Jon Sabillon

dance · electro

Jon Sabillon is a DJ, entrepreneur and multidisciplinary artist based in Lawrence, Kansas, and a native Mayan from San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He began DJing at the student station KJHK while an undergraduate at the University of Kansas, from which he graduated in 2011, and later took a master's degree at Berklee College of Music, where he was a showcase performer at the school's Valencia, Spain campus. He has played more than a thousand shows in dozens of cities across four continents, and his sets combine original tracks, remixes, mashups and live improvisation, ranging from classic hip-hop to electronic music. He is the only person to have received a United Nations ambassadorship for DJing, has given a TEDx talk, and has been recognised by the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Fundacio Palau de les Arts and Future Music Forum Barcelona. While at Berklee he founded what he describes as the first record label dedicated to robots, and he has since developed composition methods using quantum computers, run a company that designs custom DJ controllers and argues for a healthier and more inclusive DJ culture, and set up a nonprofit foundation exploring the outer edges of music, including using it to communicate with animals. He frames DJing as a soft skill rather than a technical one, grounded in emotional intelligence, flexibility, flow and empathy. He is listed on the Kansas Creative Arts and Industries Commission touring roster, which books him for both performances and community workshops. His Bandcamp catalogue centres on The Animixtape, a mashup collection released in May 2017 that draws on anime and video-game sources, with tracks such as Suit & TIE Fighters and Earth, Wind & Bieber, alongside the standalone 2017 track Stranger Blood.

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