[ad_1]
THERE WAS A TIME when you almost never saw Vancouver jazz musician Daphne Roubini without a ukulele in her hands. In 2009, the transplanted Londoner started Ruby’s Ukes, which grew into what was possibly the largest ukulele school outside Hawaii, spawning a festival and a 70-member uke orchestra.
Ruby’s Ukes scraped through the COVID-19 pandemic by pivoting to online classes, but by 2024, Roubini decided to wind things down. These days, Roubini, who fronts the band Black Gardenia, hasn’t forsaken the little four-stringed instrument that many associate her with, but playing the ukulele has taken a back seat to writing songs as her creative vehicle of choice.
When she meets up with Stir at a busy Strathcona cafe, Roubini admits that the instrument initially served as something of a security blanket or a shield. “I was a very, very shy singer, so when I started playing the ukulele, I felt like it kind of protected me in some ways,” she says. “It was between me and the audience.”
As Roubini’s confidence as a performer has grown, her need for that barrier has faded.
“I still play it at home, but I don’t often perform with it, because there’s something deep within me that wants to be expressed, and I think that’s the songwriting,” she says. “But if I do take the ukulele out at a gig, everyone starts clapping. They love it. I’ve got a 1940s Gibson concert ukulele that comes out with me every now and then. I’m also playing the guitar.”
It’s worth noting that, while Black Gardenia’s third album, Whisky Scented Kisses (due out April 3 on the Cellar Live label) might not feature Roubini’s uke-playing, it does boast six songs with lyrics and melodies written by the singer.
This is a marked change from the ensemble’s first release, 2012’s No Moon at All, which was made up of jazz standards and a few old country and folk tunes. Roubini cowrote two songs for the next Black Gardenia album, 2017’s Lucky Star, but the new LP finds her more fully coming into her own as a tunesmith.
Each of these albums has its own distinct sound, which is partly a result of an evolving lineup, but also largely due to Roubini’s determination to keep growing. “As an artist, it’s part of the process; to change, to evolve,” she says. “Otherwise, I think we become like a pastiche of ourselves, if we just carry on doing something because that’s what we’re known for.”
No Moon at All, for example, leaned heavily into a rootsy aesthetic, thanks to the shimmering lap steel–playing of Jimmy Roy and song selections that included Hank Williams’s “Cold Cold Heart” and the trad-folk staple “Wayfaring Stranger”.
Whisky Scented Kisses, by contrast, sounds like a 21st-century take on midcentury small-combo jazz, with Roubini’s smoky but smooth after-hours crooning accompanied by guitarists Paul Pigat and Stephen Nikleva, along with Brad Turner on trumpet and flugelhorn, Jeremy Holmes on bass, and Dave Say on saxophone.
“I think we’ve always had a slightly different sound because we don’t have a drummer,” Roubini says. “It’s more like an internalized sense of swing, which I really like.”
[ad_2]
Source link
