Talk Digi To Me
Excited to talk digital marketing, business and entrepreneurship? Let's go!
I'm your host Carlie Robinson and with my guests we'll uncover digital marketing tools and trends, and gather insights into how to make your business more successful. We'll also hear stories from successful business owners on what helped or hindered them along their path.
This year marks 21 years in advertising for me and I'm celebrating by sharing my passion for digital marketing and my studio in Barbados with all of you!
Talk Digi To Me
Talk Digi To Me March FWD: Jaslyn Hall
Jaslyn Hall radiates energy and wisdom from the moment she begins speaking with host Carlie Robinson in this vibrant episode of Talk Digi to Me's March FWD series. With a lifetime of global adventures, Hall has crafted an extraordinary career spanning education, event planning, radio, television, and cultural production across multiple continents.
The conversation flows like a masterclass in fearless living as Hall shares her journey from a child who lined up dolls to teach them, to becoming a sought-after creative strategist who has led multicultural projects for world expos and government events. Her early inspiration came from civil rights activist and author Alice Walker, whose disruptive spirit and connection to ancestry resonated deeply with Hall.
Music emerges as the thread connecting Hall's diverse experiences. As she eloquently puts it, "Music really does unite us." This philosophy guided her work hosting Australia's national World Music Show on Triple J, producing Caribbean-focused radio programs, and even selecting the musical accompaniment for 45 different countries during the Asian Games in Qatar. The highlight of her musical career came during the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where she served as artistic consultant and created "Hemispheres" – a three-day festival of global music that brought together her favorite artists from around the world.
Hall's travels have taken her from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to experiencing the Festival in the Desert in Mali. These experiences illuminate her core belief that we must make efforts to know and understand each other across cultural boundaries.
The conversation shifts to Hall's forthcoming book, "Living in the Gap," which explores the transformative space between where we are and where we want to be. After waking up one morning and spontaneously declaring "I'm letting go," Hall discovered that creating space in her life allowed everything to flow more naturally. This philosophy has become her guide to living with calm purpose even in high-pressure situations.
When asked about challenges women face in their careers, Hall doesn't hesitate: "We're not bold enough. If you're good at something, then say so." Her advice for women resonates with hard-earned wisdom – stand up, speak out, and claim your accomplishments. With her playful life motto "happy, happy, dead," Hall reminds us all that bold living filled with purpose is the only path worth taking.
Ready to create more space in your life and speak your truth? This conversation with Jaslyn Hall will inspire you to let go of what doesn't serve you and step boldly into your potential.
Welcome to Talk Digi to Me. March Forward, a women-only series in celebration of International Women's Day. We're talking to women in the field of marketing, media and technology, Women who make an impact, Women who dare to march forward. Presented by Carly Robinson from Robinson Creative.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talk, digi to Me. March Forward. I'm your, your host, carly robinson. I have a very special guest in the studio today, jaslyn hall I'm. I don't know if you can hear it in my voice, but we're absolutely buzzing over here laughing behind the mic now.
Speaker 2:Jaslyn was born in barbados, educated in london, she spent her adult working life between tanzania, sydney, australia and Qatar. Her best travel experience, she told me, was a trip to Timbuktu. We're going to have to hear all about that. She's got three passports. She's already let go of two husbands and a dog, but she's still got one wonderful son. She's a motivational speaker, a creative strategist, and she's had more than 25 years of worldwide experience in education, event planning, radio and tv, as a presenter, but also as a producer. Jaslyn leads multicultural, cross-functional project teams for cultural festivals, world expos and government, corporate and community events here in barbados and internationally. I mean, I hope you've got a couple minutes set aside because the bio, jaslyn. When you sent me your bio I was like I was loving reading it. So much exciting stuff going on.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for joining me. Look, carly, this is just a trip. I'm so delighted and all of what you've read is true. Oh well, I hope so.
Speaker 2:And I love it. So let's go, I guess, all the way back to the foundation. When you were a little girl, what did you want to become?
Speaker 3:A teacher. My aunt said I used to line up all my dolls in a row and teach them things. So my whole career, if you look through it.
Speaker 2:It's all about communication and teaching and I talk for a living, absolutely so. It's almost like, in a way, you did take the essence of teaching and bring it out through your career. Have you had any female mentors, well?
Speaker 3:when I was young, I had dreads down to my bum. Yeah, I had really long, long locks, and that was motivated by Alice Walker, who's my very favorite author, and I just loved Alice because she worked a lot in the civil rights movement so she really was a disruptor and I like that about her. She was a beautiful writer, she really understood about African-American culture and people and I really love that she talked about her ancestors. So for me, alice Walker brings everything, everything together, everything together.
Speaker 1:So tell me a little bit.
