Juno Award and Polaris Prize nominee Elizabeth Shepherd can’t and won’t be boxed in and labelled by the four-letter word jazz.
The soul-jazz innovator broke the mold of what people expect from the music genre last year with the release of her fifth and highly acclaimed release The Signal, a contemporary musical journey that should be listened to from beginning to end by the listener to be able to take in and appreciate the layers of commentary, ideas and influences.
Shepherd has a voice that floats in the sweet spot between power and breathless ease, no doubt in thanks to years spent honing her singing skills in church and the Salvation Army Brass Band in her youth.
The well-known acoustics offered at Banff’s St George’s-in-the-Pines will serve Shepherd’s voice well when she plays the venue on Wednesday (Nov. 18), after a few stops in Mexico, a country that surprisingly holds strong connections to Shepherd’s latest album.
“It actually launched in Mexico first, partly just on how the tour dates lined up,” Shepherd said. “We didn’t have dates in Canada lined up yet, and it was new and we just wanted to see how the material is received there and get a sense and give the band a chance to get its legs with the new material –it was incredibly received in Mexico.
“It’s a very spiritual place. In a way, that’s such a nebulous word, but what I mean is there is a tremendously rich spiritual history, from the Aztecs and then I guess the Catholics – you get the sense that people are very open to the esoteric and a lot of these songs touched on that.”
The Signal took the Montreal singer on a spiritual journey, and she categorizes the album as having political themes, while she believes Mexicans tending to be politically engaged had much to do with her music being embraced by its citizens.
“I speak Spanish enough to introduce the songs, so people can understand what I’m talking about, and some people would be applauding just for the introductions for a song in solidarity of farmers who were trying to resist Monsanto which, of course, in Mexico is incredibly strong because of all the pressure the government gets from getting in bed with Monsanto,” Shepherd said.
“People know how much corn is a part of their diet, how many varieties of corn there are and how big it is to their culture – it really resonated with them.”
Shepherd says a lot of the material for the album came from personal reflections right after the birth of her daughter, who is now four.
“I was writing all of these songs instead of talking about all of my personal anxiety, love, stories and complexes – I was looking at the world around me and said, ‘Oh my God what kind of world was I leaving my child?’ ” Shepherd said.
She also added the album can be traced right back to the beginning of her introduction to music, with strong roots stemming from growing up in the Salvation Army (both her parents were ministers in her youth, and still are).
“As a kid, I would go four or five times a week, twice on Sundays, for services and choir practice, bible studies and band practice. It was a huge part of my life growing up and music was a huge part of that culture – music for me, early on, was a form of spiritual expression and also intertwined with this movement for social justice which is pretty present in the Salvation Army,” she said.
She took some space for herself as she grew older and started exploring other types of music, which led her toward jazz.
“I think what partly drew me to jazz over other types of music was I didn’t get into jazz until my 20s, which is relatively late, and partly it was the freedom which is found in jazz,” Shepherd said. “Also, I believe and have felt that there is a spiritual component to jazz that is tandem with that freedom, the freedoms are explored.”
Explore she does, as The Signal draws on musical influences from not only jazz, but from soul, hip-hop and funk, with lyrics focusing on strong contemporary issues from Monsanto and motherhood, to forced marriage and rape in Africa to the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida.
A strong statement from a Canadian artist on strong issues of our time.
