Where most musicians find themselves concerned with elements like melody, harmony, and genre Pulitzer Prize-nominated composer Jlin thinks on a deeper level.
Jlin's erratic, expansive application of rhythms and outside-the-lines drum patterns demonstrate her lack of concern with standards or traditions. That desire to depart from tradition is palpable throughout Jlin's catalog, from her debut LP, Dark Energy, to her lauded follow-up, Black Origami, to her new mini-album, Perspective.
"I don't operate in technicalities. I operate in intuition. I create intuitively," Jlin tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom from her home in Indiana. "I love to start from blank spaces. Everything for me is a blank canvas because I know everything is in nothing, and that's a good feeling."
When beginning from that blank canvas, deeply human concepts and functions like balance and movement serve as guiding lights. These concepts have been providing inspiration in Jlin’s life since she was very young, due largely to her parents' influence. Her mother has a wide-ranging taste in music and elucidated the underlying connection among all forms of music — a connection Jlin applies in her craft to this day.
"I can easily bounce from Igor Stravinsky to Kevin Gates to Phoebe Snow to Bach back to DaBaby all in the same space because they're all important. That balance is crucial," Patton says.
Both her parents exposed her to the magic of movement; after church every Sunday, Jlin and her parents would dance together to the sounds of legendary Chicago radio DJ Herb Kent. Today, Jlin can access her sonic creativity through various movements — from the martial arts practices of wang chun and wushu (which she also considers "crucial" to her work) to choreography found in movies like Memoirs of a Geisha.
Jlin also creates music designed for movement. She’s composed for dance productions from celebrated choreographers, including Wayne McGregor’s "Autobiography" and Kyle Abraham’s "Requiem: Fire in the Air of the Earth," the latter of which was performed at the legendary Lincoln Center in New York City. For both productions, Jlin was largely trusted to be herself in her composition process.
This same independent yet connected method is also how she engaged with GRAMMY-winning, Chicago-based percussion ensemble Third Coast Percussion (TCP). In 2022, TCP interpreted Jlin's forthcoming mini album, Perspective, and their collective work was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Out Sept. 29, Jlin's Perspective is an electronic interpretation of her project with TCP. "My pieces are like my kids. They're all their own standalones. They’re their own beings. You have to love them differently. They have different personalities," Jlin says.
GRAMMY.com spoke to Jlin about working with TCP on Perspective, working with dancers like McGergor, how movement and balance continue to drive her forward.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Balance is a core tenet of your composition approach. How do you apply that sense of balance when you're producing?
The production does that for you. Every time I sit in this chair, I'm humbled. The affirmation of when I finish a piece — no matter how much I was tugging, or fighting with the piece — the result was worth going through that tugging phase. You know that it's there, but you have to find it, and you have to go into yourself to find it.
It's like two parents. One parent is making you see yourself — the things you do not like about yourself that you need to correct and then the other parent is very reassuring. Giving you constant affirmations. It's a balance that’s much needed for me.
In your music, which is often absent of lyrics, drums frequently play the role of melody, harmony, and other elements outside of pure rhythm and beat. How do you think listeners can connect to drums?**
Well the original drum is the heartbeat, and without it you have nothing. So for me, rhythm is love and love is rhythm. I’m a walking rhythmic person or being.
When I think about percussion, I think about all these drums — I’ll go on my little adventure, rabbit hole days is what I like to call them — about three or four years ago I first learned about the Burundi drums and I was just totally fascinated.
I love when things, especially percussion, strike me differently. I love Taiko drumming as well. Love it because those are different types of feels. As far as the rhythm, the love, the flow, the fluidity, that is all the same family. They all make me feel different. It allows me to express differently. Rhythm to me it's an expression of love, and love is everything.
The drums are probably the most accessible instrument — anything you can tap can be a drum. Plus, drums have been used in indigenous cultures for thousands of years.
When the music got taken out of the public school system — particularly the Black public school system — what were we doing? We were beating on our desks with our fists and our pencils. We were beatboxing. That's a drum. Look how much has happened since then: hip-hop. The rest is history.
