Shakura S’Aida Interview
Below is the transcript to my interview with Shakura S'Aida, acclaimed Americana roots soul singer and songwriter has thrilled global audiences in 31 countries over many years. You’ll find the Podcast, Video and show notes linked as well. Donna Grantis who performed with Prince for several years, is Shakura’s longtime co-producer and co-writer. Donna praises the three-time Juno Award nominee as a "powerhouse vocalist whose artistic vision continually inspires me.”
I trust you’ll find this week’s episode an inspiring and uplifting conversation, in which we’re highlighting Shakura’s new album Hold on to Love. We also talked about her career in acting, and she shared some of her experiences on the set of Schitt’s Creek. Shakura shared many valuable insights in this wide-ranging interview, and you can also watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast.
Shakura S'Aida (00:00:00):
Started learning from them, but specifically Salome and Jackie especially because as women and as Black women, how they spoke, what they spoke about, how they held themselves professionally and casually, it really made a mark on me. It taught me how to interact with musicians. It taught me how to handle my business. It taught me how to be a good artist.
Leah Roseman (00:00:33):
Hi, I'm Leah Roseman and this is my podcast Conversations with Musicians, which I hope inspires you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians with in-depth conversations and great music that revealed the depth and breadth to a life in music. Shakur S'Aida, acclaimed Americana roots, soul singer and songwriter has thrilled global audiences in 31 countries over many years. Donna Grantis, who performed with Prince for several years, is Shakura's longtime co-producer and co-writer. Donna praises the three-time Juno Award nominee as a "Powerhouse vocalist whose artistic vision continually inspires me".
(00:01:09):
I trust you'll find this week's episode an inspiring and uplifting conversation in which were highlighting Shakura's new album, Hold on to Love. We also talked about her career in acting, and she shared some of her experiences on the set of Schitt's Creek. Shakura shared many valuable insights in this wide ranging interview, and you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast, and I've also linked the transcript to my website. It's a joy to bring these inspiring episodes to every week, and I do all the many jobs of research, production and publicity. Season Five of this podcast starts very soon in January, 2025, and I send out an email newsletter where you can get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links including for Shakura. Now to our conversation.
(00:02:00):
Hi Shakura, thanks so much for joining me here today.
Shakura S'Aida (00:02:03):
Thank you for having me. Thank you.
Leah Roseman (00:02:05):
I'm hoping we can both celebrate your recent album, Hold on to Love, and also talk about some of your life in music.
Shakura S'Aida (00:02:12):
Okay, yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:02:15):
On this album you worked with your co-writer and producer, Donna Grantis, that you worked with her before. And do you want to talk about that relationship a little bit?
Shakura S'Aida (00:02:27):
Oh, Donna is one of my best friends, incredible musician, and we work really well together. We click. Someone once called her Keith and me Mick. and I certainly feel as though I'm understood musically and even when I'm not understood musically, I feel as though she's able to figure out a way to make me understood or to bring it around so that I understand how to shift. Our relationship is very unique. We started off as co-writers and definitely this last album, it was about co-producing this album. And without her, the album wouldn't be done. Absolutely would not have been finished.
Leah Roseman (00:03:15):
And it was kind of a long journey with this album, right? You started back in 2017?
Shakura S'Aida (00:03:21):
Yeah, it was, my ideal would've been to have finished it by 2018 and had it out either 2018 and 2019, but life got in the way, had a lot of death, had a lot of illness, had a lot of things change in my life that made it impossible to finish emotionally or even physically. So it became a side project as opposed to the real project. And even during Covid, it didn't seem like something I could finish just seemed too difficult. I had the support of FACTOR a funding agency that is here in Canada. I also had the support of Massey Hall, Roy Thompson Hall, which is a venue space that I'm in an artist development program with, and along with them, along with Roger Costa and Donna Grantis, as this album got done by the grace of God, because I wasn't capable of doing it, I really wasn't. I don't think I knew how to be creative anymore, and I certainly didn't know how to be objective enough to get this done.
Leah Roseman (00:04:34):
And when you decided to focus on the different aspects of love, was that the beginning of the album or sort of putting it together with Donna?
Shakura S'Aida (00:04:42):
I think it was putting it together and looking at which songs that she made it for the album, which songs by the end of Covid. This is not the album that would've been done before. This is the album that came out afterwards because your perspective changes, doesn't it? You go through a major pandemic in isolation from everything and everyone that you know and your narrative changes dramatically. And so my narrative changed into what gets me through life and what got me through life are these songs, these perspectives, these faces on the album, love.
(00:05:23):
And without love, I wouldn't be here so it seemed really important to make that the theme of the album, if you will.
Leah Roseman (00:05:32):
One of the wonderful musicians you have on this album is steel guitar player Chuck Campbell.
Shakura S'Aida (00:05:36):
Yeah, yeah. He just celebrated a birthday a couple days ago
Leah Roseman (00:05:42):
And in Takin' it to the Streets, I thought we could use a clip from that partly to show his expressive playing. And maybe you want to speak a little bit about activism through music.
