During our interview yesterday, I never did ask Shakura S’Aida how long she’s been in Toronto, but the Brooklyn-born blues singer, left, was dropping venue names like the Treehouse on Church Street and the Bellair Café, so I know she goes way back.
S’Aida will be onstage at Hugh’s Room tomorrow night leading her smokin’ hot band, featuring guitarist Donna Grantis, through a selection of songs from Brown Sugar, her 2010 disc, and her earlier Blueprint album. The band will almost certainly throw in some new material that S’Aida and Grantis have been writing but that’s not what’s making the singer nervous: she’ll be opening for herself at Hugh’s, reviving a cabaret act she hasn’t done in more than a dozen years. S’Aida’s alter-ego is named Funky Louise, a blues singer who’s brash, sloppy and my guess is, lots of fun.
“I don’t know if she’s still funky,” says Shakura as we walk her superbly well-behaved Black Russian Terrier, Lulu, through High Park. “But knowing that I’m doing something I haven’t done in a really long time is scaring the bejesus out of me and that’s a good thing. This audience has never seen her before.”
Stretching herself artistically is important to Shakura, who calls herself a blues singer but refuses to adhere to anyone else’s idea of what that means: “With Brown Sugar I was really conscious of the fact that there would be people who would say it wasn’t blues. I’ve been listening to those voices for a long time and I decided it was time to listen to my own.”
The undeniable fact is that S’Aida loves to “rock out” and writing and playing with the “kick-ass” Grantis, above, has given her the latitude to do exactly that.
“Donna and I are a real team,” says the singer. “We work well together — for the first time I don’t have to explain myself.”
As we make our way through High Park, Shakura reveals herself as frank, funny and warm. When I ask if she gets confused with Columbian star Shakira she says, yes, all the time. “But I’ll correct them by saying that Shakira is the one whose hips don’t lie, mine do, all the time (big laugh). Before Shakira people had a hard time remembering my name so now at least it’s not so foreign to them.”
There was a time, say 10 or 20 years ago, when being a blues singer wasn’t exactly an advantage when it came to the financial side of the music business. But things have turned around; blues typically appeals to an older audience and that’s really the only segment of the population that still “buys” its music as opposed to downloading files scalped off the internet.
“When we’re playing blues festivals in the U.S. or Europe we sell lots of CDs,” says the singer. “Our demographic wants the instant gratification of holding the music in their hand, they’re not interested in downloading.”
If any reassurance was required, Shakura’s place in the local blues/R&B firmament was cemented at “maestro” Andrew Craig’s sold-out Sistahs Project concerts. Generationally, S’Aida falls in between Jackie Richardson (below right) and Ada Lee, and the “younguns,” Alana Bridgewater, Toya Alexis and Divine Brown. “I’m in the middle,” says Shakura, “with Molly Johnson, below left, and Kellylee Evans, our children are all around the same age.”
Performing with her Sistahs was “incredible, overwhelming, surreal,” says Shakura. “I’ve known Jackie for a long time, she is my stage mother, my mentor, she’s my children’s godmother. She’s in my head all the time; when I’m on stage there’s Jackie, Salome Bey, my own mother and Etta James, all giving me direction and inspiration.”
If that same guidance is present tomorrow night at Hugh’s Room, then hold onto your hats!
High Park photo by Christopher Jones, performance pics courtesy of Shakura S’Aida and Sistahs photo by Bill King
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