For Toronto-based musician Jessica Stuart, musical barriers aren’t something she has to overcome. Rather, they don’t exist for the independent artist and leader of The Jessica Stuart Few.
Proof of this is the fact that Stuart plays both the western six-string guitar and the Japanese koto with equal ease and mixes both in her music so seamlessly that one can forget that they come from different cultures.
“It’s a bit of a boundary breaker when it comes to genres,” she said of her use of the 13-string instrument, which is similar to an oriental zither. “But to me it’s authentic… it’s not a riot and I just do what I feel and as long as I’m making music that I love, I don’t care.
“Most people have never seen one and I’m happy to be the person she introduces them to.”
The Jessica Stuart Few embarked on a tour of Canada earlier this month and will return to Kelowna on July 13th from 12pm to 1pm at City Park for a free show as part of the Parks Alive Concert Series.
Like the title of her latest 2013 album Two Sides to Every Story, Stuart has led something of a musical double life.
Growing up in Vancouver, Stuart grew up in a musical household and learned early on that musical boundaries are more imaginary than real.
“My mother is actually a classically trained musician and pianist. She has a Masters degree in music, but is also an ethnomusicologist, ”she said. “So she studied various world music, specializing in Japanese, Yiddish, and native West Coast music.
“I grew up with all these kinds of music all the time.”
When Stuart was in elementary school, the family moved to Japan for a year, where Stuart attended school in Japanese and her mother learned koto and guitar-like shamisen.
The koto itself is said to be derived from the Chinese Zheng and consists of 13 strings of different pitches that are strung on a long, wooden frame with 13 bridges that divide each string into two parts.
It is nearly six feet long, is played in a horizontal position with finger picks, and has a distinctive, haunting sound that lends itself to the traditional music normally played on it.
Influenced by her mother’s game, Stuart soon began to play koto himself. But what attracted her to the instrument, she couldn’t say for sure.
“It was just an intuitive thing,” she said. “I only know that the sound of the instrument attracted me.”
While in Japan she studied with her mother’s koto sensei, but when she returned to Canada she was drawn in a different direction again.
“My colleagues kind of frowned upon the fact that I had been in Asia for a year,” said Stuart. “I’ve had some tough times, pretty isolated times in school because of it.
“So I stopped talking about it, I stopped speaking Japanese, and I stopped playing koto for the most part, except on random occasions.”
However, Stuart kept her feet in the music and eventually picked up the guitar. In her later teenage years, she felt attracted to the koto again and began playing it again. She eventually incorporated her sound into her own songs when she moved to Toronto from the West Coast about six years ago.
The addition of the koto on some tracks gives Stuart’s songs a unique twist, his haunting sound goes well with the overall package and especially with Stuart’s vocal style.
“I just treated it like a singer / songwriter and used it for what I had,” she said. “Now the koto material makes up half of our work.”
Stuart’s music is sometimes compared to that of another Canadian pioneer, Joni Mitchell, a comparison she finds flattering and not without merit. Like Mitchell, she is an explorer. She continued to show her willingness to explore the koto on Two Sides to Every Story, even covering the eurythmics hit Here Comes the Rain Again to great effect.
Stuart has been busy the past few years, releasing her debut EP The Ittiest Bit in 2007, followed by her debut album Kid Dream in 2010, and then releasing Two Sides to Every Story last year.
As if on its own detour back to the koto, Stuart’s music sort of joined in when The Jessica Stuart Few played shows in Japan last year with thousands of viewers.
“It was an amazing surprise to see how much media coverage we had,” she said of the press attention she received. “But the type of Japanese I spoke in elementary school is very different from talking about the creative process.”
However, she enjoyed the experience and the band was welcomed everywhere – which in turn proves that cultural and musical boundaries do not exist.
QUICK FACTS
Who: The Jessica Stuart Few live in concert, presented by Parks Alive.
Where: Kelowna City Park, downtown.
When: July 13th from 12pm to 1pm
Free entry.
More information: jessicastuartmuisc.com or parksalive.festivalskelowna.com.
