Today we’d like to introduce you to Danielle Johnson.
Hi Danielle, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born in Ft. Lauderdale, FL but moved to Atlanta when I was around the age of 7. This is where music entered my life when my family bought me my first piano. I didn’t follow lessons well because I loathed reading music, though I played by ear and would teach myself songs. Fast forward to middle school. I had noticed that the band and chorus kids were allowed to go on a field trip to Gatlinburg. Truth be told, I just wanted to go on these cool trips, so I joined the chorus! By the time I reached high school, I decided to move out of chorus and joined the percussion section in the band, took some private drum lessons, and eventually joined the drumline in the marching band. At this point in time, music was just another extracurricular activity, though I learned some basic sight-reading skills and simple music theory.
College is where I really started to understand how amazing music was and I invested my time into learning more. I was initially a music technology minor at Georgia Southern University where I learned Pro-tools basics and two years of music theory. I soon picked up the bass guitar and was playing open mic nights, jamming with friends on a regular basis, and started recording. This is also the time I started to attend music festivals in which my life was changed forever. For the first time, it clicked that music was indeed what I wanted to do in my life.
Fast forward a couple of years, nearing the end of 2010, I had moved back down to the Miami area. At that point, I joined a 6-piece collective playing keys and went to a music production school, SAE Miami, to get my certificate in electronic music production where I learned Reason, Logic, and Ableton DAWS. It really dawned on me the power of production and how much easier it was to complete pieces. In the summer of 2011, JiRiKi was born, and I entered the electronic production and DJ community. I have been producing ever since, though music doesn’t necessarily pay the bills. After the birth of my two sons (2016 and 2017), I co-founded a new business venture in the hemp industry which I run today. This allows me to be purely creative with my music and not have to worry about where my next paycheck is coming from. Since then, I have also returned to school to get a Business Administration degree as well as a minor in Music and Entertainment Business under the Joel A. Katz program at Kennesaw State University, which has provided even more opportunities in the industry. I juggle a lot, but it’s worth it.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think for most musicians, the road is never an easy one. My biggest obstacle has been becoming a mother and trying to continue playing shows and festivals while also making money. This ultimately led to putting down music for a while to focus on my family. It was not an easy road at first, as a lot of the momentum I was gaining came to a halt. Even though it was difficult to put down music, I wouldn’t change any of it. Now that the kids are a bit older, I have been able to focus on making music and picking up gigs again, but this time my whole outlook has changed. I feel more in tune with myself and my production, which has allowed for amazing creative flow in the studio.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As far as my professional career in the music industry, it began in 2011 when I started my JiRiKi project in Miami. Becoming an electronic music producer, I had to think about how I was going to play this music for an audience. I decided that becoming a DJ was the most direct path. I never saw myself being a DJ, and I had no idea how to do it. Learning how to DJ (at least well) was not as easy as it looked, though with practice I started picking up gigs with the likes of Massive Ideas and Moksha, and started playing parties during WMC, Art Basel, and even played on UM radio station.
At the time, I was producing and playing dubstep, drumstep, garage, drum and bass, trap, and juke styles, which were not the most popular genres for Miami, so I decided to move back to Atlanta with a new music project in tow. I felt that the Atlanta scene would be a better fit with the broken beat styles I was creating. I quickly started picking up gigs around the Southeast and started playing festivals including Sweetwater 420 Music Festival, Counterpoint Music Festival, Imagine Music Festival, Gratifly Music Festival, and more. I also worked festival gigs in various departments from Artist Relations to Art Deco for festivals including Tomorrow World, Imagine Music Festival, Shaky Knees Music Festival, Shaky Boots Music Festival, and Sweetwater 420 Festival.
After a few years of touring and gigging, I became a mother and had to step out of the industry for a while, but I have recently come back into the fold with a whole new perspective and a whole new style in my production. In recent years, I have been immersed into the house scene and have been producing bass house and tech house music. Now that I am getting comfortable in these styles, I feel that I am in a turning point of merging broken beat styles with house music, with the emphasis on bass.
I am a bass head, and I am a house head. How can I merge the two? That is the challenge I have undertaken, and I am having a blast experimenting with this crossover of genres. I believe this is what makes my new music unique and sets me apart from most other producers. I don’t perfectly fit in anyone’s box, and I am going against the grain a bit by taking two different worlds and bringing them together.
Since I have returned to the scene with this new music, my momentum has really picked up again with bookings in the city as well as out-of-state festivals. I am excited to be joining the stage at Hulaween Music Festival in Live Oak, FL, as well as Slumberland Music festival outside of EDC – Orlando. I am grateful for the gigs I have been able to land this year, and it has motivated me to plan and put in prep work for 2023. I have, in a way, picked up where I left off and I am ecstatic to see where the future takes me.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?The last few years, I haven’t really had a lot of time to indulge in books, blogs, or podcasts unless it is for research. Owning my own business, going back to school part-time, managing two young children, and somehow finding time to get in the studio doesn’t give me a lot of free time. I use a lot of business apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Click Up, but I also use Photoshop and Lightroom for all my photography and graphic design work that I do for my music project. When it comes to music, I am an Ableton user with a variety of third-party plug-ins such as Serum, Izotope, and Omnisphere.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jirikimusic.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/DJ_Jiriki
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JiRiKiBass
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DJ_JiRiKi
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8OViUtyv_asRbtReD9EIaw
- SoundCloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/jiriki
Image Credits
The two Live Photos are credited to Alec Robertson AKA “Strayaways Media”. All the other photos where taken by me.