Shakura S'Aida (00:05:53):
I think for me, Takin' it to the Street and also Ain't got Nothing are my salutes to my parents, to my mom specifically, who was someone who was, she went to A&T and was part of the Greensboro Forum movement, sit-in movement. And I think it really speaks to how I was raised to use my voice to never shy away from justice and what's right, and to stand up for what I believe in and Takin' it to the Street, although it is a cover tune when you listen to the words and you listen to the defiance that's going on there in terms of you keep telling me things that you're telling me the sky is blue, but I can feel the rain falling on my face, sort of idea. It seemed really important to have that song on there. And I think it's really important to maintain strong ties to what you believe in and to allow that to keep you grounded because people change, relationships, change, attitudes change, but the beliefs are what keep you strong and the beliefs are what allow you to find real community, and that's always been really important to me.
(00:07:16):
So activism for me is a way of keeping my community strong and making sure that we have what we need to make it through. Another moment, another minute, another day.
Leah Roseman (00:07:29):
You're about to hear a clip of Takin' it to the Streets from Shakura S'Aida's album, Hold on to Love. Please note the links in the show notes of this podcast. We're including a couple of complete tracks and a couple of excerpts to give you a meaningful overview for the whole album. (Music)
(00:09:10):
It might be interesting for people to hear about how you got kind of a late start in terms of launching your career. I understand back in 2008, you borrowed some money to make your first album Blueprint?
Shakura S'Aida (00:09:25):
So to be clear, I've been at this for 40 years.
(00:09:31):
I started at 19 singing in bars, singing in anywhere they would let me going to jams. But in 1998, I found myself divorced with two children under the age of 10, and I had to make a shift in order to raise my kids and raise them the way that I needed them to be raised, which meant I needed to let go of music other than a weekly gig and a couple of corporate gigs, every once in a while. I really started focusing on other work. I worked in PR, I worked in sponsorships, asking people for money, then I worked in sponsorships, giving people money, organizations money, and I worked as an event coordinator. And then in 2005, I realized that I was calling up these corporations and I was asking for $75,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars. I was hustling for these other people in a way that I had never hustled for myself.
(00:10:35):
And I realized that in order to raise the type of daughters into women the way I really hoped them to be, I needed to first raise myself up. And that meant letting go of those jobs that were security and becoming a full-time musician, becoming a full-time actor and letting go of all of the things that were holding me back. So I borrowed some money from my parents, and along with James Bryant, who's a very gifted songwriter, producer and artist in his own right, we produced this album Blueprint. And I've been speaking to some people in the business and they said, you're not considered a Blues artist, so you're not going to get a lot of work in this industry. So I specifically chose songs that I knew were Blues or Blues related so that I could get the work that I needed in order to feed my family.
(00:11:34):
And that was the first album Blueprint. And I was told, you're not going to sell a lot. You might be able to sell a couple copies here and there. You might get into a couple festivals. And it was true, the first year Blueprint came out, I got three bookings, three festivals, and that was it. But what I did get were I sold almost 400 copies the first weekend. We were singing out at this Beaches jazz festival site on the street. People were just buying this. And everywhere we went, people were buying this album and they hadn't heard the album yet, so it could be accredited to the band and the show that we were putting on. And so I knew there was something there. So in 2008, I decided to go down to Memphis and try my luck at the International Blues Challenge. And I came in second, much to my surprise, and met Thomas Ruf. And about, I think it was about a month or two later, he called me up because Candy Cane had gotten ill. That's when she first found out that she was sick. And I went to Europe and started touring with the Ruf Caravan. And from there ended up having a record deal with Ruf and touring with them and started touring through Europe. So it really was since 2005, 2008 was the beginning of my full career as a musician. But the experience that I had acquired before, that certainly contributed greatly to my success.
Leah Roseman (00:13:17):
It's interesting to me because several people I've interviewed had a high school teacher that really encouraged them to pursue arts and music specifically. And you had Mrs. Marly Kadak.
Shakura S'Aida (00:13:28):
I did.
Leah Roseman (00:13:29):
So do you want to speak to that experience?
Shakura S'Aida (00:13:31):
Oh my God, I love speaking about Mrs. Kadak. I still can't call her by her first name, even though I've now met her and again, as an adult. So Mrs. Kadak was like the most beautiful version of Mary Poppins you could ever imagine. She had this jet black hair that was always pulled back in a bun. She always wore bright red lipstick and she had these clothes that just flowed as she walked. She was drama personified. And I had her grade 10 grade, 11 grade 12 theater arts and theater arts was the one course that I never had to think about. I never had to really put a lot of hard work in. I put a lot of intentional work in it, but it never came. It was never difficult for me. And at the end of grade 12, Mrs. Kadak came to me and she said, you should go to Sheridan College.
