For New Jersey-based artist, producer, and community leader Jadyn Violet a path in music was anything but expected.
With pressure from his family to pursue a more traditional and secure career track, Jadyn went to college to study business before abruptly deciding to drop out and change course.
Jadyn had danced for years in high school and was always interested in music and visual art but felt constrained by family expectations. “I was told that passions can only stay hobbies and nothing more. I was always trying to get good grades and a high SAT score so I could get into a good business school because that’s what my family told me to do. I was just aimlessly going about my life without knowing what I wanted to do, and then I had a moment of falling in love with music, it all changed for me.”
When a breakup spurred the need for catharsis, Jadyn looked to music as a creative outlet and produced his first song. “Ever since I made my first song I was like, “Okay, I want to be a musician.” I saw how feelings that were heavy on my chest could get lifted off and put into a song that then other people can listen and feel the same energy I’m feeling and experience the same healing I'm going through.”
Leaving for college and learning to stand on his own two feet helped him deeper his sense of self and gave him the confidence he needed to go against the grain and forge his own path. “I think the transition from high school into college kind of detached me from my family, which has its pros and cons, the pro being it helped me detached from their ideals and thinking that I had to do things just because of the foundation they laid out before me instead of thinking on my own and having my own passions, and believing that I can pursue them,” says Jadyn.
By his second year, he decided to leave school and give music his full attention. “The most pivotal moment for me was my second year of college when I ended up dropping out. Coming from an immigrant family household, being the first generation growing up in America, dropping out of school was like the worst fear for any Indian parents. I got a lot of backlash for it, but I knew that it was better to go down my own path rather than face a lifetime of resentment towards my parents. When I decided to pursue music full time I didn’t necessarily know how I was going to do it, but I knew it was possible, and it was just my journey to figure it out.”
Five years later, his journey is a testament to dedication, passion, and the power of human connection through art. An often lonely and difficult journey, Jadyn has channeled his experience and feelings into a multi-layered world of his own creation with his recent collection Raver Realm as well as a growing online community and IRL event series called Violet Rave.
After discovering onchain music in 2021, Jadyn started hosting a daily Twitter Spaces called “Violet Rave.” The radio-style network gained traction attracting a vibrant community spurring on the suggestion for Jadyn to throw an IRL rave. “I thought it sounded cool, and I thought they were absolutely crazy. In hindsight, I'm very grateful I ended up doing it. We threw the first rave in Brooklyn for NFT NYC, and had about 250 people come out from all around the world. That was my first realization that okay, “This is the thing that I've always wanted. This is the community that I've always wanted to build. And it's happening right in front of my eyes seeing all these people in real life, putting voices behind the profile pictures.” Ever since, I’ve felt like I needed to go all out on this. So I kept hosting the spaces every single day, kept growing the radio network, threw the second rave in Virginia, a month after threw our third rave in Cincinnati, Ohio, a month after that threw our fourth rave in Miami at Art Basel last year where we had over 500 people. This year we threw raves in Denver, LA, and New York, and now we're doing our eighth one in Miami at Art Basel again. It's kind of absurd to see all of this kind of come out of nowhere in the last two years. It's been a lot of hard work and really exciting.”
The growing community inspired his cornerstone collection, Raver Realm, a 1800 token collection representing a body of work encompassing nine songs and nine associated characters that are part of an “immersive musical odyssey.”
Personifying music through hand drawn characters representing different emotions and experiences, Jadyn conceptualized Raver Realm as a way to explore loneliness, discouragement, love, heartbreak, and lust with a goal of creating connection between the characters, the songs, and the audience. “I took nine new songs that I worked on for a year, and turned each song into characters that people can relate to beyond just the production and lyrics. I wanted to explore how to take this feeling of loneliness and battling with barriers everyday by myself and turn that into not only a song, but a character that people could really connect with. That was my entire purpose for Raver Realm, doing the raves throughout the last two years, building this culture and community, so that it actually makes sense to have a collection out there that people can be a part of and so that there's already something to be a part of.”
Unique characters like “Miss Influence,” “Comeback Kid,” “Rockstar Shit,” and “Dancing Damsel” are associated with various realms such as the Underground Realm, the Ethereal Realm, and the Dystopian Realm and embody a personality and story associated with each of the nine tracks from the project. Collectibles include utility that translates to the real world raves, such as gaining free access and getting free drinks. In addition to community building, the raves also function as Jadyn’s live performance platform. “I want to create a community where people can come together based on shared experiences, shared hobbies, shared vision, and shared alignment where people can grow together all based on the foundation of music and art. I think that's very important,” says Jadyn.
While working on Raver Realm, Jadyn wrote and produced over 100 songs including “Asleep at the Switch”–track ten from HIGH FREQUENCY Volume 2. Showcasing the heavier, trap-influenced side of Jadyn’s musical repertoire, “Asleep at the Switch” is an outtake from developing the Underground Realm where he used a darker musical palette. “I've made over 100 songs during the last year to get the final nine for the Raver Realm project, and “Asleep at the Switch” is one I made while creating the underground realm–the realm that encompasses that type of music. It was very fun making it. I made it in New York with a couple of friends. They were just getting lit, jumping up and down in the studio. And I was just really just going crazy on the song–heavy trap drums, 808s–and it's a vibe.”
Overtop heavy trap 808s, Jadyn approaches the beat with confidence finding a grungy flow amid the experimental soundscape. Resulting in what he aptly calls a “heavy mosh pit vibe,” “Asleep at the Switch” is a departure from Jadyn’s more popcentric material, shifting the focus to one of his first musical infatuations. “It’s a heavy trap song, which is kind of the foundation of my music career. That's how I got into the love of making music, and I was like, “Man, I need to stop trying to cater towards what other people will like and just put out something that I like, because that's what matters the most,” says Jadyn.
Staying true to the life altering gut instinct to listen to his heart and follow his joy, Jadyn continues to push onward with plans to release the Raver Realm songs, “Asleep at the Switch,” and other tracks from the vault on DSPs next year in addition to continuing to foster the Violet Rave community. “I think Violet Rave and Raver Realm have legs and a lot of room to run. And I'm in it for not the next one or two years, but the next 20, 30 years to see what we can really create.”
Collect Music NFTs from HIGH FREQUENCY Volume 2. “Asleep at the Switch” is the tenth track to be released from HIGH FREQUENCY Volume 2. “Asleep at the Switch” is dropping via Sound at 2pm PST on December 07, 2023
Collect and add HIGH FREQUENCY writing NFTs to your digital library.
Article by Wallace Morgan for HIGH FREQUENCY, NOISE’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe for more.