As artists, we often focus on the personal. In many ways, that is was art is, personal exploration given form, but every now and then we are reminded the importance of creating art from an outside lens.
This week, I had the opportunity to do just that when I sat down with three-time Juno nominee and Maple Blues Award winner, Shakura S'Aida to discuss her creative process, storytelling, and personal approach to style.
Shakura, an extraordinary singer, writer, and actress, is working on her new upcoming album after her 2022 release of Hold on to Love and recently released single, Keep It Movin'.
You can read the full interview below:
If you could use three words to describe your music, what would they be?
Love, soul, food.
Food, really? Why would you say that?
Because it's food for the soul. You know? It nourishes. I create music that nourishes. Nourishes my mind, my body, and myself.
What does your creative process look like from the first idea to a finished track? Do you have a ritual for your creation?
I think for the most part, when I'm writing on my own, I'm walking. It starts with me walking, and the ideas come as I'm walking through nature. I think nature is a huge part of my process. Being able to walk and [be] in the trees, by a river, in the field, away from the noise of the city. Water is a huge part of it. Showers, bathtubs, rain are a huge part of my process, but again, that's a whole thing of nature, right? Of cleansing.
Are your musical influences auditory, visual, emotional, or a mixture?
What influences me is an emotion. It's definitely emotional. I think it's also, actually really weirdly enough, audience driven as well. Because really, there's certain things that I really experience with my audiences. It's not that I want them to do it, but I'm hoping that we can share moments. So, for example, this next album that I'm writing. I want to share moments of just abandon, where we just dance, and we don't think about it. We just move our bodies. And so that idea of getting together with me on stage, and them in the audience, and us just moving. Then looking backstage and seeing the crew moving too. That to me is incredibly inspirational. It really spurs me to find moments like that, you know? When I'm creating.
Do you have a favourite song that you’ve created and if so, could you share a bit about how you came to create that song?
One of the new songs that's going to be on the album is called Bed of Roses.
I've been really staying away from the news lately. Any kind of news, whether it's radio, television, paper. Any kind of media, because I found that I wasn't able to… I wasn't even able to function. My mental health was really suffering from everything that is going on and it's not that I don't care, and it's not that I don't want to be involved, but I just don't think that being immersed in all of these talking heads telling me what's important is is going to help me to to work towards any kind of solution that I can be a part of.
Bed of Roses was inspired by the fact that I'm hearing so much about these politicians, whoever they might be, speaking about what's right, what's wrong, what's necessary, and why they're doing the things that they're doing when they're literally murdering people. And I'm not hearing about the people who are being murdered. Whether it's people in war, whether it's people in the streets, whether it’s people in countries where there is internal fighting going on. All these people are dying and their stories aren't being passed on. So, I wrote a song that just urges us to not forget their stories. To remember to keep telling those stories, and rather than just reading the headlines, let's do some research on who has lost who and let's keep their names present in our minds.
And the chorus is:
Lay me down in a bed of roses.
Wash me in a river of tears,
watch my soul as it flies high
above all conflict here.
Tell everyone my story, and then just let me go,
write my name up in the stars
with all the lost souls that we know.
When is this album expected to come out?
It will be released later this year.
How would you describe your personal style?
It's funny because I was just spending time with some young people (I do workshops with Roy Thomson Hall) and I was speaking to them about how my style used to be based on what I thought I should look like in order to fit in with everybody else or in order not to stand out as being different. You know? Because I was always on the outside looking in, in terms of, where I grew up and how I lived. And I think of late, I think it might also have a lot to do with working with you three and building confidence in sort of: “how do I want to present on stage?”
I think my personal style is, for lack of a better word, Shakura.
It's me. It just is me, you know? It's whatever feels comfortable, whatever feels funky and cool. And [whatever] allows me to feel sexy, because I think feeling sexy is important: whether you're in a pair of track pants, or whether you're in leather. I think you can have a sexy pair of track pants on, pair it with a really cute top.
And so, I think to say it’s ‘Shakura’ is trite, but it's just me. You know? I also, because of social media, have become really aware of New Yorkers and the style that they have, and I realize that a lot of my style choices would fit right in if I was in New York. Because everyone there just wears what they want to wear, and it always looks funky and cool.