(00:14:28):
They have a performance studies program that you should go into that, and this is around the time of Fame and everything. And I said, I like singing, but I think I'd rather be an actor. I think I like acting. And she said, oh, you'll always act, but you need to be a singer. And because Mrs. Kadak told me, so I said, okay. And it took me about another half a year to break down and tell my parents that I didn't want to go to university and become a language interpreter that I wanted to instead do what Mrs. Kadak told me that I should do, which is become a singer.
(00:15:05):
And later on, I think about a year or so before Covid hit, I actually met with Mrs. Kadak and had an opportunity to learn her story. And she had been a theater manager and had gone to school with Alex Trebek and they all came through Toronto, and she stopped in Toronto and decided she wanted to be a teacher. So she went to teachers college and they didn't have a theater arts program, and she hated the maths, she hated the sciences, and she wasn't really into the English. So she went to the department heads and said, you don't have a theater arts program. And they said, no, we don't. She says, well, that's what I want to teach. And they created a program with her for her. And so Mrs. Kadak changed my life dramatically in so many different ways. Because of her, there was a theater arts program in Ontario, but because of her specifically choosing my school, Monarch Park to teach her program in, I got to be the beneficiary of this program. So not only did she change my life because I chose this school because of the theater arts program, I was always curious about something like that. But she changed it because she created this entire program. So to me, she is my fairy godmother. She is my inspiration. She's someone I hope is proud of everything that I've done. And I think about her a lot. I really do. She's incredible woman.
Leah Roseman (00:16:42):
I'm always curious to talk to musicians who act as well because I think it works so well together. And I think the rest of us who haven't done any acting are really losing out. How do you feel like being able to inhabit a role helps you as a singer?
Shakura S'Aida (00:16:58):
I think I'm a much better actor as a singer than I am as an actor because I think I've put more time and effort into learning that craft. That's me being completely honest. I think what acting has given me is an understanding of how important the words are, and how important it is to lose yourself in the words, in the story, and to leave your ego out of it, and to just focus on telling the story and also telling the story authentically in that moment, focusing on what the words mean to you. Today, there's this really weird, funny clip that I saw where this actor is standing in this dark space and starts to recite to be or not to be. And then he's interrupted by a very well-known actor who says, hold on for a second. It's actually to be or not to be. And then another actor comes out and says, it's to be or not to be. All these different actors come out. And I found it interesting because they're all right and they're all wrong. They're all speaking to his moment, which is what his truth comes out of. But their truth is also right in that moment. That's what they feel. And for me, that's what being an actor in music is. It's finding those moments that you can just connect to and then share with your audience, and hopefully it'll resonate with them at that time.
Leah Roseman (00:18:39):
Now, many listeners will be fans of Schitt's Creek, and I was wondering if you had any favorite memories from being on that set?
Shakura S'Aida (00:18:48):
Being on a set with Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara period is a favorite memory. I can't believe I got a part in that. And one of my absolute favorite memories is being doing the ADR, going and doing some of my lines over in the studio and Mr. Levy being there and directing me there. And that was just a special pleasure. I have such respect for that man, and I just love his eyebrows. Can I just say he's the best eyebrows in the entire world, but certainly being on the set, and I've never been around comedy in that way. I was a waiter at Second City, and I got to see people like Mike Myers and Ryan Styles hone their craft. Colin Mochrie, all of these people, and that was one way of being around comedy. But to be in the room when you actually are part of the process of them creating their comedy was a masterclass.
(00:19:47):
The timing, the lack of effort, the matter of factness of their art was just incredible. And watching them conspire together, they just sit there and they talk and he'd say something to her and she'd go, oh. And then she'd say something and they'd go, yeah, and I'm sort of watching and trying not to watch. And then they come back into the scene and do it a different way. It was just incredible. And at one point, right before we started shooting, I'm reciting my lines and Catherine comes up and she says, oh, well, they're all just trying to, don't you understand you're better than this? And I said, oh, thank you. And she goes, no, don't you understand? They're just using you. You really are better than this. And then I realized somewhere in the small part of my brain that she was actually acting and I should be acting too. But she was so real that I just went, thank you? And so what do you do when you're playing tennis and the person you're playing tennis with doesn't know how to lop the ball back? You just give up. You throw your racket down, which is exactly what she did. She just went next and walked away. So the moments like that where I realized how easy it is to act as opposed to the acting, the buffoonery or all of those things that I thought I had to do in order to be an actor,
(00:21:19):
Great lessons,
Leah Roseman (00:21:20):
Really great. If we could go back to Hold on to Love, one of my favorite songs is Doodun.
Shakura S'Aida (00:21:28):
Yeah, what do you want to know?
Leah Roseman (00:21:31):
Well, can we include that track in this episode?
