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For DaMojanad, music is a family affair
The rapper and producer fuels his negative emotions into art
By Haya Najdawi, Jordan News
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AMMAN — — “It was fate,” said
Ayham Mojanad, a 23-year-old Jordanian-Palestinian-Syrian rapper and producer
also known as DaMojanad. “I did not choose hip-hop as my career, hip-hop chose
me.”اضافة اعلان
Music is a family business for the Mojanads. When the artist was young, his father ran his own recording studio back in Syria, and in 2011, when he was only 12 years old, he started learning how to produce music on his own.
Mojanad performing at his collaborator BigSam’s album release concert on April 11, 2019, in Al-Shams Theater. (Photo: Handouts from Ayham Mojanad)
“I started as a producer, not a singer. I practically grew up in the recording studio, and I taught myself sound engineering,” he said.
Depression and angry feelings have inspired many of DaMojanad’s music, which he describes as a way to express feelings that he cannot express by any other means. “I do not really know how to talk about my feelings,” he said. “I do not know how to share my thoughts and emotions, so music is my way to vent. Most of my songs are inspired from my depression.”
The rapper relies on producing music as his main source of income. “In general, Arab artists started benefiting financially from music like two years ago, when platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music became available in the region,” he said.
“But for me, I rely financially on producing the music more than the platforms.”
The process of crafting beats is always fun for him. “I always start with guitars: I make sure I like how they sound, then I add other sounds like drums, and later on I decide whether I want to keep the beat for me and make it into a song or sell it to other artists,” he said.
“Recently I started selling beat licenses on a website called ‘beatstars’, where you can purchase the license for a certain beat for like $35, or you can communicate with me directly, so I can make a custom beat for you,” he added.
DaMojanad cares deeply about the visual element of the music industry. “Until now, there are some people in the scene that think they can record something and post it with a random poster for example, and I find that very annoying,” he said. “They should put more effort into the visual side of the work, so they do not end up regretting it later on.”
DaMojanad has collaborated regularly with fellow musician, singer, and songwriter BigSam, who has over 600,000 subscribers on YouTube. “I love working with BigSam,” he said. “He understands what I want to do, he gets my perspective, and adds his own to make beautiful songs.”
He added that two of his favorite songs were made in collaboration with BigSam: “Ya Gamar” (meaning ‘You moon’), which hit over 6.5 million views on YouTube, and “Amwaj” (meaning waves) with half a million views.
“I had recently come out of a depressive episode, when I wrote verses for these both songs,” he recalled. “I would say those are my favorites out of all the songs I have ever done. I am usually not really sure about my songs, but those I genuinely loved.”
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Music is a family business for the Mojanads. When the artist was young, his father ran his own recording studio back in Syria, and in 2011, when he was only 12 years old, he started learning how to produce music on his own.
Mojanad performing at his collaborator BigSam’s album release concert on April 11, 2019, in Al-Shams Theater. (Photo: Handouts from Ayham Mojanad)
“I started as a producer, not a singer. I practically grew up in the recording studio, and I taught myself sound engineering,” he said.
Depression and angry feelings have inspired many of DaMojanad’s music, which he describes as a way to express feelings that he cannot express by any other means. “I do not really know how to talk about my feelings,” he said. “I do not know how to share my thoughts and emotions, so music is my way to vent. Most of my songs are inspired from my depression.”
The rapper relies on producing music as his main source of income. “In general, Arab artists started benefiting financially from music like two years ago, when platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music became available in the region,” he said.
“But for me, I rely financially on producing the music more than the platforms.”
The process of crafting beats is always fun for him. “I always start with guitars: I make sure I like how they sound, then I add other sounds like drums, and later on I decide whether I want to keep the beat for me and make it into a song or sell it to other artists,” he said.
“Recently I started selling beat licenses on a website called ‘beatstars’, where you can purchase the license for a certain beat for like $35, or you can communicate with me directly, so I can make a custom beat for you,” he added.
DaMojanad cares deeply about the visual element of the music industry. “Until now, there are some people in the scene that think they can record something and post it with a random poster for example, and I find that very annoying,” he said. “They should put more effort into the visual side of the work, so they do not end up regretting it later on.”
DaMojanad has collaborated regularly with fellow musician, singer, and songwriter BigSam, who has over 600,000 subscribers on YouTube. “I love working with BigSam,” he said. “He understands what I want to do, he gets my perspective, and adds his own to make beautiful songs.”
He added that two of his favorite songs were made in collaboration with BigSam: “Ya Gamar” (meaning ‘You moon’), which hit over 6.5 million views on YouTube, and “Amwaj” (meaning waves) with half a million views.
“I had recently come out of a depressive episode, when I wrote verses for these both songs,” he recalled. “I would say those are my favorites out of all the songs I have ever done. I am usually not really sure about my songs, but those I genuinely loved.”
Read more Trending
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