Dawn Jay back to woo Sri Lankan fans

By Rashika Fazali

He may look ‘One Direction’ young, but he is in fact 28-years-old. I believe what pulls his female fans towards him is his charisma. Dawn Jay is back in the country to write more music, promote his new single ‘Dadam’ and look after his father. This year, he wants to focus on getting an album done, but getting one done is not a simple task.

“Working on an album is way more tedious than working on a single, especially for an independent artist on an independent label since I’ve also got to focus on other aspects like marketing, time, etc. This year, my main focus is on producing singles, but that does not mean I won’t be doing albums anymore,” stated Jay. “I want people to digest one single at a time and make them feel the track.”

Everyone makes music for someone. He makes it for the girls more often than the guys. “My music goes by the theme of love, passion and sex. It usually depicts what a young guy goes through,” said Jay.

He is currently promoting his latest single, ‘Dadam,’ a more positive, happier song – something different from his earlier single, ‘What would you do.’ “I did a controversial video for that – a guy who cheats on his girlfriend and the response I got was more angry compared to the ‘awwwws’ I usually get for the other videos. I did lose a lot of female fans. To them I looked like a guy who was just giving excuses, but what I wanted to show them was that these things happen in the world today,” explained Jay.

The word ‘Dadam’ signifies the sound of a heart beat. “My co-writer Adam Mohammed and I were playing a game of cards and were listening to a couple of beats. That’s when we heard a beat that went like ‘badam.’ Later on we changed it to ‘dadam,’” said Jay.

He went on to say, “I wanted it to be a signature word. Like for a guy to say ‘I met this girl and my heart went like Dadam.’ I wanted them to have that moment,” stated Dawn. At present, he is also working on a video for this song.

Apart from all the ongoing proceedings, he is also working on a dance-dubstep track with The Sherifs. As far as the fans are concerned, Jay revealed that they should expect another love song – something they could easily relate to.

To get to such a position, he had to work hard, and life was certainly not easy for him. Having divorced parents is not easy any way, but for Dawn Jay, he had his love of his father, a baker who brought him up as an independent person. He won the Grade 5 scholarship and chose Royal College as his school. Just before he turned 18, he moved to Singapore to pursue a diploma in robotics engineering.

Nevertheless, he did one thing before he went abroad – he dropped an album called ‘Innersense’ on which the debut single ‘Ride with me’ gained the No. 1 spot on the SUN FM Hot 40 Chart back then.

Looking back at 2004, he said, “The album was a fusion of Sri Lankan hip hop and R&B.” He gets inspiration from Usher, Craig David, Jay Sean and Ne-Yo for his song writing skills and Trey Songz for his style and performance.

I asked him if he actually wanted to study robotics engineering and he said: “My dad wanted me to pursue it, I liked it in fact, but music was my thing – I was always into it. I just knew I wanted to be in the music industry.”

Singapore became his lucky ticket to fame and his dreams came true when a Singaporean label 1OR8FACTION signed him after ‘Time’ produced by Azi Sherif got a good response. At that time, he was DJ-ing while pursuing his music career.

“But the track that made people recognise me was ‘Liar’. They saw me as the character. The response was great! A lot of people from abroad were talking about it, especially from India. That video got over 200,000 likes on YouTube,” Jay revealed.

Speaking about the label he stated, “They gave me the freedom from planning to marketing to producing the songs – you name it – throughout the album. Most importantly, they promoted my image as ‘Dawn Jay’,” he said.

So how did he get the name ‘Dawn Jay’? “People in Singapore couldn’t pronounce my real name, Dhananjaya, so they shortened it and called me ‘Dawn Jay’,” explained Jay. Somewhere down the line, that led to naming his debut album, ‘The Dawning,’ which was released last year in January. “After ‘Time’ became successful, I thought it was time I put out an album,” said Jay. “The album certainly was a learning experience for me.”

For his debut album, he worked with some famous Sri Lankan producers like Azi Sherif, Nisal Gangodage and Pasan Liyanage while from Singapore he worked with Rouzan Raheem and Syam. Speaking about the album, he said: “It was tough, but worth it in the end.”

The response for this album was bigger in Singapore than in Sri Lanka where he was able to get himself a lot of gigs and opportunities to perform. “I was asked to perform in India as well at the Saarang Music Festival last December,” said Jay.

Last week, he performed at Alternative Sunday Round 8 and also at the Colombo Music Festival that was held in August. When I asked him if he has more plans and dreams for his future, he said: “As for now I want to go out to many countries as possible to perform. I would also like to collaborate with more overseas artistes. In order to earn something, you got be a showman first,” asserted Jay.

Revealing more of his plans, he stated that he is also working with Prince Leone to revive the hip hop and R&B culture in Sri Lanka by educating the society about these genres. “We are hoping to put up some shows in schools,” said Jay.

“Being Sri Lankan doesn’t stop me from performing for the international crowd,” stated Dawn. “I am just an artiste who is doing music for them, incorporating Sri Lankan music into my work.”   

If you want to check him out, you can find him on www.facebook.com/dawnjayonline, on Twitter as well as on his YouTube channel titled Dawn Jay.