Shakura S'Aida (00:21:35):
Oh, listen, you can include that track day in, day out. You can make it your theme song. I'm telling you, it's certainly mine. It really is. Yeah. It's a song that I wrote after I'd spent some time right before Covid with some of my younger daughter's friends, and we were talking about life, and they had all these questions and they kept looking to me to answer them, and I didn't have the answers. And I realized how frustrating it can be to have all these questions about life, not know where your life is going, what your life is going to be, and not know where to turn to. And the truth of the matter is, as parents, as adults, we really don't have all the answers all the time. And self-help requires us to find coping mechanisms. And one of my coping mechanisms is singing. And so while I was writing this song, this thing just came to me and it made me feel better. It just made me feel better. And I thought, what if I just create this piece that is honest about, I might not have all the answers, but if you just do this for a minute, it might make you feel good. It might make you feel better.
Leah Roseman (00:23:01):
Yeah. (music)
(00:27:01):
I was just thinking about, we were talking about high school and arts education. The high school I went to also in Ontario, they had hired a theater arts teacher, but then they canceled that and they made him teach math, and he was very bitter. But I think had I wanted to take theater, you couldn't choose between. I think it's still like that. You can't choose like theater and art and music. They make people choose. But yes, you can take physics and chemistry and math. That's okay.
Shakura S'Aida (00:27:27):
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I was actually able to take music and theater and I was on the mime club.
(00:27:35):
I was in the mime club. I tried busking at Mime for a little bit. It didn't work out, but I actually had amazing teachers. And when I look back at my time at Monarch Park, I had great teachers who really put up with me. I was a kid who before high school, had never spent more than a year, a year and a half in one school. We moved around so much. So going into high school, having not had a stable life, I was a bit of a troublemaker. I was a bit of a brat. And I had teachers who just gave me such a accepting way. And even when I challenged them or I pushed them, they pushed back and set boundaries, but they never squashed my spirit. And I think that's why I was allowed to come out of that school, feeling strong, feeling confident, feeling as though I had a place in this world. The ideas that I came up with were nurtured and encouraged, and music for me was choral more than individuals singing, but it taught me to listen to what was going on around me. It taught me to focus on the words on being clear with words and to focus on being part of a community
(00:29:01):
As opposed to being an individual.
Leah Roseman (00:29:05):
Now you were born in Brooklyn.
Shakura S'Aida (00:29:07):
Yep.
Leah Roseman (00:29:09):
And I'm curious. I'm
Shakura S'Aida (00:29:10):
Sorry. I was,
Leah Roseman (00:29:11):
Yeah,
Shakura S'Aida (00:29:11):
That's right.
Leah Roseman (00:29:15):
And I know you lived in Switzerland for three years, but I'm curious primarily in Canada. How do you think your career has been affected by being Canadian?
Shakura S'Aida (00:29:24):
I think that I have a more diverse background that allows me to be open to how different music can sound. I'm not, I don't want to say stuck, but I'm not married to the idea that there is such thing as traditional music. I think. I believe that music has the ability to shift and adapt and move because I've watched my grandmother migrate from the south. My grandfather migrate from the south, and I watched how their lives, their music, their opinions changed. I watched my mother migrate from New York down to the south and then back to New York and then to Canada, and then to Switzerland. I watched how her ideas shifted and changed. I watched my dad go from Switzerland to North America and watched him shift. So I really believe that being here now and being around people who are also primarily when I was growing up, were also immigrants from the Caribbean, from South Asia, from Asia, everywhere from England, we had a real unconditional acceptance of each other's differences.
(00:30:44):
And we also had a real willingness and eagerness to share our differences and define our commonalities. And because of this, I assume that people want to hear the differences that I can bring to a conversation, whether it be a musical conversation or a verbal conversation. And I assume that they want to share their differences as well so that we can sort of fit together like puzzles, like standing up puzzles, whatever those are called. And musically, I love nothing more than getting on stage with musicians who are from different places and us having to really listen to each other and find our way. One of the most fun things to do at the IBCs is to jump up during the jams and to get caught up in this space of music that has rules, but not everybody understands the same rules. So what's going to happen as a smorgasborg of people and experiences and opinions about how these songs should go and what happens when you put us together and we don't push, we let go and go together. That's what Canada's brought to me. That's what my life has brought me to.
Leah Roseman (00:32:17):
I'm curious, back when you had your day jobs and you were going to jam sessions, did you think of yourself as someone who loved to sing or as a singer the way you do now?
Shakura S'Aida (00:32:30):
I think I thought of myself as someone who sang, and I don't even know that I had a love of singing. I believe that singing was just certainly what I did. It's just what I did. I had an aha moment when I was in Montreal at the Jazz Festival. It was 2006, 2007, probably 2007, the year before when I decided I wanted to do this, I wanted to do this album and everything I had written in my journal, I'm no longer afraid to admit that I want to be great. And then a year later, I'm in Montreal and I'm on this huge festival stage and there's thousands of people, thousands of people in front of us, and the band is playing and the audience is just in it. And I saw this energy wave just come up from the audience and come towards us. And I remember looking and seeing us inhale and exhale and it go back out.
