If there was a way to blend the best elements of the exceptional soul music of the late 1960s and 1970s, with a modern sensibility, and then bring in a rootsy, folk vibe into the mix, Toronto-based singer/songwriter Lydia Persaud was going to find a way to do it.
And, my goodness, did she ever. The result of bringing together her favourite musical styles in such an innovative and seamless way, imbued with a sense of purpose, passion and a powerfully emotive singing voice is her debut full-length solo album, Let Me Show You, which was released May 10 on Next Door Records.
The songs on the album showcase an artist who is just beginning to tap into her remarkable talent, and her equally adept ability to convey the complexities of the human heart in such a potent and insightful way, all wrapped up in a delightfully lush musical melange that adds an extra layer of emotional depth to every verse and chorus.
Persaud has been a fixture on the Toronto scene for a number of years, after moving to the city from nearby Brampton to study music at Humber College. While at school, and shortly thereafter she began playing in a series of jazz groups and other musical concoctions, as well as forming a friendship with fellow students Jill Harris and Meg Contini to form the folk/roots trio The O’Pears.
As with any collaborative endeavour, the greater good of the group usually entails a certain amount of creative compromise and a practical limitation on self expression. As she grew more and more confident in that independent artistic voice that was being cultivated inside her own musical head and heart, Persaud began to chip away at her own compositions. Realizing she had enough for an album, late last year Persaud hunkered down in the studio alongside producer Robbie Grunwald (Donovan Woods, Jill Barber) and a host of talented studio musicians, to record what would become her powerful and compelling debut solo album, Let Me Show You.
“What led me to release it now was that the songs were ready, and I was able to get these amazing musicians together along with Robbie. Certain songs on the album are about three years old, and some of them were written last summer, so in some ways the album has been in the works for a long time. But I like the timing of it, because I like to keep an album as a snapshot of where I am musically and in life. Personally, if I had waited too long, I would probably have tried to find this perfect thing that I know I could never get. And so that album is what it is, where we tried to capture a very specific window of time in my life,” said Persaud, who released an EP entitled Low Light, with a number of songs that would eventually appear on the album, late last year.
“And I wasn’t really hesitant or worried at all. It was mostly excitement. Hesitation and fear really only related to how I am perceived. People know me from the bands that I am associated with, so I know that meant they didn’t entirely know who I was. So, there’s a lot of work to be done on that. But the whole lead-up to the release, and the release of the Low Light EP and all of those things were filled with excitement over spreading my wings and doing my own thing.”
For the recording process, Persaud and Grunwald went old school, using real tape as much as possible to capture the warmth and depth of the sonic soundscape she was hoping for.
“I really wanted this music to feel both modern and nostalgic, and it was an extremely intentional process. When I recorded the Low Light EP it was recorded, mixed, mastered and edited all to tape and we brought some of that process into the album. We didn’t do everything to tape, but we put all the recordings through tape into the computer and it’s because we all loved the sound of that,” she said.
“It sounds so great because everything, all the frequencies, all the tracks are just smushed together and they’re just so warm and so blended. I am only 29, but I am already wearing a bit hearing recordings that are really clean and really isolated and really perfect. I just don’t feel a lot of things have the emotion and the rawness of the music that I love.”
It was important to Persaud to elevate all her previous musical experiences, plus all of her ongoing life experience into the compositions on Let Me Show You. It is a bold artistic statement from someone freed from the shackles of other people’s expectations and, to a certain degree, some of her own self-imposed limitations.
“For me as a person, my biggest journey and my biggest feat has been connecting with myself and my inner voice. I have been through so many journeys in my life where my voice was kind of muffled. Specifically speaking, I was raised very religiously, and I am so thankful for that phase of my life, but it muffled my own voice and it substituted my voice with that of someone else. Similarly, I have been in so many other projects musically that have been all about the greater good of the project, and every decision, every writing move was made for the project. And I just feel like now I am kind of on my own, and it feels really right. I now have a lot of space to think and feel and grow and do the things that I want to do, and this a home to me,” she said.
“I think that a lot of artists never get that, and they want it, desperately. Now I have the support and the opportunity to do it and I am realizing this is my foundation. So many things in my career have led to this album and I am so thankful for them, they are my foundation as well. But this feels different, this feels very right and natural. In the past, based on the way I looked and also based on the music that I liked, people wanted to keep me in a box that was very, very soul/R&B oriented musically. And it’s still happening. People are going to have a hard time identifying what this album is genre wise. They are going to see me and go, ‘oh, it’s soul.’ But there is folk in there and I think it’s still new for people to see a woman of colour play folk music. We don’t have those people thriving and represented in our culture, especially in Canadian culture. People very much associate folk music with white music.
