Before I Was Shaka

Jordan Ham

Before the bard, there was a boy named Jordan Ham — born February 25, 1990, a Pisces with music in his hands. His mother gave him a Hawaiian name at birth: Kaleikaumaka. It would take him thirty years, two colleges, one trash dump, and a volcano to grow into it. (And yes — he owned the pun early: his first handle was @musica_con_jamon. Music with ham. 🥓🎸)

The first door he walked out of

A year and a half of music study, then the dropout. Not because he couldn't cut it — because the classroom was smaller than the question he was carrying. He would spend the rest of his life proving that the dropping-out was the curriculum.

The heart opens

YWAM took him to South Africa in 2010, and that is where his heart for the whole world began. Not a metaphor — a widening. He came home knowing his music would never belong to one stage, one scene, or one country.

Hollywood, round two

Two more years, then the second dropout — the same trail his heroes the Red Hot Chili Peppers walked before him, the band Rick Rubin produced. He didn't know it then, but some circles don't close. They spiral. 🌀

Everything is possible

In La Chureca, the trash dump of Managua, standing on what the world threw away, he wrote "Todo Es Posible" with Brad Corrigan. Everything is possible — a song born in the last place you'd think to look for one. That dump became his truest conservatory.

🎥 Todo Es Posible — the Pinolero demo, from his own Música con JAMón days →

The favorite band

Brad took him to Nicaragua; the band launched a tour in Colorado; Jordan helped in rehearsals — and his first full tour concert was Red Rocks. It became two summer tours with his favorite band, Dispatch, while he taught music back in Nicaragua — Love, Light & Melody, and his own youth orchestra, Amor, Luz y Melodía. For a while, the dream was literal.

The loss, the mountain, the phoenix

Then 2020 took the spot with his favorite band. In the rebirth year, on the longest night — winter solstice, on the volcano Maunakea — Jordan Ham took on the name his mother had given him at birth: Kaleikaumaka — his Hawaiian name, which became Shakaleikaumaka. Shaka. Her name is Susan Ham — and her love and aloha saved his life in his darkest year. He rose like a phoenix from his own ashes. (These days, fittingly, the road keeps leading through a place called Phoenix Gulch. The metaphor writes itself.)