Speaker 3:Of course, you've also done a lot of work in music. Tell me a bit about global music. What's the allure to you? I think it's beholden on all of us to know each other. Yeah, and one of the ways to find out about each other and know each other is to listen to the music. So how many people have been introduced to Africa via the you know Afrobeat craze that's going on? How many people have been introduced to the caribbean via reggae music? Absolutely, you know. So music really does unite us, and I, um little known fact, I'm a french horn player very good you can tell by my embouchure, my lips, so it's radio you can tell
Speaker 2:by my own, sure so it's radio, you can't.
Speaker 3:I have beautiful lips everybody, but can't you tell me the voice is an excellent French horn player.
Speaker 1:I think Chad Baker was a.
Speaker 2:French horn. I think he played French horn and played trumpet he played trumpet. Yeah, it's all about the lips.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So, um, being a a french horn um player, I'm also interested in classical music so I can read music, and classical music means that I have to know about the european traditions. So when I went to Australia and I trained in in radio, um, I had a little program pretentiously called Caribbean Queen, uh-huh.
Speaker 3:I like it because you can yeah and so I was introducing Australian audiences to the music that I know and way back when, and Red Plastic Bag and I kind of reminisce and laugh about this I interviewed Red Plastic Bag years and years ago on my program called Caribbean Queen.
Speaker 3:So, and Mighty Sparrow, I actually, when I was a producer with a company called Jaslyn Hall Presents you see, there's a theme here. I'm really kind of like heightened so when I had a company called Jaslyn Hall Presents, I actually bought Mighty Sparrow from the Caribbean to play in Australia. So I say all these things to say that my life is about connections and about communicating with people, about knowing people from different cultures. Yes, and I was surprised when I arrived in Barbados back home 15 years ago, how much we lived in silos, how much I felt that in this small island here you would go to places and you would see only white Barbadians or you'll go to places and you only see black Barbadians or you'll see only expatriates, and how, and it was like and change from that is very slow, moving very slow, and I'd say, well, don't you know Carly Pike?
Speaker 3:really you should know Carly, she's in the same industry as you are. So now we are gradually breaking that down.
Speaker 2:But yeah, my life is about connections, global connections, and the music to answer your question to me is one of the ways through and segueing from that, let's talk about travel too, because you're so well traveled, I mean, and you've also spent quite a bit of time in many different countries. So music is one way I think you've been able to discover the world, but also through your, like, physical movement. Talk to me about Tanzania, talk to me about Timbuktu, talk to me about the festival in the desert, talk to me about Timbuktu, talk to me about the festival in the desert. I mean, what are your top travel experiences that you've had?
Speaker 3:no-transcript. Well, I'm going to start in Qatar, Right? Because in Qatar I had the job of producing the music for 45 different countries for the Asian Games. So, I was the coordinator so I had to have you know when somebody scores a goal or something like that and there's a little music bit in, or when you enter the stadium and the music is playing. So I chose all of that music 45 different uh countries, just saying that's such a cool job.
Speaker 3:That was a cool job most people didn't know existed until now yes, that's right, you can choose that little sting or that little bit of music you can be the one. So Qatar was just super interesting. I really loved the Middle East and really the Middle East is not the Dubai. I've been to Dubai too, but it's not Dubai, it's Oman, it's Qatar, where you really are immersed in the culture. So that was really excitinganzania. I worked as a teacher. Did you read that? I was a teacher.
Speaker 2:when you read that bit at the beginning, I can't remember all about you, but I didn't read everything about you, just just a few pieces.
Speaker 3:No, I didn't, you didn't okay, so um, I got french horn player global music producer.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I got the opportunity. French horn player teacher global music producer. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3:I got the opportunity to work in Tanzania as a teacher at international schools in Dar es Salaam and in Moshi, where I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Oh my God, you were going to have a part two, which was really, which was super fun. You were going to have a part two, which was really, which was super fun, but while there I was able to visit the Serengeti and all of those fabulous places. So that's East Africa, mali, where I attended the festival in the desert with all these incredible desert musicians.
Speaker 3:Timbuktu really is like well, you have your rice with sand like you're eating rice and there's a lot of there's a lot of sand, um, in Timbuktu, and I just found that, you know, because of my ancestry and African though when I was in South Africa and everybody thought I was actually Bantu and in Mali, that sort of West African, so, but there I just felt really home when you're sitting underneath a baobab tree and we know the baobab trees here, because we've got one in our Queen's Park, when you're sitting underneath in the desert or, you know, along the Niger and you're sitting underneath the baobab tree you kind of feel home it's just a canvas of stars above you.
Speaker 3:You feel, you feel like, you feel like home. So um my trip to um mali also included interviews with umu sangari, um habib kwate oh it was just magical and um of course, timbuktu alifaka Tore, who is just an incredible guitarist.
Speaker 2:And I can see just like the smile on your face as you talk about music.