(00:33:35):
And I still don't know what it was except for me. It was energy. And I heard myself say, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And the next morning I woke up and I couldn't stop crying. I was trying to write about it, but I couldn't stop crying. And I opened up my journal and it opened up on exactly a year ago, the day before, and it said, I'm no longer afraid to admit that I want to be great. And I realized I was crying because my spirit was happy that I finally recognized that this is what I was supposed to do with my life. xc
Leah Roseman (00:34:35):
You're about to hear the title track from Shakur'as album, Hold on to Love. (music)
(00:38:50):
Hi, just a quick break from the episode.You may be also interested in my episodes with Kellylee Evans, Vahn Black, Colleen Allen, Jah’Mila, Kat Raio Rende, Cliff Beach and Edison Herbert, among so many. It’s a joy to be able to bring these meaningful conversations to you, but this project costs me quite a bit of money and lots of time; please support this series through either my merchandise store or on my Ko-fi page; you’ll find the links in the show notes. For the merch, it features a unique design by artist Steffi Kelly and you can browse clothes, phone cases, notebooks, water bottles and more. You’ll also find the links to sign up for my newsletter where you’ll get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Please check out my back catalogue, with episodes going back to 2021. Now back to Shakura S’Aida!
(00:39:55):
So I just want to acknowledge that you made time to meet with me another day to continue this conversation, and I really
Shakura S'Aida (00:40:02):
Appreciate that. Thank you. I appreciate you still wanting to talk to me after last time
Leah Roseman (00:40:10):
We were just texting and you said you were walking your dog. Now on Instagram, I saw a photo of your beautiful dog!
Shakura S'Aida (00:40:15):
Puppy, big dog.
Leah Roseman (00:40:19):
Is that a Russian Terrier?
Shakura S'Aida (00:40:20):
She's a black Russian Terrier, yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:40:23):
Really big.
Shakura S'Aida (00:40:24):
It's all relative. She's about, her summer weight's about 1 30, 1 35, 1 40. We don't talk about weight in my house. It's a sensitive topic. But yeah, she's big enough for me, put it that way, and sometimes too big for me. But she's a good puppy. She'll probably make an appearance at some point because she thinks if I'm on any kind of zoom or video call, she needs to be involved in it. So yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:40:53):
Did you get a dog during the pandemic or did you -
Shakura S'Aida (00:40:56):
The way it worked out, I got her during the pandemic, but I had wanted to get a black Russian for about two years before that. My last dog was a black Russian, and she passed away in 2017, so it was always my intention to get another one, and it just so happened that it became possible in 2020. So yeah, she became my pandemic puppy.
Leah Roseman (00:41:22):
So if we could get back to your life in music, you have this beautiful project, the Nina Project, which as I understand has had different iterations depending on the invited singers you're working with.
Shakura S'Aida (00:41:32):
So the Nina Project is a, how do I put this? I started writing it in I think 2014. Before that, I was commissioned by a woman by the name of Sybil Walker, who was a club promoter and manager here in Toronto to do a Nina Simone show. And when the time came to do the show, we hadn't had time to rehearse. So there were quite a few songs that we didn't know, but I still wanted to include the songs in the show. So I just ended up speaking the lyrics of the songs in between other songs that we were doing.
(00:42:17):
It kind of struck me how powerful her lyrics were, and not just lyrics that she wrote, but certainly the lyrics of songs that she chose to represent herself by. In 2014, I started writing this show and I used Jackie Richardson, who's an amazing artist here, and Kellylee Evans, another amazing artist as my muses. I love both of them, and I figured if I'm going to do this, I want to perform with two of the best vocalists in the country. And yeah, we presented it in 2015. It was sold out on a regular basis, and we went up to Ottawa, and then I think it was two years ago, I was on the Legendary Blues cruise, and I presented a version of it there as well.
Leah Roseman (00:43:06):
Yeah, so I interviewed Kellylee Evans on this podcast back in 2021, and we did talk about her Nina Simone album. And when you were asked to do this tribute to Nina Simone, had you been listening to her albums a lot when you were younger?
Shakura S'Aida (00:43:21):
So I was a late bloomer in terms of Nina Simone. I discovered her probably, I want to say in my thirties, maybe a little bit in my twenties, but certainly in my thirties. I did a really deep, deep dive and learned a lot about her. And then when I decided to do this play, to write this play, I started reading her books. And I was really careful not to read too much because I really wanted to figure out what our story was. The idea was not to do a tribute on Nina. The idea was to sort of explore what happens when you put three vocalists with three very different styles in a room together, and they all have a love of Nina, what happens to her music, what happens to the story? And what came out of it was this story of Nina's life because we would be talking about Nina the entire time, what she had gone through, not just career wise, but artistically, how she had been forced to make decisions about her art that she should not have had to make. And certainly as someone who suffered from some sort of mental illness or some sort of needing support from community and didn't feel as though she got that all the time. So those discussions led to that play, and that made me even more of a Nina fan because then I was really listening and really watching videos and really reading between the lines, trying to figure out exactly where my story was within her story.
