After more than two decades behind the mixing board, Tandra Jhagroo is building a room where Jamaica’s next generation of creatives — musical and visual — can work under one roof.

We know the product placed in front of us. We watch the film, stream the song, admire the artwork — rarely thinking about the people whose insight, intellect and labour made any of it possible.

In music, one of those critical roles is sound engineering, in the studio and on the stage. And if you think women are few at the forefront of the industry, you may be appalled by how few there are behind it.

So let’s step into the studio and meet Tandra “DJ Lytes” Jhagroo — a Canadian-Jamaican recording and mix engineer, producer, DJ, sound designer, educator and creative entrepreneur.

Not simply because she is one of the few women, Jamaican or otherwise, working in audio engineering. Not only because of the work she has already done. But because of the work she is doing now, to pass the baton forward.

The work behind the credits

Jhagroo arrived in Jamaica from Canada while the music industry was in the middle of a chaotic transition from analogue to digital production. Her technical training became her leverage. She helped studios and engineers adapt to new recording technology, and earned the respect of established figures in the industry while doing it.

That expertise put her straight to work, and the work backs up the introduction.

She is credited as an assistant engineer and mixing assistant on Drake’s debut album, Thank Me Later. Her credits also include Sean Paul’s Tomahawk Technique and, more recently, assistant engineering on Coldplay’s 2024 album, Moon Music. She has worked in some of Jamaica’s best-known recording spaces, including Geejam and Tuff Gong, contributing to sessions with major local and international artistes.

For a more casual glimpse of Jhagroo in her own voice, she appeared in a 2021 video feature by Weed and Music.

From catalogue to community

Two decades in, her focus is no longer on building a catalogue of personal accomplishments.

“True legacy isn’t about how many hit records you accumulate on your own. It’s about building a foundation that outlasts you.”

Rather than stay in the traditional and highly competitive producer rat race, Jhagroo has redirected her energy toward something broader than the discipline she made her name in.

What she is building is an art studio. Not a recording booth with a lounge attached — a working space where music and visual art sit under the same roof, and where the people making both are close enough to hear each other.

It is an unusual thing for an engineer to build. It is also, on reflection, exactly the thing an engineer would build. Two decades of sessions teach you that a record is never made by one person in one room, and that the distance between the disciplines is usually the problem.

Why the room matters

For decades, Jamaica has shaped the sound of the world — and not only the sound. The album art, the flyers, the photography, the visual language that travelled with the music did as much work as the music did.

But when we talk about protecting that legacy, the conversation almost always stops at the microphone. We celebrate the artistes who stand in front of it. We occasionally remember the engineers and producers behind it. We rarely get as far as the illustrator, the designer, the photographer — the people who made the thing look like what it sounded like.

A space that holds both changes what’s possible. The album cover gets made in the same building as the album. A young painter learns what a session actually costs. A young engineer learns that the visual is not an afterthought someone handles later.

More practically, it means young people can get hands-on training, develop technical skill and experiment — with sound and with everything else. It means the next generation of creatives doesn’t have to rely on talent and luck alone, but can reach the equipment, the mentorship and the professional environment that sustainable careers are built on.

There is precedent for the investment. In Trench Town, the Jamaica Music Institute — JaMIN built a recording studio and certification laboratory under the Agency for Inner-City Renewal, funded through the UNDP, USAID, the Ministry of National Security and the Jamaica Social Investment Fund, and later supported by private money from Scotiabank and the NCB Foundation. Inner Circle’s Ian and Roger Lewis donated an upgraded console. Crucially, the point of JaMIN was never only records. It was training, certification and paid work for young people in the community.

JaMIN showed that public and private money will move toward creative infrastructure in Jamaica when someone makes the case for it. Jhagroo is making a wider one — for a space where the disciplines are not kept in separate buildings.

Her vision isn’t another studio. It’s a place where knowledge is transferred, creativity is nurtured across disciplines, and new professionals enter the industry standing on something solid.

An open invitation

This article is also an invitation — to investors, visionaries and members of the creative and entertainment industries.

An invitation to help build a space that trains and encourages the next cohort of engineers, producers, artistes and artists.

After more than two decades behind the scenes, Tandra Jhagroo is settling into a new groove. She’s inviting the industry to groove with her. For anyone who believes in the value of Jamaica’s creative talent, this is a chance to invest in the people, the training and the rooms that will carry it forward.

Find Tandra Jhagroo: Portfolio and booking on EngineEars · @mixedbylytes on Instagram · LinkedIn

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Written by K L Williams

Kerece Lilanie Williams is a poet and educator, and the author of three poetry collections published under the name Lilanie: Kisses and Lies, Above Water, and Faith and Favour: Odes of Gratitude for Unmerited Grace. She contributes her writing to Urban Vine Media, a creative initiative that fosters intellectual conversations around arts, culture, and entertainment in Jamaica and the diaspora.

She is also the founder of Write Ah Yaad, a vibrant writing community for Caribbean poets and storytellers, and the Chief “Copy Cat” behind MeowMedia Services, a platform helping creative entrepreneurs create and build their brands—because kats roar with MeowMedia.