Local soul/trip hop artist Jaxxee’s debut single “Gone” is thematically profound and deeply personal. The song—which dropped in August, followed by the release of “so tired” this month—offers listeners a story about Jaxxee’s life journey, with a glimpse of hope.
“[It’s about] letting go of relationships that don’t serve us,” she says, “and, I believe, that don’t deserve us anymore, because we too often out of guilt hang on to those relationships and let them eat us up or hurt us.”
When it comes to artistic expression, Jaxxee—who graduated from Camosun’s Business Administration-Accounting program in 2002—didn’t always have the impulse to be creative. Coming from a traumatic background, she originally took the opposite approach to managing her emotions.
“Growing up, my coping skill was definitely to be strong, and just push through and, you know, kind of bury it down, and I think we all just wanted to be like the normal kid,” she says.
Now as an adult, she’s ready to not only process her emotions, but to transform her trauma into something she feels is powerfully cathartic. Writing and music have been integral to her journey—but so has the act of putting the music out into the world.
“Writing and, actually, the art of sharing as well was part of my healing,” she says. “That’s the whole reason I wrote this song, and shared this song.”
And Jaxxee has a lot to heal from. “Gone” primarily focuses on the emotional journey she took when she finally allowed herself to spiritually break free from her father, once she reconnected with him after 20 years.
“I won’t give you any more pieces of me, you know?” she says. “And for me, it’s just, you know, someone that made you be small, over and over again, and use that as power… to finally take that power back. We all want to do that at some point, so it felt like it was time.”
One of the most cathartic aspects of the release for Jaxxee was a creative partnership with her 14-year-old daughter, who gave a stunning interpretive-dance performance in the “Gone” music video.
“It’ll probably always be my biggest accomplishment. The biggest,” says Jaxxee. “Based on [my] timeline, when I was, you know, when my parents were going through divorce, and my dad was going to jail, and I was going through all that, I was around that age. So it was, it almost just felt like the universe, right? I was like, who could play me at that age? And, you know, and here I have my daughter.”
In regards to creating art, Jaxxee encourages people to be bold, saying that they have to take the leap and share for anything to come of that creation—and to keep in mind that pleasing everyone isn’t the goal of art. You have to make it for your own fulfilment.
“Put it out there. Let people see it. Let people like it; let people not like it,” she says. “Let people, you know, take what they will… I know for myself, it’s definitely started to open more opportunities and things and that’s because I finally did it. I put it out there and I shared it.”