Leah Roseman (00:44:59):
Yeah, we had talked at the beginning of this conversation last time about music as activism, and she was certainly known for that.
Shakura S'Aida (00:45:09):
Yes. Yes. I think one of the first things that I'm aware of is that her companions were James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry. And the conversations that they would have deep into the night were always around activism, were always around politics, were always around art, and how those three things fit together. And one of the stories that I read said that after the bombing of the church in Birmingham, Nina was really upset about it. And Lorraine Hansberry asked her, what are you going to do about it? And that was really what sparked Nina's activism into motion. And I respect that because a lot of times we speak on things from a place of frustration and not knowing how to participate in making things better or participating, making people aware. And it takes one person, or one sentence, one word, one visual, to change our lives and to change our mind and to change how we go, how we support the things that need support, I think is a good way to put it. Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:46:30):
And you mentioned Jackie Richardson that you'd invited her as part of this project. You also regard her as a mentor.
Shakura S'Aida (00:46:35):
She is my mentor.
Leah Roseman (00:46:36):
I'm interested because she's also in theater and music together, like you.
Shakura S'Aida (00:46:40):
Yes. I first met Jackie in 1985. I was very lucky. In 1984, I met Archie Alleyne, one of the most amazing jazz drummers that Canada had seen. Worked with Nina Simone, worked with Billie Holiday, worked with all the greats. And a year later, Joe Sealy, who's also another one of my early mentors, brought me into a room which contained Archie Alleyne as a producer, Salome Bey as a producer. Salome Bey is the sister of Andy Bay and certainly one of the Grand Dames of Canada and Jackie Richardson. And they were doing a play that Salome had wrote on Madame Gertrude, Ma Rainey. And I started learning from them, but specifically Salome and Jackie, especially because as women and as Black women, how they spoke, what they spoke about, how they held themselves professionally and casually, it really made a mark on me. It taught me how to interact with musicians. It taught me how to handle my business. It taught me how to be a good artist and how to respect the artistry. And Jackie, over the past, what is it now, 40 years, has continued to nurture me, to give me guidance, love, care, support, encouragement, and I certainly would not be where I am without her.
Leah Roseman (00:48:22):
And Salome Bey, I mean, she really opened up doors for Black performers.
Shakura S'Aida (00:48:26):
She opened up doors, not just for Black performers, but for anyone who was othered. She wrote a show called Rainbow World, which now would be a hit, but back then it was before its time. So she had all these kids, she had Indigenous kids and Black kids and Latino kids and Queer kids all up on stage learning how to act, learning how to be in a theater production, learning how to learn lines and sing and interact with each other. And she really opened those doors. The band that she had, she always had a band that had younger people in it so that they learned how to support a vocalist from the best. They learned how to pivot, they learned how to behave. Salome was Salome. She just was amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Leah Roseman (00:49:31):
And speaking of being a role model and mentorship in terms of your identity as a mom and also for the younger generations, just be interesting to reflect on. We talked about how you kind of got a late start really going for what you wanted, really asserting yourself last time you had said something really beautiful and that part did not get recorded. And I'm trying to get you back to what we were talking about. I reflect on this as a mom who's a performer, that when you have, especially younger kids, you feel like everything's for them. And it's easy to just let yourself put yourself to the side, and it's hard to make time and find energy to do your own projects, right?
Shakura S'Aida (00:50:16):
I mean, when I was starting out, I didn't have kids. And then when I had kids, I wasn't really serious about the art until I wasn't able to do the art. And then I got to the point where divorced two kids had to work and could only do a couple of gigs here every now and then do a couple of corporates. And the part that hit me was all of a sudden realizing how much I was hustling for everybody else, I was calling people up and asking for these big amounts of money for sponsorships and things like that, and asking for their support for all these different events. But none of the events involved my art or me as an artist. They all involved something else that although I might've cared about it, it wasn't at the root of what made me breathe, love, live, laugh, all of those things wasn't part of my passion.
(00:51:14):
And so I made a really intentional choice that my kids were old enough that I didn't have to worry about looking after them in the same way that I had looked after them before when they were younger. By 2005, they were 15 and eight, so they were a little bit more self-reliant. They could always go sing on a corner if this thing didn't work for me and and I went for it. And I think there's something to be said for that intentional choice and understanding that if we don't show our kids how to live for our passions and how to live towards our passions, they're really not going to know. It's not enough to just say, you should do this. You should be the best that you can be. You should always do the things that make you happy. If they don't see us happy, if they don't see us fulfilled, if they don't see us doing things that we'd love and living with heart, the HE and the art, then they're not going to feel as though they have a choice in that as well.
(00:52:23):
So that was really important for me, and it definitely has been difficult, but it's also been rewarding being able to bring my kids to Paris when I was touring in France, being able to bring my other daughter back to France again and travel across Canada with my younger daughter. All of those things are, for me, that's part of the benefits of this wonderful work that we get to do. And showing my kids not just coming home tired and not being able to go to their shows or their sporting events because I'm on the road, but showing them what I'm doing and helping them to feel that igniting of passion.
