Back for a third season, the Emmy® Award-winning TV show Articulate, explores the evolution of identity, joy, and sorrow through vocal performance. In the recent episode, The Renaissance Woman, host Jim Cotter interviews the multifaceted vocalist and composer Shara Nova. Lead singer of the band My Brightest Diamond, Nova paints in all shades of musical style and theory. A mix of electronica, art pop, and chamber music, Nova’s work is as complex in its style as in its sentiment. In this episode of Articulate, Nova shares the unique way in which she wanted to reach her audience and what she wants them to learn, both from her art and the life experiences that inspire her art. Listening to her impassioned performance of “We Added it Up” (2011), it’s impossible not to think of a relationship where nothing seems to match up. A “pair of disagreeable agreeables,” as she puts it, of which we have all been a part. While Nova says that her aim in creating any music is to bring out certain sentiments in her audience, she also doesn’t concern herself much with missing the mark in that aim. Everyone brings their own experiences and feelings to her shows, which filter the way her music affects the audience. Everyone leaves with something a bit different, maybe even unexpected, compared to what Nova may have intended.
Like all great music, some of Nova’s work is ultimately about catharsis, both for the creator and the listener. Emphasis on sharing both deepest joys and deepest heartache is purifying for Nova, creating a ‘monument’ for such strong emotional experiences through sound. These monuments are made visible through the intimate connection between audience and the music itself, where Nova’s heart resonates in every stroke of the violin and strike of piano keys. It makes a sort of intangible, maybe unimaginable, notion flesh - easier to confront and understand. Nova suggests the inspiration for “Another Chance” (2018) was borne of her separation with her husband, whom she had been married to for most of her adult life. Melodiously sweet, yet aloof like the fading memories of nostalgia, Nova pours in everything from that separation and lost love. There is no anger or regret for the separation, but a savouring of happy memories and crescendoing hope for new love and opportunities to find happiness.
Sometimes, Nova explains, dramatic changes shake how we define our own identity so much that it can feel like we are dying. It is terrifying, shedding off that old identity and losing the only version of ourselves we have ever known, but that is the only way to grow into the person we’ve always wanted to become. In her performance “Supernova”, she explores ideas about what lies beyond that change. What can seem like death, an infinite and dark unknown, can also result in a brilliant rebirth of new energy that creates an identity more true to who we are now. Nova laments that we nearly always dwell on fears of that dark place and scarcely have enough time left over to look beyond to the supernova. The supernova is brilliant, she explains, and can be a source of courage to bring us through changes that can be painful.
The series Articulate explores ideas about what it means to be humans through a variety of mediums and artistic voices from around the globe. Shara Nova is a Renaissance woman who uses her childhood as a singer and organist with her traveling Evangelical parents, exposure to R&B in Detroit in the 1990’s, and classical operatic training to compose a sound as unique as her perspective and life story. Yet, she also seamlessly integrates her insights with sensations and emotions to which we can all relate. Maybe we do not get exactly the message she is sending, as she tells Cotter, but we get the message we needed to hear.
Check out this poignant, yet celebratory episode of identity and change through the voice of Shara Nova here.
