Canadian music has been the spark behind many careers, and jazz musician Laila Biali’s career is one. Celebrating both ten years from the release of her first album, covering Canadian classics, as well as 150 years since confederation, her Great Canadian Songbook tour is taking many classics from Canadian music and putting Biali’s own spin on them. She will be in Yorkton as part of the Yorkton Arts Council’s Stars for Saskatchewan season on October 27.
The concert will be built around the famous Canadian singer-songwriters everyone knows, people like Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Daniel Lanois, k.d. lang, Feist and more. The tour leads to Neil Young’s birthday, and Biali’s cover of Heart of Gold was her way of celebrating Canada 150 this year.
“That has been the theme song of the tour.”
Beyond the country’s history, it’s also going back to Biali’s first album, From Sea to Sky. That album changed the course of Biali’s career, and sparked a love of Canadian music that lead to the tour overall.
“In 2007, when I was commissioned to do that project with CBC records it was an introduction to all of these incredible songs and artists who were out there, many of whom I was not familiar with. Obviously I heard the odd k.d. lang song, but I had not delved deep into her music. I was a fan of Joni Mitchell and Daniel Lanois, but at that time, I was so research driven, and so new to the bulk of what we call the great Canadian songbook, I went really deep and discovered this incredible music. What that meant was that this concept of covering Canadian songs created by others didn’t just stop there. I continued along that thread ever since.”
Choosing songs is audience-driven, and Biali does something called the “Request-O-Matic.” They invite concert audiences to suggest covers, and those suggestions range from massive pop hits, to Stompin’ Tom Connors, to artists that are less well known like Karkwa from Quebec.
“Leonard Cohen and Joni [Mitchell] are the only two Canadian musicians so far who I have covered twice, in that I have covered more than one song by them. Otherwise we try to cast a wide net and have a signature song that we have covered from each artist so that we get as many artists covered as possible. Also so that we keep track of the up-and-coming acts, not just the established, renowned artists in our country, but also those who are newer on the scene who might be in genres that are even more distant from jazz.”
The challenge and the joy of Biali’s work is translating music from a wide swath of genres into jazz.
“I try to find an idea, whether it’s the lyrics or something hook-y about their original production of the song that I can hang my hat on and build upon. Then of course the jazz comes in, and I’m changing up the harmony and I’m opening it up so the band can improvise and we can do something fresh and new with the tune, while still honoring its origins.”
They don’t want to go “too far into outer space” with the arrangement, but there are exceptions.
“For example, on a song like Stolen Land, we did go to outer space on that one. It’s Bruce Cockburn’s tune, and the version I heard, the only version I was familiar with, was just him and a bohdran, an Irish drum. Very primal. Because I didn’t know of any harmony to this song apart from the melody that he sings, I could do whatever I wanted with it. There is still, though, that original heartbeat feeling, that primal heartbeat feeling he brought with the drum.”
The joy of covering the music is also seeing the audience look at the songs they know in a new light.
“Maybe there’s an element to the song that we pull out and focus on that adds a new layer or offers a new perspective or focus.”
Biali not only plays music, but also presents it, as the host of CBC Radio 2’s Saturday Night Jazz, which just started broadcasting in September. Now on the other side of the mic.
“It’s connected me even more with what I imagine to be the listener’s experience. Now, from a new perspective, I’m trying to envision what the people listening to the show might be doing. Are they wrangling their kids trying to get their kids to bed, are they driving home after a long day of work on Saturday, are they heading in to a night shift, are they gathered together with friends? I can only imagine the different environments that my show is being invited into, so I feel like I’m trying to be really mindful about what do they need, what do they want, what can I offer them that will make their evening better? It sounds really cheesy, but that’s really my job. It’s to add something good to their life in that moment, otherwise they’re not going to tune in.
“I feel like in a way that’s the ultimate goal of music, it’s an art form that is supposed to make our lives better, so that has become something I think about more than ever now that I’m a host.”
She expects that her experience as a host might influence her next record, because she can picture the people on the other end, the people who put her album on the stereo.
Before becoming host, Biali had just finished her next album, coming in 2018. This album, consisting of mostly original material, is a personal project, developed from her experience moving back to Canada from New York. For her family it was a big change, especially for her son, who had spent almost his entire life in New York.
“The new album really explores transitions, my life on the road, what it means to call a place home and how, in a way, the road itself has become a home for me, and how home has become something inherently transient, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The music itself becomes home.”
The album also responds to more serious things in the world, such as the Syrian refugee crisis, exploring the idea of what home means to someone fleeing their country.
Biali views her songs as her children, whether they’re songs she has conceived or songs she has adopted, and she views her covers and her original music as a kind of family.
“When you try to get inside of a song written by an artist you deeply respect – I would never choose a song that had lyrics that didn’t resonate with me, I’ve always chosen songs that have messages I felt I could own... You adopt them, they’re adopted children. They’re not really yours, but you take them on as your own, and you bring them with you on the road and they grow and they change with you.”
Biali’s Saskatchewan tour has some unexpected personal resonance for her, because she’s going to be exploring her own family history. Her father and grandmother’s first home in Saskatchewan was in Swift Current after he immigrated from Egypt, and while he doesn’t talk much about his history, he has been responding to the towns she’s mentioned as she describes the tour to her parents.
“I have this crazy familial tie to your province that I didn’t even discover until recently.”
Playing smaller communities is exciting for Biali, because she’s looking forward to meeting the audiences in a more intimate location.
“It’s exciting to play London, it’s exciting to play Paris, it’s exciting to play New York City. But, in some ways, when you get off the beaten track or the main path, you can actually access the heartbeat of a place, what really makes that community what it is.”