Leah Roseman (00:53:09):
Beautifully said, thank you. Which of your original songs on the album would you like to highlight?
Shakura S'Aida (00:53:15):
Love Clap Your Hands. I love that version. I don't do that version live. I do a different version live. I love Glad For Today, and I love, Hold on to Love. I love the album, and I don't say that often enough, but I really love every song on that album. So anything you highlight will leave me grateful.
Leah Roseman (00:53:39):
You're about to hear the title track from Shakura's album. Hold on to Love. (music)
(00:57:42):
Now, one of your recent awards in 2003, you were awarded the Her Music Award,
Shakura S'Aida (00:57:47):
2023.
Leah Roseman (00:57:49):
23, sorry.
Shakura S'Aida (00:57:50):
It's okay.
Leah Roseman (00:57:50):
In 2023 last year.
Shakura S'Aida (00:57:52):
Yeah.
Leah Roseman (00:57:53):
And in your acceptance, I read that you said that now you feel like you are in a new place, you don't have the same fear of failure, and you can stay truer to yourself.
Shakura S'Aida (00:58:04):
Yeah. I don't have anything to prove anymore. I feel like even when I thought I was proving I was not proving anything to anyone anymore with my last three albums, I was still proving something. I think it's inevitable in some ways, but I really feel with this last album, I just did what I wanted to do. I think Covid changed our minds in a lot of ways. And if you're going to do art, you need to do art just because that's how I came out of it. You have to do art because you want to do it, not because you're trying to prove that you're good enough or that you actually know what you're doing or any of those things. At this point, if I don't know what I'm doing at this point, then I need to give a lot of people their money back.
(00:58:50):
And since I've already spent it, I'm not about to do that. So I don't need to prove that I'm good enough. What I need to do is just be an artist, be a singer, being an interpreter, be whatever it is I am and do the best that I can and the rest will follow. So yeah, I feel very comfortable. And I do believe that comes with age. I was saying to someone the other day, I've discovered the joy in pauses. I've learned you don't have to have a response for everything. You can just sit there and just look at somebody. And that is a thing of age, not having to have an answer, not having to have the last word. Something that I've struggled with all my life thinking I had to have the last word. I had to be right. No, I don't. I could just let it go.
Leah Roseman (00:59:50):
I also wanted to ask you a number of years ago, you helped organize a music festival in Rwanda.
Shakura S'Aida (00:59:55):
Kigali Up. Kigali up, and I was very lucky to be a part of that. Kerry Clark is the artistic director of the Calgary Folk Festival, and she was friends with Mighty Popo, who is an artist out of Ottawa, who I believe now is back in Rwanda. And he wanted to do an open air festival like he had been a part of in Canada. He wanted to do one in Rwanda. So we raised money, Kerry, and a lot of really great festivals contributed money so that we could go down there and in 10 days, create this open air festival. And it was one of the most amazing and yet craziest experiences of my life. Open air festivals weren't done at the time. This idea of music and food and alcohol at an event was not something that was done. So we got a little bit of pushback, but we also got a lot of encouragement.
(01:01:01):
The day of the festival, there was rain. Half of our equipment's not there because there was kind of a conflict with two of the people who were supplying. They didn't like that we were getting equipment from the other person, so we had to go and smooth over things. There's people who wanted their money right away. All of these issues that we hadn't quite navigated in a way that worked. And at, I think the festival grounds open at 12 and no one was there. And I think all the food vendors are there, and they're going, what is happening? We've brought food. You told us to bring food. We brought food. Nobody's there. Around 1:30, the rain stopped and a couple of expats start wandering around with their dogs. And I don't know what happened. I think I ran to do something, or I was bringing people on stage, and I looked up and the festival grounds were full.
(01:02:06):
And there was all these people, and Leah, the history of Rwanda and the horrific genocides that happened there, and how divided the country was, and how much work they've done towards reconciliation, forgiveness, and community and moving forward. And I had studied up on a lot of this and read some books and spoken to some people while I was down there, but I didn't really get it until one of the musicians, Lyon, I was singing a short set, and I was doing, No Woman, No Cry and Lyon came up on stage to join me, and it's (singing) "No woman, no cry, no woman, no cry". But instead he sang, "no more genocide. No more genocide." And the minute he said that, the roar, the call, the I mean goosebumps, because it wasn't something that I can even, it was like this mutual feeling of everybody exhaled at the same moment.
(01:03:22):
And everybody then started singing. And it was such an emotional and humbling moment. No matter what I've gone through in my life, I will never experience what these people, these survivors, these warriors experienced and have come through on the other side of. And yeah, it was a life altering experience to be there, to be a part of that too. I think they're still going. As far as I know, they changed the timing from when we went, which was in the fall to, I believe, sometime in the spring. But they're still during the festival. And hopefully one day I'll get to go back down again because it was a really special experience.