Speaker 3:It's obviously a big passion for you, huge passion. I hosted the World Music Show on Triple J in Australia for many years. A national show on the youth station there, and yeah, that took me all around the world both physically, for many years. A national show on the youth station there, and yeah, that took me all around the world both physically and sort of orally. And another highlight of doing the world music show, I got paid by then Polygram Records to go to France to interview Anjali Kijo in her kitchen. Really, yeah, check that interview out. It must be somewhere in the I'm going to YouTube you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it must be somewhere. Yeah, Anjali.
Speaker 3:Keejo and I in her kitchen. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:In reviewing your long resume as well. You spoke about the Asian Games, which was something I wanted to pull out as well because I thought that was really exciting. I did notice you were an announcer for the 10 pin bowling event. Girlfriend, girlfriend, I'm gonna move past this, but I'd like to know what the heck do you know about bowling zero?
Speaker 3:right, you read the script, girlfriend. Yeah, I was also the announcer for the football. You read the script. The only time you don't read the script is when they score the goals, and then you have to actually kind of say what the score is but everything else is all is all scripted. That's just a little behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:It's all that was that. Was that really as an announcer?
Speaker 3:all those people on the olympic games, etc. They're reading the script um.
Speaker 2:so something else that stood out to me sydney olympics 2000. You, you were the artistic consultant for the organizing committee. You did concept, programming, design and marketing of Hemispheres, a three-day festival of global music in Centennial Park. I feel like they just basically handed you a big old gift and said, like this is something you are going to love, plan a three-day festival. Go Talk to me about that.
Speaker 4:Whoa. What can I say about?
Speaker 3:that must have been incredible absolutely incredible, oh gosh the olympics of alone you know what can I say? It's, it's just magic um. I had angelique kejai, I had all my favorite artists, basically because, again, you're in charge.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I had the world to choose from.
Speaker 3:So I had all my favorite artists. I had all my favorite Australian artists. There was one point during the three-day festival when I had a group called Cafe at the Gates of Salvation and I'm a woman of faith, I believe in God and I had Cafe at the Gates of Salvation singing and they came off stage and we just had a moment where we all hugged each other because it was so special, it was just so blessed. Yeah, yeah, I can hardly speak about Hemispheres because it was a gift and it really I had been doing the World Music Show. I had been doing something called Global Villages for a while in Sydney. I had worked on the music the performers.
Speaker 3:For every year Sydney puts on, as you know, their New Year's Eve puts on their fireworks display and it's just a massive extravaganza and we on the on the forecourt of Sydney Opera House, there is performances and, you know, food and drinks and stuff, and I have curated that show that's on the forecourt there. So I've been in the kind of world music space for a while. So then being chosen to work with Hemispheres was just an actual fact, I think. Was I involved in choosing the name too? Yeah, possibly, of course. I'm sure you woke up one morning and said Hemispheres. It was just an actual fact. I think was I involved in choosing the name too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh yeah, possibly. I'm sure you woke up one morning and said hemispheres, it's perfect or maybe um yeah, I can't remember how that came about um, one other kind of cool thing that stood out for me um, you're a trained volunteer audio describer for Vision Australia, so you audio described theater productions for the Blind at the Sydney Opera House and so on. Like that's such a cool, I love that.
Speaker 3:I know it's, it's a. I mean the other thing how do you describe it? The other thing about going back to reaching out and communicating for a living and bringing people together. I chose that volunteer role because it's another opportunity to be inclusive. It's another opportunity to say what do you need and how can I help. So I talk for a living. I have a great voice. How can I use that to be of service to somebody else, somebody who's blind, for example? And so, yeah, you describe what you see through your eyes and they're super grateful. And when we're doing it in theatre and plays and things, they actually have headphones on so they can hear me in their ears and I'm describing what's happening. And when we do it for films, or if you take them on a trip around the art gallery or museums, yeah, you stop and you pause and you say we are looking at and you describe everything do you want me to describe you.
Speaker 2:I do. I want to know when you're being trained. Are you trained to like? Is there a methodology you're supposed to follow? A template, so you don't just kind of get poetic with it you can get.
Speaker 3:But you are trained to be an audio describer, so you need to be, especially if you are in the theatre. The play doesn't wait for you to describe that person, what that person's wearing. So when that new character comes on stage you have to kind of work out which bits are really important for the story telling and what bits aren't. So all of that is part of your part of your training.
Speaker 2:So storytelling, this kind of the ability to describe something in words, in audio, you're now working on your first book. I think the two are hand in hand a little bit your ability to come up with something really quick that describes a character briefly and concisely and gets a point. You know the costuming and the aura and so on. You get that across. You're working on your first book now, so you're also going to be a writer. You can add that to your resume. It's called Living in the Gap, the space between where you are and where you want to be. Transformative lessonsons to Live a Life of Growth, awareness and Peace. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 2:Did you wake up and decide you're going to write a book? What was the catalyst for the book?