“And I am still going through that. As I have been dealing with stereotypes in other ways, this is a whole new world that I am walking into and one that I am particularly excited to walk into because I feel way more aware of who I am than previously when I was younger. Now, I am aware of the fact that people don’t have representation, they don’t see brown folk artists from Brampton. I am excited to be that now and I am excited to break those boundaries in ways that I can, while also holding true to the fact that I love soul music. I can be anything, and I think that’s something I would have loved to have seen someone else do when I was a young girl.”
As someone who has endured questions, limitations and stereotyping about various aspects of her identity, from her gender, skin pigmentation and ethnicity, Persaud has always sought to use her voice as creator to support those who have been marginalized by the so-called mainstream of society.
“I wouldn’t consider myself an activist, but I do use the platform of my music to raise awareness. I think as a millennial and as an artist my definition of activism is very bold, and it’s a life dedicated to bringing awareness to the issues faced by those in my community who are marginalized by race, gender, sexuality. Marginalized people have been the people who have been at the forefront of everything for me. I wouldn’t be able to say that I am who I am without black music. I couldn’t deny that history. So much of what I love comes from black music: soul, jazz, R&B, funk, and even folk. There is so much inspiration that that comes from the history that these people have lived. I like to bring light to that. I didn’t just wake up and want to play soul music. I really dug deep into the struggle that came from this music and its history,” she explained.
“And the LGBTQ+ community has been so pivotal in my life and my awareness of different types of gender and sexual orientation and watching these people fight for who they love and who they are. That has been huge in my life. Any chance I get, honestly speaking to focus in on a group that needs more consideration, more attention, more support, I am willing to do that – it’s so important to me. So, the people who I love, who are dear friends of mine, who have nurtured me and my music, I wanted to thank them. And I do deal in pretty broad strokes in my music, but if it brings awareness, that’s what I am always hoping for.”
One song that is painted in very broad strokes, but which is infused with this spirit is the breathtakingly powerful title track for Let Me Show You. It could be said to be about any relationship – between individuals, between lovers, or between cultures, and the importance of listening, understanding, empathizing and building real connection.
“I think that storytelling is so important, and I think that once we tell our stories, and people listen and vice versa, we really understand one another so much better. With Let Me Show You, I am putting both my hands out face up and I am saying, ‘I have no ill intentions but for you just to understand me.’ And if I were to personify that feeling, as an objective person, I would think of our indigenous people, who have their hands out saying, ‘just support us, acknowledge us and help us.’ And we can’t seem to do that, which is so heartbreaking. So, I was thinking about their tradition in storytelling and how important that is in their culture and how we have so much to learn about the power of telling our stories,” said Persaud.
“I am basically saying, ‘hear me out. We’re really not that different.’”
Persaud has learned to understand herself, and has, over time developed a self awareness and also a strength of character to allow her musical muse to dig deep into the recesses of her own heart, soul and spirit for a bevy of tracks on Let Me Show You where she talks of the pitfalls and blessings of love.
“I wrote More of Me when I was with someone who was always wanting more time: ‘I want more of your time, I want your attention, I want more love.’ And at the time I was super annoyed by that because this guy wanted more of me than I could give. And later I realized that I was just seriously emotionally unavailable. I was really not in a place to give myself to someone. I was just not open, and I wasn’t communicating that very well. So, it’s about the action and reaction of being emotionally unavailable,” she said, adding that Hold Out takes a more positive and constructive tack, encouraging people to wait for real love.
“It’s about loving yourself to the point where you can then find love in a really healthy way. You can find clarity in that love, as opposed to it being this really messy, crazy, passionate, intense thing that kind of flies by you. Hold On is like, I am in love, and I want to be in love, and I love this love – it’s that sort of feeling. And then you have Honey Child which, I remember writing in my room on a sunny day and I had been listening to a lot of Marvin Gaye tunes and other soul tunes, so the song has a lot of that, but then also slips into a little folk section which I thought was pretty cool.
“It’s a song to myself about loving myself for who I am and the body that I have and the person that I am, and it ended up being this ode to other women of colour, which is what I tried to communicate through the music video. I wanted to show just how beautiful, vibrant, strong and resilient these women are that I have known my whole life. I know almost every single woman in the music video, so the song ended up taking on a whole other meaning away from myself and being for other women who I love dearly and want to support.”
Persaud will be hitting the road in for a short run of dates in Ontario with Charlotte Cornfield in June. On June 11, they will be at Donaleigh’s Irish Public House in Barrie, followed by an official album release show for Let Me Show You in Ottawa June 13 at the National Arts Centre. The duo then heads to The Mansion in Kingston on June 14 before a show at Mills Hardware in Hamilton on June 15. The official album release part in Toronto takes place at The Drake on June 19.
For more information on these and other forthcoming shows, on the new album and other news related to Lydia Persaud, visit https://www.lydiapersaud.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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