Javier Sanjurjo is one of those individuals that one can say has been in and out of music his whole life. He was born and raised on the island of Cuba, the Mecca of afro-Cuban rhythms and Latin music. At the age of five, his parents bought him a set of congas, and that was the beginning of it all. As a natural born musician he mastered the art of playing just about every percussion instrument. He was actively playing with all the local Latin salsa bands as a gifted child musician until he was 11 years old when unfortunately the communist revolution forced him to leave his beloved island. At 13 years old, his father aware of his musical talents bought him a drum set and sent him for drum lessons. After a year of constant practice he became a young power drummer in Chicago where he spend his teenage years. For four years he played on weekends and during summers all around the mid west with local bands that were actively playing. He remembers always being the youngest player in the groups and having to be accompanied by an adult when playing the bars and venues serving alcohol. He learned the music business playing to live audiences at a very early age.
At the age of 18 his family moved to New York and he took a four year break from playing to start a family business but his love for music led him to buy a guitar, learn the instrument and fall in love with the art of songwriting. He met a great songwriter and together formed a duo that was playing all of their original material all over New York. This lasted for two years.
At 24 years old he decided it was time to go back to playing drums and moved to Miami, where there was a heavy music scene happening. After a couple of months he was lucky enough to start playing drums with a well known disco/funk, 8 piece horn band called Turning Point. Doing shows for two years and playing six nights a week all over the southeast made him one of the most in demand drummers out of the Miami area. For the following five years he was the drummer for groups like Will Power, Nasty who later became Naasty kids and other working local bands. During the day he was being hired by the local recording studios as a session drummer/percussionist, and also recording with his own bands. At studios like Criteria, Coconuts, Studio Center and many others, where the hits of the times where being recorded.
This allowed him to gain an invaluable experience in audio, ear training and production.
After eight years of active professional drumming he wanted to have a family, got married and had a little girl followed by a son 4 years later. Being on the road all the time and playing venues was not the kind of life he wanted for his new family so he made the hard decision to raise a family and not continue in the music industry. He bought some recording equipment and started to record his own songs at home just for the love of it. He did this as a hobby for fifteen years which resulted in writing hundreds of songs and mastering the art of songwriting, but never marketing them.
Also during this long period he never lost his love of music and literally has been to hundreds of concerts and band performances.
One day after realizing that his two children where now grown up and he and his wife of 25 years had a real estate company that could pay the bills, he wanted to go back to the music business. He made the decision to start a production company in Knoxville Tennessee. He and a partner opened up Heartland Entertainment, and for four years became one of east Tennessee’s best live lighting and sound production companies. They also started to bring in national acts as promoters into the area and had a full time booking agency and equipment installation company for venues. As an audio engineer, he now tracks, edits and mixes projects for Black Dog Mastering Studio. He has also started a new BMI music Publishing company by the name of Play That Timba Music, to mainly market his own songs to major recording artists, movies and TV industry.