Speaker 3:Well, in actual fact, I woke up last year on March the 24th and I sort of woke up and I said out loud I'm letting go Seriously. I woke up and I just was startled and I just said I'm letting go, and this transpired to be about letting go of some things in my life that I actually really didn't need. And as I let go of these things, a space occurred and I called it the gap, because it's kind of like a little bit Barbadian. You know, we have gaps, roads, streets, so it's about things that you can let go of in your life to create the space that you need to live more fully. One of the things and I quote the Indian author Geeta Mehta here she has written a book called Karma Kola and in it she describes an Indian myth which says we are living in the age of Kalu, and this is Kalu presages the end of the world, and Kalu describes the fact that we are living our life with so much speed that we will eventually speed out Right, you know, it will all just finish because we live our lives, you know, at this terrific pace.
Speaker 3:So living in the gap. One of the things about living in the gap is about creating space in your life and to slow down, decelerate. One of my other favorite poets is Rumi, about when you live your life at such a running around after everything, you know that whole FOMO thing. When you live your life, you know you are stressed and anxious all the time. But if you live your life, if you find a space, a place of patience, then everything flows to you. And so I've been living my life in the gap. Everything's flowing to me. I am calm in all situations. I work in an area, as you know, as a strategic planner, which is all about deadlines and planning and working with people and managing teams, and one of the things people say to me is that, oh, you're always so calm, Nothing fazes you, You're always smiling and I say, well, I'm living in the gap. Where are you?
Speaker 3:I want my slang copy because I feel like I'm living in the gap where are you?
Speaker 1:I want my signed copy because I feel like I'm not in the gap. You need to come on and jump into the gap.
Speaker 3:So this book um which uh has um, is the precursor to doing a TED Talk about living in the gap.
Speaker 2:Have you not been afraid at any point? I mean, because you've taken so many bold moves, big steps, done such great things, and now you're writing your book, does fear ever cross your mind? Hell, yeah, every day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure, oh, absolutely. But I don't worry. I think there's a difference between fear, and fear is kind of healthy. It stops you putting your hand in the fire, you know, it stops you doing craziness. But worry, I don't worry. Right. So fear, yes, adrenaline driven. So fear. Yes, adrenaline driven when you're on stage or wherever.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, but worry no, I'm going to channel my Jaslyn every morning.
Speaker 3:Yes, do no more worry.
Speaker 2:Live in the gap. Live in the gap Now, bringing this back around to International Women's Month. What do you think are some of the major challenges that women face in their careers, or what are some of the challenges you may have faced in your career?
Speaker 3:Well, I think we're not bold enough. I still think that we need to speak our truth. If you're good at something, then say so. Don't wait for somebody else to say it, or don't kind of go, they will see that I'm good at this. No, they won't, especially if they're old white men yeah, sorry or old black men they won't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, stand up and speak out. Stand up, learn what you need to learn to be good at what you are and what you want to be good at. Do the work so that you are the best. Do the work so that they come to you first, or maybe second, and deliver, and when you deliver, let people know that you've delivered, that you are behind that. Yeah, I am the person who was the planner for that. Yes, I am the person who created hemispheres. Yes, I am the person who did that. Yes, I am the Doyenne of world music in Australia.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think we're just not bold enough, and there are reasons why people aren't bold. We often start our careers later because we've chosen to concentrate on families or whatever we've done, or we haven't been bold enough to start doing what we really love, so we're often coming to the game a little bit later, but now we're sitting at the table. So now that you're at the table, don't remain silent. You're at the table, you're there for a reason, and the reason is to speak up and bring your truth. And if you can do that, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Be bold. I absolutely love that. I think that is just brilliant advice and a brilliant take on exactly what happens. I want to thank you so much for sharing your time, your thoughts and and talking about everything that you've had going on.
Speaker 3:It's definitely very and still have going on absolutely shit. One of my. My motto is happy, happy, dead girlfriend my new tattoo happy. Actually I should put that on for me yeah, yeah, happy, happy, happy dead. I love it. That's the way to, that's the way to go and don't worry about anything. Happy, happy, happy dead.
Speaker 2:It's perfect and with that she's dead. But she was happy, but she was down happy, she was bold, she stood up, she did what she had to do. For sure, that's right, and together we will march forward. Yeah, thank you for having me. Thank you so much, jazz. This has been talk digi to me.
Speaker 4:March forward, I'm your host, carly robinson do you have questions about your digital marketing toolkit? Contact carly directly via whatsapp at 266-4847, on Instagram at CarlyTalksDigital, or send your email to Carly at MyRobinsonCreativecom. That's C-A-R-L-I-E at MyRobinsonCreativecom.