Brenda Earle Stokes: Motherhood

Motherhood is a salient subject if ever there was one. Yet few jazz musicians ever touch on it in their work, never mind dedicating an entire record to the topic. The real or keenly felt need to keep up with the Joneses in a musical atmosphere that typically applauds and promotes standard bearers, hyper-masculine happenings, politically charged firebrands, and cutting-edge quests doesn't leave much room for an honest and open-hearted look at the scope of selflessness and self-discovery involved with maternal matters. The truth is that it takes serious bravery and being real—two things that are in surprisingly short supply nowadays—to show yourself and share a good deal about this journey, and Brenda Earle Stokes is one of the seemingly few willing to go here.

Consciously or not, this Canadian-born, New York City-based pianist-vocalist-composer began to contemplate exploring motherhood through song as she captured thoughts, fragments and lyrics in a notebook while pushing her young son's stroller around her neighborhood. Eight years later, during a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Stokes—armed with her written musings, voice memos, perspective and experience(s)—wrote eight compositions in nine days, essentially birthing this project.

Few stones are left unturned here as Stokes gives a candid look at motherhood in her own inimitable voice. "The Endless Wait"—the opener, with some of the leader's most moving singing, plus ace trumpet work from Ingrid Jensen—offers outward expression for the mind in pregnancy, contemplating possibilities, time and ties to the generations. In doing so it introduces confessional qualities in Stokes' songcraft that carry across the entire program.

Whether taking us through wonderful yet trying years of growth during "This is Your Childhood," processing identity at once lost, subsumed and discovered through parenting on the questioning "Who Am I Now?," exploring beauty and body issues (and society's role in aggravating and propagating both) in the gently flowing "Where Are The Mothers?," or the increased responsibilities and stresses that squeeze a woman with school-aged children on singer-songwriter gem "Kathleen," Stokes has a knack for removing blinders that a significant portion of the civilized world intentionally or willingly wears when it comes to matters of motherhood. And her bandmates—Jensen, bassist Evan Gregor, drummer Ross Pederson, backing vocalists Melissa Stylianou and Nicole Zuraitis—use their expertise to help flesh out her clear and communicative vision at every turn.

Weighty matters logically dominate this discourse, but Stokes has a real way of softening some of the blows and/or adding humor in her delivery. She uses "Loose Tooth Blues" as a hip trip into a second-grader's shoes, presents Mr. Potato Head as prime fodder in a talk of letting go and moving on during the emotion-raising "Saying Goodbye," and offers a rundown of modern society's ever-present dangers with humor-streaked, beat poet brilliance in "Sharp Edges." And when all of that is played, sung and done, there are the celebrations—a supremely soulful "The Strength of a Woman" and laudatory "Happy Mother's Day"—which elevate those who deserve to be on a pedestal ever so high in the sky. May this be the start of a jazz trend to recognize motherhood in all its truths, difficulties, joys and wonders.

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