Leah Roseman (01:04:16):
Yeah. Thanks for talking about that.
(01:04:19):
So on this great, Hold on to Love album. The last track is Heart of Gold. I hoped we could include an excerpt from that.
Shakura S'Aida (01:04:25):
Oh, I love that. Well, I mean Heart of Gold, those aren't my lyrics as much as I wished they were, Mr. Neil Young wrote that song. I certainly took the lyrics to heart. One of the things I speak about my performances now is the realization that I made during Covid that it's not about music for me, it's about connections. I'm looking to connect with good people. I'm looking to connect with people who make my heart happy and who accept me as I am, and who really have hearts of gold, who understand the value in community. And that song to me encompasses all of those things. The older we get, the more we're searching for those connections. Even that person, that grumpy old, old man that's sitting on the corner on the bench, and he looks like he goes there every single day and he's just sitting there grumpy. If you sit next to him and smile and say hello, I guarantee you he will at least look at you and grunt back. At the very least, just letting him know that you see him, just letting you know that he's not invisible in this world is such a small kindness to give someone. And that's what that song means to me.
(01:05:47):
We need to show more kindness. We need to show more awareness of those people around us, and we need to connect more.
Leah Roseman (01:05:58):
You're about to hear an excerpt from Heart of Gold (music)
(01:07:56):
And you tour all over the world, and I know you sometimes do things with kids like going into schools.
Shakura S'Aida (01:08:06):
Yeah. I am really lucky that I've been able to incorporate workshops in the work that I do. I love kids. I really do. I love this idea that maybe it comes from having great teachers, and I wanted to be a teacher when I was a kid before I decided to be an artist. And this idea that we could possibly change a young person's life doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to be an artist, but by showing them what's possible through art, we could possibly show them what's possible in their life. We can open up their mind to possibilities. So I'm lucky that I get to work with Massey Hall of Roy Thompson Hall doing workshops, and we teach how to write protest music. I use my mother as an inspiration for that. I teach them the Authentic Stagecraft workshop, which I do with young people and also with established artists.
(01:09:11):
And that helps people to learn how to be more grounded and authentic on stage. Something that I think we as artists need to be reminded of because it becomes, if we keep doing our shows over and over again, especially our, if we're on tour, sometimes you can stop listening to the words or you can stop paying attention to the music. And authentic stagecraft is about staying in the moment and staying open and listening and connecting to everyone on stage and in front of house and all of that. But I really love working with kids a lot. I enjoy it.
Leah Roseman (01:09:49):
So before you go on stage, do you have certain habits you have that help you with that groundedness?
Shakura S'Aida (01:09:56):
Yeah, and it's really shifted a lot. I used to throw up or other things before I got on stage. Every single time it just gets sick to my stomach. And I realized that it came from not being prepared, not being grounded. So I make sure that the band and I, even if it's just one person, that we have a moment where we connect to each other as a group before we go on stage. We see each other before everyone else sees us. And then when they go on stage to prep, to start the song, I have my own personal private ritual that I do to help me stay grounded. I asked to remain humble and asked to remain mindful of what the greater purpose is. And that's a really big part of me being on stage is not making it about me or working hard not to make it about me, because it really isn't. I'm just a vessel there, and it really is about the music and the audience and how they connect to the music. And if it's not working for them, then I need to be able to shift it up without thinking about, oh, this messes up my set, or this isn't what I planned. So being humble and mindful is really big part of my prep, before I go on.
Leah Roseman (01:11:20):
And to close this out, I was just thinking, you're such a great Blues singer, but are there other genres you want to explore more?
Shakura S'Aida (01:11:30):
Well, this last album was a Roots album. It wasn't categorized as a Blues album because I feel that being Blues was becoming too much of a monolith. It was becoming, I was being siloed and pushed aside in some ways, or erased in some ways because people weren't able to relate to what I was doing because of what they thought it was. With this new album that I'm writing now, yeah, it's going to shift again. To me, it's all Roots, it's Blues, it's Americana, it's Soul, it's all the same. But in order to make it palatable for people, I understand that we have to put it into very specific
Leah Roseman (01:12:20):
Labels?
Shakura S'Aida (01:12:20):
Boxes. But I don't want to define myself by those labels. I just want to do what feels good. And for this next album, I'm going back to what felt good when I was 9, 10, 11, 12, and the music that I was listening to, then the music that really influenced me then. And it's going to be fun. I'm looking forward
Leah Roseman (01:12:45):
To it. Great. So you're already writing the next album?
Shakura S'Aida (01:12:47):
Yeah. Fantastic. Not waiting another 10 years. Can't do that again.
Leah Roseman (01:12:54):
Well, thanks so much for this. Really appreciate it.
Shakura S'Aida (01:12:57):
I thank you, Leah. Thank you for your thoughtful questions and for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Leah Roseman (01:13:04):
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. Or you can browse the collection of merch with a very cool, unique and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly with notebooks, mugs, shirts, phone cases and more. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. Have a wonderful week.
