Our world is filled with an endless amount of signals connecting us using sights, sounds and human contact.
For Canadian jazz artist Elizabeth Shepherd this idea of connectivity was important for her latest album, appropriately titled The Signal.
“Through social media we can see what is going on on the other side of the world and yet there is this disconnect from what is really human – from each other, from flesh, from talking sitting face-to-face with a person,” said Shepherd from her home in Montreal.
Having recently entered the world of motherhood, Shepherd said she wrote these songs right after her daughter was born and there was a shift in focus where she began to turn outward.
She said she began wondering about the state of the world and what that meant for her daughter.
Choosing to stay home with her daughter meant that there was very little time for creativity, according to Shepherd. Normally, Shepherd said she was able to put herself into a creative sequestering for days and weeks at a time – but with a newborn she had to take a different approach to the creative process.
“All of this was written and arranged and worked out in fragments of time whenever I would have a break. It’s sort of a hidden blessing in that I didn’t have time to deliberate over it too much,” she said. “It was just really honest. It was ‘this is what I have to say and this is how I want to say it.’”
With no time to get bogged down with questions of whether the album was accessible enough or jazz enough, Shepherd said she made the record that was true to her.
This seems to be a method that is working for the musician, with some critics calling it the best jazz album of the year.
“They are saying it’s different, it’s unique, it’s bold, and I didn’t set out to do that, but I think when you’re true to yourself you create something that is different and unique,” explained Shepherd.
This uniqueness might be attributed to the way Shepherd discovered Jazz.
She described growing up in a bubble where her parents were Salvation Army Ministers and she listened to mostly Salvation Army music, as well as classical offerings.
She said she spent her 20s absorbing music like a sponge, with jazz being one of the many genres she gravitated towards.
“I feel like sometimes that if you grow up within a tradition it is really hard to shake the preconceptions of how that tradition should sound,” said Shepherd. “I feel like coming to it late in life and having a bit of a weird perspective and angle allowed me to just see it as another genre.”
Baggage is what she said she brought into the genre, a good kind of baggage that is.
“I’m going to work with this genre, but I’m going to bring everything with me. It is good in a way, because the only way you can make appropriate a genre is to bringing what you know and bringing your experience to it,” said Shepherd.
Shepherd will be performing as part of the Bragg Creek Performing Arts season Nov. 22 at the Bragg Creek Community Centre. Visit braggcreekperformingarts.com for more information.
