Dejima: Kaveh Hodjat's musical window
Photos by Sasha Gayko
By Izzie Claudio
When Kaveh Hodjat, better known as Dejima, performed at the Spring Showcase for Emerson College’s radio station WECB, he was beaming with joy as he jammed on his guitar. At the Paramount Theatre, Dejima was the first group to take to the stage and kick off a night of live music hosted by WECB. The audience was full of antsy students and community members ready to groove. Hodjat plays almost all the instruments when he records his songs, which you can hear on all streaming platforms. However, for live performances, he has a full band behind him. The group performed a slew of songs from his discography, even teasing a then-unreleased track from his new EP Swollen, which was released on April 18th.
Though there were audio issues with the keyboard, the entire band worked together to make light of the technical difficulties. While they played an improvised tune, two band-mates waltzed around the stage lifting the spirits of their fellow musicians and the audience who joyfully watched.
“The show [on April 10th] was a breakthrough for me, feeling comfortable on stage, which is funny because it was a musician’s worst nightmare,” he says. Hodjat’s gentle voice lulled the crowd into a sway, as the fog machine spouted a mist of smoke behind them. Flooded in blue lights, Hodjat shared the sound of Dejima: a dreamy atmosphere of rich bass lines, toe-tapping drum fills, and hypnotizing guitar riffs.
Dejima is the musical alias of Kaveh Hodjat, a junior Visual Media Arts major at Emerson College. Hodjat was drawn to the name Dejima for a couple of reasons. First, it was inspired by his dad. “It was the name of my dad's first [business] startup, his first professional thing, so I was like, ‘Okay, this is my first professional thing.’ So, I’ll carry the torch.” he says. Dejima is also the name of a Japanese Island used as their main trading port in the 17th Century. “All that the world saw of Japan was just this little island. For me, Dejima is the little window that I use to express stuff…there's a whole personality behind Dejima, but that's my outlet to release stuff.”
In a cozy apartment in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood, he proudly has three guitars on display in his bedroom: his electric, a new 12-string acoustic that he is excited to own, and a light brown bass that a family friend passed on to him. There’s a camera collection above his guitars and a poster of Paul McCartney, his favorite Beatle and an important inspiration. This space showcases his passions, not only is he a musician, but he is a filmmaker, both areas he has immersed himself in since a young age. “Every time I would listen to music, I would envision movies playing in my head,” he says.
Hodjat started his musical journey with the drums, and when he performs live with a full band, he finds a moment to return behind the snare and high hat and jam out. “I’ve been playing drums since I was four…the drum set is like my comfort zone, I never feel unsafe there.” He grew up in the Bay Area, and his garage jam sessions with his dad and brother always attracted the curiosity of passers-by. Once his brother left for college and his dad played his guitar less, he needed to fill the musical void. “I got into production, and I got into guitar, bass, and piano. Then, COVID really gave me time to dive into all that stuff,” he says. Now, he’s performing in basements and stages around Boston. April has been especially busy due to the excitement surrounding his new EP Swollen.
Swollen is a collection of songs Hodjat has wrote the past 3 years. “I started bridging all the songs like, ‘Oh, this one kind of sounds like this one, and this one also sounds like this one,’” he says. “If I put them together, that could be cool. They could all come together.” Hodjat tapped into another of his passions for this project, creating a short film that visually threads together each of the 6 tracks on Swollen.
Hodjat wrote, co-directed, edited, and starred in the 30-minute short film that brings together all the songs of Swollen. “The Swollen film is definitely the biggest thing I've ever made,” he says. “In the film, we perform all the songs fully live, but it's the lyrics of what I'm singing [that] have to do with what my character is going through.” The project expresses Hodjat’s frustrations, and he turned to music to express what he’s gone through and has been going through. He discusses the inspiration behind the album title. “[It’s] this autoimmune thing that I have where my skin kind of swells up or hives sometimes. So, a lot of it was from [the] frustration of that, but then there were also other songs that were just like, I was annoyed at like something. It’s a very annoyed EP,” he says.
Hodjat keeps all of his songs organized on his computer. “I have a serious folder and a messing around folder,” he says pointing out the files on the screen. First, he organizes them by year, so that he can understand the headspace he was in when the song was written. Then, he places each song in their respective folders. The “serious” folder holds tunes that he wrote on the guitar or piano and intends to be a completed piece. “I have the structure down, I have the lyrics down, and I have the whole thing in my head…When I start recording it’s like, how close can I get to the vision in my head,” he says.
The “messing around” folder is for songs he started on the production software Logic, simply playing around with a combination of sounds. “It takes the pressure off…This is just [a] pure exploration of sounds and where it could go. A lot of times that leads to a way more interesting result,” he says. “It really pushes [me] because if I’m trying to make something sound really good, then I tend to limit myself.” Swollen is a mix of those folders, a full scope of song journeys that begin from a plan or lack thereof.
Hodjat takes a moment to let his cat, Misty, leave the room. She tends to mischievously climb his curtains, but he loves her presence, letting her stay until she meows to leave. He shared some music paraphernalia he had around his room, including a signed Jamiroquai CD. He also consulted Spotify to aurally explain his musical inspirations. The sounds of musicians such as Djo and Loving filled the room.
Djo, a band led by Joe Keery, is not just an inspiration for Hodjat. He also had the opportunity to work with their producer and co-writer Adam Thein on Swollen. “I want this EP to be a next step compared to everything else I’ve done. I feel like it needs something to take it to the finish line…I need another ear,” he says. He cold-emailed Thein when he was finishing up Swollen, and once he sent his EP, he was excited to receive a response that Thein loved what he heard. The two worked together to polish up Swollen, and Hodjat looks forward to collaborating with him more in the future. “It was a dream come true working with him,” he says.
Hodjat is giddy to have Swollen out in the world. “I feel like I never worked this hard on a project before and put so much of myself into it,” he says. As he looks to the future with bright eyes and a smile, he hopes to continue fusing his love for music and film and be in a consistent state of creation. “One year I make a movie, then the other year I make an album, and then the other year, I go on tour. If that could just be my lifestyle,” he says. “I think that’s the dream.”