Joshua Banks Discusses Performing, His Local Scene and Album ‘Para Sayo’

With Para Sayo being his first recording project, Joshua Banks has made sure to do his homework. The album, released in May, is Banks’ own educated take on contemporary jazz. Since he began playing and studying music, the Edmonton pianist has gone to great lengths to educate himself about the many influential musicians that came before him, as well as the ones he can call his peers. He particularly focused on studying the sounds of highly regarded Asian pianists Hiromi Uehara, Kie Katagi, and Nahre Sol.

With years of classical study behind him, Banks took this inspiration and used it to fuse together his own style. Proud of his Asian heritage, Banks strives to expand the presence of Asian-inspired jazz. Born in Canada, but from a family of Filipino immigrants, the album explores what it means to find space as an Asian artist. It also considers what it means to find a place for himself, his family, and his culture living in the West.

Para Sayo was recorded over the course of two full years. Banks wanted to take his time recording, ensuring that he was fully satisfied with how he pulled these compositions together. With many years of study and experience behind him, he was able to craft the album that he wanted to. It features a distinctive fusion of styles and eras in jazz music. After fleshing out the album’s sound, Banks connected with his good friend Hazel Cavida. Cavida is a singer and lyricist, and a good friend of Banks’. She helped him develop lyrics in both English and Tagalog. He leaned on Cavida a lot to help him explore both his own Asian identity and the musical identities of other Asian artists.

Today, we are pleased to be joined by Joshua Banks, as we learn more about him as a person and an artist.

Tell us about your experience going it alone as an artist. How hard is it to get your music distributed, promoted, shared, etc?

Joshua Banks: “It’s definitely been a trip and a half for the distribution and promotion. I’m lucky enough to have the two grants backing me up, so financially it wasn’t a challenge to get everything lined up for promotion, and I can see that being the toughest part of going at it alone for most independent artists out there. But for me, since it’s my first time genuinely trying to understand things like licensing, release strategy, etc., it’s been a lot of sitting down and trying to do some extensive research while my cat yells at me, acting like he hadn’t been fed an hour ago from across the home.

“If I could do it for the first time again, I’d maybe give myself just an extra month or two of time to build a better understanding of ‘the comms stuff,’ as they say. But jazz venues book far in advance and fill up quickly, so I had just barely gotten my release show booked in just before the end of the season, and that was the deadline I had to work around, so you live and learn!

“I really thought going in, the hardest part was going to be the recording part. I can be a bit nervy going into any kind of performance, and the thought of recording my first thing as the bandleader, I went in feeling the pressure for sure. But actually, I felt pretty grounded once things actually got moving!”

Joshua Banks, photo by Mason Herron

Do you ever get stage fright? What’s your solution for it?

“When I first started performing, I would often have full-blown panic attacks, not just performing, but sometimes in rehearsal or even private piano lessons with my instructors! It would manifest physically, think TV static in the eyes and limbs, and I’d feel really hot, like I was getting heat stroke.

“I still have panic disorder-type experiences on occasion, but nowadays I’ve picked up enough strategies to manage my physical, mental, and emotional health to the point that it’s rare for me to get to that state. I don’t really have one single solution to it, other than I just have a lot of things I learnt from therapists, colleagues, friends, and family, etc. that I can pull out when needed. If one strategy doesn’t work, stops working, isn’t working in the moment, whatever, I have so many backup plans and strategies for managing myself that I’ll always have something for me to pull from.”

Do you have any rituals before you hit the stage? If so, what are they?

“Nowadays, I more just get nervous until the first song of the set is through. But, the one thing I do always tell myself before I play is that, no matter what happens, how I play is the best I could’ve done. There are so many little things out of our control in life. A bad sleep, caffeine jitters, or lack of percolation, a sideways comment that affects our brain. It helps me to believe that, however I play on any given day, is a predisposition of not just my own preparedness, but also these many outside factors and more. It helps me be more fair to myself by noting my own preparedness or lack thereof, while also displacing and acknowledging some of the pressure and negativity that I might place too squarely or harshly on myself if I don’t play to my standard.”

Joshua Banks ‘Para Sayo’ album artwork

How would you describe your own music?

“Well, I find my mind always jumps to the most self-deprecating answer of ‘weird’ or ‘dense’ (laughs). But, I think that’s a bit of an entrenched belief from school. A lot of the stuff on my album are things I wrote years ago while in university, and a number of my musical peers either seemed unwilling or unexcited to play my material, or didn’t see the artistic point of some of my favourite musical calling cards, such as changing metre on a dime.

“It wasn’t until I did Para Sayo that I really started telling myself, ‘yeah, I really like these things I do!’ And I found people who looked to try and put effort into understanding why I made the musical and theoretical decisions I did, before jumping immediately to ‘why’ in a negative connotation.

