever but it\u2019s harder than ever to make any money at it. I don\u2019t want to win people over. I\u2019m here when they are ready for me, and while my record sales of various projects in the past decade aren\u2019t staggering by any stretch, the concerts I do are jam-packed and more and more people \u2018get me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n I want to believe I get<\/em> Jaymz Bee as I pour over my notes at home and try to gather the framework of an article. I watch his music videos and eye his body language, his voice, anything to find an insight that could crack his enigmatic success. He stays coy about his youth and the secret of his name (saving it for his memoir) and attributes his incredible energy to wolf naps and healthy living. Is it just some natural skill? My mind returns to the documentarian\u2019s words. You want to know how to be a journalist?<\/em> Well, here I am, doing that, and I might be in over my head. Eventually I decide he must have been talking metaphorically \u2014 that what matters is confidence in oneself.<\/p>\n Confidence, according to Jaymz, is set in a foundation of acceptance and detachment. \u201cI still forget that because I dress so flamboyantly some people are laughing at<\/em> me, not just smiling because life is so awesome. So to me, everyone is happy when I get all dapper-dan to paint the town.\u201d He adds: \u201cI\u2019ve been not-caring for so many decades, why would I start worrying about being cool now? I never cared much for the song but I love the sentiment: \u2018It\u2019s Hip To Be Square!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He offers the example of a snarky dismissal he got from a critic in Calgary, who in a review accused him of stealing a Simpsons<\/em> gag for one of his songs. \u201cWe\u2019d been performing \u2018Ape City\u2019 since the late eighties in Switzerland. When I saw The Simpsons<\/em> doing \u2018Rock Me Dr. Zaius\u2019 I thought solidarity<\/em>, not hey, they stole my idea!<\/em> Again, water off a duck\u2019s back. I am thick-skinned.\u201d<\/p>\n In all of my encounters with Bee, solidarity is a recurring theme. At the party, and the Jazz Safari before that, he was busy every moment, either helping someone set up or catching up with a line-up of friends. When I ask him about his most satisfying accomplishment, he quickly moves to talking about what his bands have achieved together, and the times when he got a CD produced for some under-recognized genius, and eight years of globe-crossing Jazz Safaris that bring audiences to the bright, young voices of jazz who are struggling to be heard in the plenitude. A harmony appears then: if I had to spout a definition of jazz after all I\u2019ve seen and heard, it would be somewhere in the coordination of the musicians. At the party, as the players warmed up, they grew more and more comfortable until they could communicate so subtly that it seemed supernatural. Jazz beats with a spirit of improvisation \u2014 yes, I know that\u2019s not much of a breakthrough \u2014 but what strikes me is how it\u2019s a communal one. The song doesn\u2019t live in the technical ability, but in the act of buoying your band mate as they take a chance, with a faith that they will be there in turn to support you.<\/p>\n During an intermission in the music a friend of Jaymz confides in me that behind the fa\u00e7ade of levity is a very hard working man. She chuckled, pouring another glass of wine. \u201cTrust me, he only makes<\/em> it look easy.\u201d Definitely, he admits that times have been tough before. As a young artist himself, adrift in the world of music, Jaymz remembers the hardest part was being nearly homeless for long stretches.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I would come back from Europe after spending half a year over there I\u2019d stay with various friends, sometimes for a night or week, and when I was lucky I could sublet something for a month. But I was always moving \u2014 no place to call home. I didn\u2019t want to put anyone out so I did a lot of dishes and cleaning as thank you.\u201d That lifestyle led to a philosophy of giving back: \u201cNow that I have a nice pad, I have a guest room and always invite friends from far away to stay with me. It feels good to pay back all those people who helped me.\u201d<\/p>\n As the music wound down and the guests began to leave, Jaymz said goodbye to me just as warmly as he\u2019d welcomed me, dropping a sly reference to why I\u2019d been invited. \u201cNow you\u2019ve seen the place,\u201d he pointed out. And I realize something, looking back: he was giving me a gift. The other young people I talked to that night all talked about how they\u2019d been helped along by Jaymz, given guidance and support. Of course, I was no different, even though he barely knew me. This party, the interview \u2014 he was a step ahead of me the whole time.<\/p>\n I think I must have realized this on a wordless level before that moment, during a soaring, bruised solo by a pianist I never had the chance to meet. Live music, done seriously, is rapturous in its intimacy, and the whole party was drawn into the performance and made part of it. When Jaymz speaks about parties (and he literally wrote the book on cocktail parties \u2014 look it up) he speaks in a mystic tone for reasons I understand now. \u201cIf a party is done properly,\u201d he says, \u201cit should be as uplifting as going to the opera, attending a church service or seeing your favourite sports team win a game. I\u2019ve never really been into sports, and there are only so many operas mounted in a year. Add to that the fact that church attendance is on the decline and that leaves parties and concerts as the best place for people to congregate.\u201d Parties and music and art, I realize, serve a human need \u2014 for acceptance, perhaps, but more so for simple congregation. To be around people like you, who inspire you or fascinate you. To make new friends and new connections and find new opportunities.<\/p>\n What\u2019s been wrong all this while has been that school itself set me up to fail, with its cosy determinism and all things in their rightful place. There is no Plan A, no structure and no actual land of \u201csuccess\u201d waiting at the end of a life of checklists. \u201cMaking it\u201d is a process of living with the full knowledge that you might fail \u2014 that maybe no one will hear your EP or read your stories. More than that, in school I got caught up in the rhetoric of \u201cmy\u201d career, which I was supposedly buying from them. \u201cMy\u201d career and \u201cmy\u201d success. And suddenly Jaymz\u2019s boat seems less shark-like when I realize he\u2019s circling to pick people up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n JAYMZ BEE<\/strong> can be heard weekdays at 7 a.m. on Wake Up \u2026 with Heather Bambrick<\/em> and Saturdays at 6 p.m. on Jazz In The City<\/em> on Jazz.FM91<\/a>. Among other projects, he is currently writing a book of memoirs entitled Compulsive Disclosure Disorder<\/em>. He thinks you should start with Afro-Eurasian Eclipse<\/em> by Duke Ellington, Prelude<\/em> by Deodato, Smoochy<\/em> by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bob Till You Drop<\/em> by Ry Cooder and Do It Yourself<\/em> by Ian Dury & The Blockheads.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n JACK HOSTRAWSER<\/strong> is a recipient of the York University President\u2019s Prize and once chased tornadoes across the Midwest. His writing has appeared in Exist\u00e8re<\/a><\/em>, The Fieldstone Review<\/a><\/em>, In The Hills Magazine<\/a><\/em>, The Quilliad<\/a><\/em> and Steel Bananas<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Early February, 2014. The weather\u2019s still cold and ambivalent. I\u2019m in a basement at York University, staring out the window at snow and people hunched against the wind. A seminar of past graduates of the English programs has just ended,… Continue Reading
\n
\n