Zaki Ibrahim takes cosmic journey skirting two ends of the planet, birth and death

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In conversation Zaki Ibrahim feels like a bit of a dreamer, so it can be a surprise to hear how punchy and strident some of her groove-based songs get. Either way, she’s not an artist who worries about targeting an audience, or even a specific genre of music fans.

“I don’t usually go into the studio thinking about who the audience is unless I’m writing a song about a specific topic like the plight of women, or women of colour. But that is also for everyone. When you’re writing from a personal place it connects to more people than you might think. When you let yourself be vulnerable it inspires others to connect to the threads in that story.”

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More listeners will be connecting with some of those threads as Ibrahim’s previous EPs and albums get re-released through her new contract with Six Shooter Records, from her 2006 debut Shö (Iqra in Orange), and the 2008 follow-up EP Eclectica (Episodes in Purple), to singles like Money (2009) and Ansomnia (2010) that got her a Juno nomination and soundtrack placements, respectively.

The self-taught singer is setting her own creative trajectory. Her first full-length set, 2012’s Every Opposite, put her on the Polaris Music Prize shortlist, but that was only a warm-up for last year’s LP The Secret Life of Planets. It was another big step, not least because the studio process overlapped with her father’s death and the birth of her first child.

“It was a lucky project to be doing. It was cathartic, therapeutic, an interesting time of transitions that actually happened over several summers as we traveled back and forth between Canada and South Africa. We didn’t leave anything out, and I could get a little sci-fi about it and pour my emotions into that.”

Stevie Wonder fans will recognize the title as a deliberate riff on his 1979 album Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants, and the sounds hint at ’70s pop here and there, along with more contemporary hip-hop, soul, elements of spoken word and other beats. And the science fiction part?

“A lot of things on the album are allusions to things that have already been done, just to show that nothing is really new,” says Ibrhaim. “But we were looking into the mysticism of sound, the music of the spheres and planetary phenomena, and things like Space Is the Place (from jazz man Sun Ra). There’s more too, on an extra EP Orbits, inspired by the life cycle of a star.”

Born in Vancouver, Ibrahim has called Toronto home for the past couple of years, but in between those coordinates she’s grown up in various parts of Canada and Cape Town, South Africa. Both her parents were music lovers and her father hosted programs on a prominent community radio station in Cape Town, so from a young age she was exposed to a “vast array” of music.

“From early childhood I was very inclined to express myself, very interested in making music, and I was writing songs from three and four years old. It’s funny because I had a really creative personality and wanted to perform, but at the same time I’ve always been an introvert so it was a gradual thing that only really took off in my adult years.”

She gives a nod to various rhythm and blues acts — Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker, and South African jazz stars like Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba — as important sign posts along the way before hip-hop really grabbed her.

“I was really drawn to electronic music, hip-hop and hip-hop culture. I recognized similarities to the jazz movement, to the way people like Duke Ellington were able to find identity and a community within it. That’s where I started to find the path. My canvas was hip-hop beats.”

Ibrahim was an avid collaborator with musical friends for years, “trying out the technology” as she recalls, but her first solo performance with her own music was in a theatre in Vancouver at the age of 23, shortly before her first move to Toronto almost two decades ago.

Today she’s back collaborating with friends again, but in her own band, along with co-producer, co-writer and electronics whiz Alister Johnson. Ibrahim’s appearance at Interstellar Rodeo will see her fronting a five-piece band with Johnson, backing singers Victor Bailey and Kyla Charter, and a synth player named J3m, complete with costumes and choreography.

“We’re taking our time to explore some intricate harmonies, and a cappella singing too. It’s high energy and theatrical and pretty intense emotionally, but mostly just fun. It’s a party and a place.”

She has already been able to tour her songs into Europe, the U.S. and the U.K. And soon she’s going to work in a studio in Ethiopia. Over the years Ibrahim was also a fan of artists like Sheila E., K’naan, and Saul Williams, so she’s thrilled to wind up playing the same music festival as them.

“I feel like I’ve kind of come full circle now.”

PREVIEW

Zaki Ibrahim

Where:Interstellar Rodeo, Heritage Amphitheatre, Hawrelak Park

When: Main stage Saturday

Tickets: Limited passes still available