“Which, I guess, is a long-winded way of saying, it’s eclectic! It takes much inspiration from the Asian jazz-fusion idiom, but is a little more stylistically classical due to my musical upbringing. So genre-wise, I’m defining it as contemporary jazz, though I know I’m missing some of the greater historical context of jazz in these compositions, as well as in my own jazz education. So perhaps it’s more objective to be more general and call it ‘instrumental.’ But I know I like it, I want to keep making it, find others who want to make it with me, and reach people who want to keep hearing it.”

When recording your Para Sayo, did anything strange, wonderful, or terrible occur?

“Actually, one of the things I thought was a fun anecdote to say to people after I finished recording my album was, ‘It was great, no hitches. Nobody dropped out, nobody got ill, and the fire alarm didn’t go off until after the recording was complete!’

“We recorded the album over four days, with the strings being the last thing we did on the fourth day, and not but a moment after they stepped out, the fire alarm went off. I guess someone was cooking (pancakes, I believe I heard), and ended up causing a fire enough to cause a little damage. So that was quite humorous to me.

“If there’s anything wonderful, it was really just hearing it all live. All I had going into the studio was the reference tracks I made and the few rehearsals we did to get layers in. I wrote the string part, but never heard the strings actually play it live before, and we never rehearsed Nick’s (Lange) tenor sax solo at the end of ‘Agila,’ so I went in a bit nervous about whether the layers I hadn’t heard in the full context would sound good.

“It was so relieving to have Nick knock out his solo so quickly, and I still remember, when me, Nick (who was also producing my album) and my audio engineer Brett heard the string swell into the chorus of ‘Opo’ on that first string take, they shook me around and slapped my back and told me what a gorgeous job I did… It really meant a lot to me to see their genuine joy at something I was fortunate enough to craft.”

Do you receive a lot of support from your local scene and fans in general?

“For the most part, yes! I’m fortunate enough that in my experience with Edmonton, it’s got a bit of that ‘big city size, small town vibe’ thing going on. My partner likes to point out that whenever we go out together, I’ll always run into someone I know, usually from the music scene, and then I’ll have to get my hospitality fix in before we can continue on our way. Which is to say, the music community here is quite close-knit, much as the city itself, and I’m grateful to have met the many friends, supporters and colleagues that I have met and made along the way of my musical journey.

“Sometimes I struggle with being a minority still, though. Maybe six to eight years ago, when I was first getting my digs in on freelancing, it was a bit scarier to go to the jazz clubs here. There were, unfortunately, some more obvious discriminatory undertones to race, gender, and other minority identities going. Where if you weren’t ‘in the club’ (so to speak), you wouldn’t get equal treatment or opportunities. I’m grateful for the members of my community who have been vocal about creating space for artists like me who didn’t have as much of a chance to be involved before, because the atmosphere is quite night-and-day compared to what it was.

“There’s still plenty more work to be done, but I’m far less afraid than I was before. And that’s due in part to these efforts from others to support my community. I hope to continue to repay the silent debt I owe those great people here by continuing the legacy of being vocal, creating space for minority artists to thrive, and caring for myself all the same.”

Joshua Banks, photo by Mason Herron

Politics and Music. Yay, nay, or What the hay?

“Oh, definite ‘yay.’ As in, they’re intrinsically connected. Even if the art itself has no political content directly, the artist has a political alignment and a platform to state said alignment. Even silence is a platform (a deceptively loud one, which I and many others take note of as well). And it’s not just with music, but with any art, including books, TV and movies, visual art, what have you.

“Even if I love the writing of, say, an author whose young adult novel series is about a magical school with magical students, why would I ever support that author if they say openly hateful things towards my queer and trans brothers, sisters, and siblings? In a musical lens, if you, say, buy an artist’s CD, or vinyl, or stream their music, you’re indirectly but inherently amplifying that individual’s platform.

“I’ve been trying to work on living my more underground truths a lot more in the past few years— existing and being open about my queer identity is the forefront of that endeavour, and I can’t stream the music of someone who can’t see me as equally human, even if it’s only a few cents. It adds up, and it sends a message about what society will let slide or even sacrifice in the endeavour of entertainment. So, yes, even more than politics and music, it’s politics and ‘the artist.’”

What’s next for you?

“Like many others, my introduction to music was in piano lessons, but thankfully, I really enjoy classical music as much as any genre, and so I achieved a certain level of classical capability before transitioning over to contemporary genres. But right now I’ve been really interested in returning to my origins, obsessing over obtaining that perfectly relaxed drop of the finger and body, and playing with a relaxed technical facility to the point that I don’t develop any repetitive strain injuries over the coming years.\

“So I’ve been going back and finishing up some classical papers with the Royal Conservatory of Music that I never got to finish, partially due to being busy with school and projects, but also because I was less adept at managing my bigger feelings back then, and having panic attacks at every exam. Aiming to get an ARCT diploma in the next year or so!

“I’m thinking for my next release, I’d like to do something solo piano. Genre-wise, not sure what that’d be yet, but maybe it could be classical! Or jazz? Metal (laughs)? We’ll see, but returning to my solo piano origins is definitely helping with that idea.”