{"id":147280,"date":"2023-12-04T18:09:03","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T23:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/rwddev\/?p=147280"},"modified":"2023-12-04T18:09:09","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T23:09:09","slug":"sound-and-sight-hannah-shira-naiman-born-to-be-a-singer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/sound-and-sight-hannah-shira-naiman-born-to-be-a-singer\/","title":{"rendered":"Sound and sight: Hannah Shira Naiman – Born to be a singer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI started out in life as a singer. I think that my strongest instrument is my voice. There are some a cappella numbers on the album and I really love sinking into those because I don\u2019t have to worry about making mistakes on my instrument\u2014my actual stringed instrument, which is a very real stress for me, making mistakes in that way. But when I\u2019m singing, I just feel like I got this\u201d, Hannah Shira Naiman observes, while discussing her 2022 album, The Wheels Won’t Go<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her third studio production, recorded shortly after Naiman and her family arrived to make a new life in Huntsville, has been nominated for Traditional Singer of the Year at the 2024 Canadian Folk Music Awards to be held April 4-7, 2024, in St. John\u2019s, Newfoundland and Labrador.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naiman explains that she has been singing since she was a child. \u201cActually, my parents told me, in the mornings when I would wake up as a baby, I\u2019d either be crying or singing. That was how they knew if it was going to be a good day. And then, in second grade, I remember trying to sing harmony during music class. My family exposed me to a lot of harmony singing and traditional styles from a very young age. I listened to a lot of music with my family but I also went to a lot of shows where there were choruses\u2014almost every concert we ever went to, because my parents took me to folk music concerts, there was always a chorus that we could join in on, so there was always something for me to try stuff out within. Beyond that, I went to a high school in a vocal music program, so for the duration of my high school years, I was studying classically and I went to local competitions and did all that stuff to get a bit stronger in that realm\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naiman was raised by professional musicians and recording artists, Kathy Reid-Naiman, a performer of children\u2019s music with a catalogue of twenty albums for Merriweather Records and Arnie Naiman, an admired stylist of claw hammer banjo and old-time style 5 string banjo playing. As a consummate instrumentalist, Arnie has recorded with The Albemarle Ramblers, Jim Childress, Erynn Marshall, and his daughter, Hannah Shira Naiman, to name a few.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only an award-winning singer, Hannah Naiman is an accomplished banjo and fiddler player, as well as a prolific songwriter and recording artist. She is also a bilingual children\u2019s entertainer, workshop leader, and educator, with two acclaimed children\u2019s albums. She is a choreographer of \u201ccontemporary dances that fuse New English and English folk dance\u201d, as well as a caller of contra and square dances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of claw hammer banjo, Naiman relates that she simply felt at ease as soon as she held her father\u2019s banjo in her hand. Often referred to as down-picking, overhand, frailing, or drop-thumb, claw hammer banjo is an ancient instrument and syncopated playing style that evokes a mysterious backdrop and modality for Naiman\u2019s compelling stories and deeply resonant songs. Steeped in the rich mosaic of old-style Appalachian songwriting, Naiman\u2019s songs are inhabited by enigmatic characters trapped in inexplicable circumstances.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe other thing that is interesting about traditional music and the songs I am drawn to is the storytelling in them is very general. So, even for the songs that I\u2019ve written, I am writing about my own personal experiences but I\u2019m using archetypes and symbols that you can connect back through the ages. So, that\u2019s what makes it so easy to tap into, no matter what period you\u2019re listening to it within, no matter who you are or what experience you are coming from, there is such a broad range of entry points to listen to and understand the music from\u201d, explains Naiman.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the release of her first two albums, \u201cTether My Heart\u201d (2013) and \u201cKnow the Mountain\u201d (2016) that she was awarded Traditional Singer of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards in 2016, Naiman toured extensively throughout North America, garnering a growing enthusiastic fan base.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, Naiman moved to North Bay with her partner and gave birth to their daughter. She never felt comfortable in the area but had secured a \u201ccreation residency\u201d funded by the Ontario Arts Council, working toward songs for her third album, when the pandemic short-circuited those plans. Moving to Huntsville on the eve of the lock-downs further delayed work on the album.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Establishing herself as an artist, raising a family, settling into a new home and town, while contending with restrictions during a pandemic coloured several of the completed tracks on the new album, but finally, in 2022, with Ken Whiteley producing, Naiman released, The Wheels Won’t Go<\/em>. It marks a distinctive departure, thematically and sonically, from her first two albums, which she believes accentuates her potential growth for future innovative songwriting and productions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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