How do you translate the idea of different movements, like dancing or martial arts, into sonic form?
The movement, whatever that is, whatever that choreography is, will tell me what to do.
I often try to embody my drums after the way that Eartha Kitt’s body moves. All the time. All the time. Because she was so sporadic in this lush, brilliant—in her brilliance. In her goddess form. Her body has told me what to do many times when I needed an inspiration for something. \
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Lately, the person I’ve really been watching, and she reminds me very much of Eartha Kitt but in a different way, is Tamisha Guy. She is definitely a person who is so in tune with herself, and you can see. It’s just all over the way her body moves.
The way a person blinks their eyes could inspire me to write an entire piece. It just depends on the body of that movement or range of motion.
One way this connection between music and movement has arisen within your professional career is the numerous dance productions you’ve worked on. What is it like for you to integrate another creative into your process like you did with Wayne McGregor?
Wayne [McGregor] is a beautiful person, first of all…he's a gem of an individual. That man really does trust me musically, and I'm so grateful that he does. For example, when we did "Autobiography," that was a very intimate concept, and to have that level of trust with something so intimate takes a lot.
When people approach me it’s because they're looking for me to be me. What I love about working with people like Wayne and Kyle [Abraham] is that they come in with the trust. And then they come in looking for me to be myself under the concept or the idea of whatever the project or the collaboration is.
With anybody, especially working in that depth I always get to know them, the person first before I start the work. I go and study the way that they move on YouTube, whatever I can get, and I ask them to send me sketches of them dancing. Whatever it is, [if] you're at home. You're in the park. Just send me something, and I grab hold to that. And then I reinterpret that sonically.
That's how I've always worked. So for example, when I was working with Kyle Abraham, he's also very sporadic to me, but with a massive signature. I feel like if I saw something I could tell if Kyle choreographed the piece.
That makes it even more of a beautiful chemistry because there are pieces that, for example, Wayne created that my music absolutely does not work for. Same thing with Kyle. It's great that it doesn't work all the time because it's not supposed to. It's absolutely not supposed to. That goes back to, again, balance.
Another collaborator you’ve worked with recently was Third Coast Percussion, which interpreted your new mini-album Perspective through their percussion arsenal. What did you think of their take on your work?
I loved it. I always love someone else's perspective. That's one of the reasons I named it Perspective because if I wrote the track one way I don't want to hear that shit the same way. Arrange it the way that you see fit. I'm interested in: What is your arrangement? Or how do you see that? What is your interpretation?
How did knowing that your pieces were going to be reinterpreted affect your approach in creating them?
It didn’t because I love acoustic percussion as much as I love electronic. In my mind, they’re not separate. They’re the same family.
That’s why I think I'm able to have this versatility because I've never separated them in my head. When I hear strings, and then when I hear strings electronically, they're all the same family. So it wasn't different for me
I went to their studio and they have a massive acoustic percussion [collection]. Their physical library is insane. If you were there for a week, you couldn't record everything. You’re there for eight hours a day and you couldn't record everything.
I think I was there two eight-to-12-hour days and I recorded as much as I could. When a person approaches me with an idea — I think that's part of why they trust me, because I don't have a pallet.
My superpower is having nothing…. I love to create from that because it requires that I go into the core of myself and tap into myself, which can be very frustrating at times, but it requires me to push myself.
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Do you think approaching the project with this emphasis on the idea of perspectives encouraged you to include a wide range of perspectives on the album?
It's not my place to tell them what to think about those pieces. That is totally their imagination, and I feel like that about anything I create.
The perspective is gonna change to each person that listens. That's a beautiful thing. That's what makes the world go around because we're all different.
I already know with it going out there are going to be people who don't understand it. Some people are gonna hate it. Some people will love it. Some people will find it interesting. All of those people are needed. Balance. So I'm not thinking about that. I'm just the vessel that it came through. Now it’s out in the world.
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