Can Jay: When life imitates ART
The white-hot music studio in the south of Ibiza that’s a hub for culture and creativity, thanks to the Turkish music producer Cumhur Jay.
Ibiza has always felt familiar to me. As soon as I started to come here it felt like home, because of the same weather conditions, the same ecosystem I felt an immediate connection and a sense of homecoming.
In the rural south of Ibiza, the Turkish music producer Cumhur Jay has created an otherworldly residential recording studio with a retro, seventies-inspired aesthetic that has made it the go-to for the hippest artists of the moment. L’Officiel Ibiza caught up with Cumhur at Can Jay to find out how Ibiza has stolen his heart.
L'OFFICIEL IBIZA: You have a long history with the island. How did you end up living in Ibiza?
CUMHUR JAY: I’ve been working in Ibiza for the last 10 years or so. I came in 2012 as a resident DJ for Space and have worked here almost every summer since. It’s interesting actually – I grew up in rural Turkey, in a small village that’s not dissimilar to the whitewashed villages you see here. Because of that, Ibiza has always felt familiar to me. As soon as I started to come here it felt like home – the same weather conditions, the same ecosystem. I felt an immediate connection and a sense of homecoming. I came up with the studio idea during the pandemic. It’s something I’d played with in my mind for a long time, and as soon as they started to talk about lockdown, my first thought was ‘I have to get back to Ibiza.’ That was an intense and powerful feeling. I knew it in my heart. And then I started to search for the house. I found it on the internet. The house had once been abandoned and it was totally unmodernised, and the access is still quite difficult. There was a lot of unused land and I’ve spent the last two years trying to bring life back to the grounds and the gardens. I’ve revived the orange groves so that next year we will be harvesting fruit again. I’ve planted a lot of wheat. My mission is to reconnect the land with the house. It’s amazing to see how nature reacts when you give it a bit of attention.
LOI: Your recording studio is a work of art. How did the idea come to fruition?
CJ: I’d always dreamed of having a place where I could just hang out and make my music. I really hate recording studios – they look the same, they feel the same; it’s like being in the gym. You only want to spend an hour in there, then you’re done. It’s very hard to try and create something meaningful - be it art or music or design – when there are constraints on your time and when the environment is stagnant. When musicians come to Can Jay, they can spend as long as they like. Relax when they want to relax. Create when they want to create. There are two recording studios, and both have beautiful, soulful energy. One is in a little converted olive oil mill, so that one is cool. There is a big musical library – I guess it’s like a record store really - where artists can get inspired listening to music from the 1970s and 1980s or search for some samples. We have a lot of vintage instruments too – pieces with a cool sound. The idea is just to surrender to the process. I don’t think there can be a time restriction on being creative. You know, we’re just here, letting things happen naturally. We don’t rush. You just come and chill. You can relax by the pool, cook some food, then go back to the studio. It’s like another planet. It’s my universe.
LOI: Your home has featured in some very influential design magazines. What informs your decorating style?
CJ: To begin with, this house is very, very old. I believe there has been a structure here for around 600 years. So, the style of the building - both inside and out - is super rustic. I’ve tried to respect the feeling of the house and choose objects that go with the surroundings. In my case, I’ve chosen a mix of contemporary and antique pieces to create a kind of balance. I didn’t really begin with any sort of a plan, I just made it up over the last two years. I think with a house like this it’s important to occupy the space first and see how it flows. There are some really interesting pieces in the house from my travels and pieces that have been made by people I know. I have some ceramics made by a friend of mine. His family have a ceramics studio and he started to make ceramic pieces without having any experience. The objects he created were actually brilliant, naive yet stran-
gely sophisticated. And I have these two contemporary white sofas by the Italian mid-century architect and designer Mario Bellini. They are iconic pieces – curvaceous and almost bulbous – and somehow, they fit really well in the house. And there are lot of antique pieces from the farm and the land outside – old wooden agricultural equipment, pieces made of sabina. And some salvaged items from the 1950s. It’s a real mix. I’m very interested in design because I work in quite a fluid way. I don’t believe that you must belong to one discipline or another. If you’re in the music industry, you’re connected to fashion as well. And then if you’re in fashion, you need to relate to art and creative direction. I think this all goes together. I can’t separate the disciplines in my mind. That said, I don’t attach myself too much to objects. I don’t have feelings for individual items.
Things are moved around all the time, and as soon as an item’s mission is done, I’m ready to get rid of it or change it or sell it. I’m not really stuck on pieces. The house is as much of a project as my music. It’s an ongoing thing. Sometimes things fit and sometimes they don’t. I try to respect the flow of the space and the feeling of the environment. But that can change day by day.
My mission is to reconnect the land with the house. It's amazing to see how nature reacts when you pay attention.
LOI: You’ve done some amazing events at Can Jay – with Gucci, for example – how did that happen?
CJ: It’s all been quite organic really. I think that the decor, the Can Jay lifestyle, the house itself and the studio definitely attract attention. It’s an intriguing concept. And I have a lot of friends involved in fashion and media because I lived in Paris for so long, so that has helped. I had the idea quite early to ‘activate’ the spaces with interesting happenings and to draw attention to issues that affect the island. For the Gucci event, we decided to do a dinner in this huge empty water reservoir. With such little rain and high demand for water, Ibiza and Formentera suffer from frequent droughts and the underground aquifers are being rapidly depleted. Once upon a time this water tank would have been full, but it has now lain empty for 25 years. It’s a talking point and it initiates the right kind of conversation. Together with Raquel Sanchez and Parsida Aboud we filled it with rugs and cushions and candles and flowers and set a long, low table. Everyone dressed beautifully, very bohemian, and sat on woven floor cushions. It was magical actually and felt quite unexpected and unpretentious. I think that’s the beauty of this place – it all feels quite ‘undone’, which of course is the feeling that everyone wants right now. And of course, the interiors are quite unusual, with lots of modern art. I think that’s what attracted Architectural Digest when they did their report.
LOI: The lifestyle here seems almost perfect. Do you have a philosophy for living?
CJ: It's all about balance. A balance of work, of money, of time spent being busy and time spent doing very little. I really, really believe in balance. Of course, it’s important to have a goal, but it’s also important to offset that with time out. Life is intense. We need to make time to switch off. I think finding little things to make ourselves happy is the key. Spending time on ways to be present. It’s like making music - those 12 notes don’t actually mean anything, they’re just momentary, but it’s a great tool to connect us to be present and to focus. So, my philosophy is to be present in order to not worry about the future. Time is subjective depending on how you spend it.
