HOMEGROWN SONGBIRDS
Chiliwack, B.C., and winner of the 2017 Juno Award for outstanding vocal jazz album, now lives in Manhattan and tours across the United States, having just released her second album, With a Twist, on Sony Masterworks. Despite her touring schedule and teaching commitments, she retains a strong sense of her Canadian identity — as she puts it with a laugh, “I always tell my audiences I’m from the jazz metropolis of Chiliwack, B.C.”
Skonberg returns to B.C.’s Fraser Valley at least twice a year to visit family and undertake educational outreach work in local schools. “I left Canada to live in New York because I wanted to feel uncomfortable, and to keep growing creatively,” Skonberg says. “New York is the best place for me right now for so many reasons — but I still feel grounded and connected to my roots in Canada.”
As for being a woman in the traditionally male-dominated world of jazz, Skonberg says, “A lot of women have worked hard for a long time to get female musicians respect. By the time I came on the scene, my teachers were always treating me as an equal. You know, if you can play and hang out, the gender thing is just a side issue. I’m not pretending there aren’t challenges to being a woman in jazz, but when you look at what early pioneers like (1940s trumpeter) Valaida Snow went through, I feel really comfortable with the scene now.”
Canada for creating opportunities for her career is soul singer Tanika Charles. Born in Toronto and raised in Edmonton, Charles returned to Toronto to further her musical career, and credits her Canadian background with creating “a more open and welcoming environment” for her to explore her talents. Charles specifies: “Being a Canadian does not influence my music, but it does allow me not to be put in a box compared to artists from other backgrounds.”
The last five years have seen Charles’s profile rise quickly, both in Canada and internationally. A Juno nomination in 2010 “got more people listening to my music and enabled me to start performing at bigger venues,” such as London’s famed 100 Club on Oxford Street, and other locations in the U.K. and France. A record deal with Italian soul label Record Kicks followed, and the last three months have been something of a whirlwind, with a second Juno nomination in February followed by the release of her new album, Soul Run, in April and a new single, Endless Chain, in May.
She also got to support one of her musical heroes, Lauryn Hill, at Toronto’s Massey Hall, an experience she describes as “a dream. This last year has been wonderful and a blessing for me, managing to balance the workload and a personal life.”
And that workload shows no signs of being reduced any time soon, with appearances on the festival circuit across North America planned for this summer, and a second European tour in December 2017, followed by further European dates in early 2018.
agenda right now for Nova Scotia-based R&B artist Reeny Smith, whose family and background have played a huge part in forming her identity as an artist and in forging her career: “My dad was in a gospel group for 20 years and travelled all over Canada and the U.S. My mother was a singer who played in a band with (renowned Nova Scotia blues artist) Carson Downey,” Smith says. “So music was a real part of our family when I was growing up.”
Smith has won many awards in her native Nova Scotia and like Charles, she credits these awards for opening up opportunities for her to play to wider audiences and record with different artists. Her burgeoning career notwithstanding, Smith says she has no plans to leave her native province just yet: “Right now, I’m staying in Nova Scotia. You know, Atlantic Canada has this rep for folk or singer-songwriters, but there is a great R&B scene in Halifax.”