John Smith & Daja

Highlight Reel

Live Performance

Music Video

2013 Nominee – Instrumental Artist of the Year – 23rd Annual LA Music Awards

2013 Nominee – Jazz Artist of the Year – 23rd Annual LA Music Awards

Our mission is all about building bridges between musical genres, generations, races, and cultures, past and present. What people will discover when they listen to our music? “It is Love”. Having such a mindset enables our production environment to be more conductive for innovative things to happen.

At an early age performing with such artist as Anita Baker, Force MD’s, Chapter 8, and The Time, as well as legends Martha Reeves and LJ Reynolds, John Smith came up with the concept of combining the forms of Jazz, Funk, R&B, and Latin. Which birth the form know now as “Latin Funk”. His vision of the genre came to be after the tragic death of the artist Selina. From that moment John internalized his vision and proceeded to go forth and create the sound that dwelled within him.

To this day Da`Ja has built the bridge of these special genres of music together and presented it to the people. Some popular venues were the Detroit Gem Theatre, Fisher Theatre, Chene Park, Hart Plaza, The Detroit Opera House, and their debut performance at Captain’s Bar and Grill.

Da`Ja continued progression is to capture the international circuit and bring Latin Funk to the forefront of the music industry.

Who is John Smith? John grew up in church, created his first band in Jr. High School, played in street bands, performed in talent shows and indoor/outdoor private functions.
As he grew older, John continued to pursue his musical career and developed in many different music genres and plays guitar, trumpet and drums. John’s focus now is on arranging, writing and playing the drums.
John created the group Da’Ja. (The name means “Ready”). Da’Ja had to revamp in 2002. John came up with a new idea to create a new sound. The idea came from the Latin singing-legend Selena. She created a new Latin- Pop sound and John created what is now known as Latin-Funk. John then started to recruit new musicians and they released their first CD “Straight Up John Smith & Da’Ja”.
Da’Ja opened up for such artists as Anita Baker, Chapter 8, Martha Reeves, The Forced MD’s, The Time, Carl Carlton and a host of other artists.
Da’Ja is about building bridges between musical genres, generations, race and culture – past and present. Their second CD “Up & Ready” (2008) is already receiving critical acclaim for its hit single “Lost Chronicals”. Now preparing for their third CD release “Da-Jay” – it is hot!
John Smith and Da’Ja has performed in venues and festivals throughout the country. Look for John Smith & Da’Ja at a venue near you. The group is available for private and public functions. For booking information contact Michael Mills Entertainment Group at (313) 221-3106.