Jayda G creates 'science you can dance to' in new climate change documentary

Jayda Guy is a world-renowned, Grammy-nominated producer and DJ — who also has a master's degree specializing in environmental toxicology. Those may seem like disparate sides for some, but for the B.C.-raised artist — who performs under the name Jayda G — there is no line between the two: her first album, 2019's Significant Changes, was an ode to her thesis featuring sounds from whales, which she studied in college. 

So when director Nicolas Brown and his team asked Guy to host his new film, Blue Carbon, a documentary that joins music and climate to highlight the ocean's potential to absorb carbon, the answer was easy.

"I think the biggest part is that it made sense to me," Guy told CBC Music. "[Blue carbon is] using swamps and wetlands as this ecosystem that's really good at combating chemicals and toxins and overall climate change…. I was like, 'Oh, I totally get this.' Like I was helping out with projects like this during my master's."

Blue carbon is the shorthand for carbon captured by the world's ocean and coastal ecosystems, according to the National Ocean Service, and the colour blue is attached to it simply because it happens in the water. Seagrasses, mangroves and salt marshes can all sequester carbon, and at a rate faster than the Earth's forests. To showcase these ecosystems' importance in the film, Guy travelled to the U.S.A., Senegal, Vietnam, France, Colombia and Brazil — often in the midst of her own touring schedule — to visit communities both affected by climate change and working to protect the systems that work against it.

"Not far from the busy streets of Ho Chi Minh City is a place that makes you believe in resurrection," Guy says in the film, transitioning from the mangroves of southern Florida to the those of the Mekong delta, in Vietnam's Cần Giờ district. 

There she meets Vien Ngoc Nam, an associate professor of forestry who's worked for the past 50 years to restore the mangroves that were destroyed by some of the 19 million gallons of herbicides — including Agent Orange — that the U.S. sprayed in the country to force out the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Nam partnered with local organizations to do the work, knowing very little about mangrove reforestation when he began in the '70s, but understanding that replanting needed to happen.   

"I feel very emotional and excited. I feel so proud to have devoted my life to Cần Giờ forest," Nam says in the film. Guy spends time getting to know the forest that Nam has helped rebuild, as he tours her through the mature mangroves towering over their river boat.

"I think the biggest [thing] is that we're trying to find hope within this film," said Guy. "We did not want to go the doom-and-gloom route — like we know that, we get it … I just really do believe when you perpetuate fear, it causes everyone to paralyze and not actually move towards action. And that was something I really loved about this project is that if we're giving people hope, that it's going to allow people to actually move towards action, and that's 10 times more important than just perpetuating the same message that all these horrible things are happening and all these animals are dying." 

"Something that I really want people to take away from when watching the film is that it's really about taking care of your own home, even if that just means your backyard," she continued. "It doesn't mean it has to be this big, huge, overwhelming thing of, like, saving the world."

Though she's been focusing a lot on music the last few years, having released her critically acclaimed sophomore album, Guy, in 2023, Guy still wants to further her environmental work. In 2019 she launched JMG Talk, a series of lectures from young scientists who wanted to share their research. It was meant for anyone to attend and ask questions. 

"I wanted people to feel safe talking about sciences because I know, for me personally, in the sciences, there's this risk you're running of seeming stupid or not knowledgeable enough," she said. "And I just didn't want people to feel like that." 

As she says in Blue Carbon: "I don't want to be a one-dimensional artist. I also really want to talk about the environment, something that's really important to me, and actually make a difference in the world." 

The music portion of the documentary is two-fold: Wu-Tang Clan's Rza wrote the score, while Guy collected sounds from her travels to write a song based on her Blue Carbon experience. The two artists didn't meet due to scheduling conflicts — "Oh, I wish," said Guy, "like it was on the list of things to try and get us to do" — but you'd never know it by the seamlessness of what they've created. Using the sound of Florida's manatees munching on seagrass, the Cần Giờ mangroves clicking and popping (the sound of them breathing when the tide is low) and a sample of a Colombian singer she met during filming, Guy creates the beating heart of the Blue Carbon track "Still Be With You."

"We just need to plant," says Guy, as the documentary ends with a transition into her song. "And we need to protect. Nature will do the rest. This is science you can dance to."

Blue Carbon will air on CNN on April 21, 2024, with premieres in more countries to come.