Like, if you put somebody from New York in Toronto, people are like, “oh my god! What are they wearing?”
But in New York, it’s like, “of course they are wearing that.”
I’m from Brooklyn and I grew up in New York in the 60’s looking at people just wearing whatever they wear, and I would go back every summer when we moved back to North America [from Switzerland], and I would see the birth of hip hop. So what people were wearing was really what was cool and funky and different. And Sexy.
So I don’t know what I’d call my style other than just being me.
In terms of style, do you have any musical style influences?
Yes, absolutely. I’d say definitely Jimi Hendrix, definitely Tina Turner. Diana Ross. Anything by Bob Mackie. You know, what [Diana Ross] was in. Her and Cher were huge Bob Mackie icons and even Tina was into his stuff.
So I love that.
Betty David, the singer, with her space odyssey, Afropunk. You know? The thing she was doing before it was cool. And the way she dressed Miles Davis when he didn’t have style. She gave him style.
Do you think of style as a part of your performance or storytelling?
That's interesting because I think when I first started working, the first dress that I got from [Call and Response] was a red dress and it was long and silky and slinky. And what I started recognizing was that some of the clothing that Call and Response would put me in allowed for my arms to feel longer. So [that] allowed me to shape my story with more arm movements. And the way that the clothes flowed allowed me to somehow even glide across the stage, if that makes sense, or seem like I was gliding across the stage. The way the fabrics followed me.
And so I've really become a fan of flowy fabrics. Fabrics that move. Fabrics that almost, in a way, imitate water or reflect that movement.
Yeah, so I think my personal style is flowy but also body conscious. I don't want to just be a billow of fabric up there. I want to have some sort of shape.
How does what you wear affect how you perform or create?
I love audience reactions. I love it when I walk out and you can hear, (especially) the women go, “Oh!”
Like you can literally audibly hear it.
Then, when I start moving, and if I take off a piece, I love it when I have more than one piece of layered things. [I] can see the audience, they get re-interrested because we listen with our eyes, don't we?
The photographers that are around the stage, they start lifting their cameras back up because,
“oh, here's a new shot that we haven't gotten yet.”
I love that interest because that, to me, is my music. My performance is based on community involvement. My community starts with me and it extends to my band, and to their instruments, and to the stage crew and the production crew, and then the audience. More than everything that I do, from the melodies to the performance, to the costumes that I wear on stage, they are all there to engage my community. It's not just for me to be happy, it's for me to have a full sharing experience with different people in the audience. So the more layers I have and can take off and how that engages with people. I love all of that.
So, in the truest sense of the meaning, you are a community musician.
I am, absolutely. I really believe it’s not about me up there. It’s about us. I can’t have a show and not speak to the audience. I cannot have a show and not share my heart with the audience. It doesn’t feel authentic to me.
What is next for you?
Recovery. I just spent a month away from home and so I’m going to continue to refine my music that I’ve been writing. I’ve been working on it for a while but now that we’ve played the songs for the [last] month, there’s some refinements that need to happen.
I am [also] performing throughout the month of May and I’m gearing up for my show on June 19th at TD Music Hall.
[In] the summer, I go back to Europe, so I’m gearing up for that as well.
Why do you wear Call and Response?
It makes me feel powerful. Every single piece of clothing that [Call and Response] creates for me makes me feel powerful. Makes me feel… it gives me that armour that I need. Not that I’m going to war, but just that I know… it’s sort of like wearing a power suit, you know? …It’s my power suit, no matter what I’m wearing.
[Call and Response’s] designs are my power suit. And I know that it’s going to expose what I want to expose and hide what I want to hide, and I know that it’s going to impress. I know there’s always going to be someone that’s going to come up to me and try to touch my clothing… see what it is I’m wearing and I love that.
I love the interactions I get from women when I’m wearing [Call and Response], but I also love the men that touch and want to figure out how things are made. That engagement after the show is always really fun for me. There’s always a curiosity about that and I love that.
Shakura S'Aida's work can be found on Apple Music, Spotify, Youtube, and everywhere else you listen to music.
Tickets to Shakura's show at TD Music Hall can be found here.
Be sure to follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and through her website to stay up to date with her tour dates and releases!
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