Ten years ago, Dominique Fils-Aimé was working as a psychologist, totally burnt out. She’d always loved creating music and discovered it was the one thing that truly felt healing for her soul.
She didn’t anticipate it becoming her life. And yet, four critically-acclaimed albums later, she has just been nominated for a JUNO with her new album, Our Roots Run Deep. If she wins, it will be her second JUNO. She has been shortlisted for the Polaris Prize and sells out shows in Canada and internationally.
“I put myself in the 13-year-old version of me and I have her discover my life right now and she’s always there to say, ‘Are you serious, you get to sing to pay the rent? Where are we right now? This is amazing!'” says Dominique. “She’s always there to remind me that it’s incredible I get to do this for a living.”
She says that because creating music was so powerfully healing for her, it felt imperative to bring it to others. That was the start of her shift to music-as-career.
“The notion of repetition, mantras, even just sound repetition and harmonizing, has something extremely soothing for me,” she says. “I don’t read music, I don’t write it, but I believe that what I don’t have in an academic sense I have in just the feeling and the desire to share an emotion through music.”
Her ethereal, dark, complex jazz is imbued with the history of African-American culture. Her first body of work was a trilogy of albums.
“When we started everything my manager said, ‘You have six months now to dream about whatever project you want to do artistically. Do not worry if it will sell, do not worry about anything other than it feeling true to you,’” Dominique says.
“I wanted to explore all the musical genres that raised me. And also share what they taught me about Black history and Black resilience and Black emotions. I realized there were stories I wanted to tell that could not be told in just one song or just one album,” she says. “I decided to give myself that space.”
“People were very worried about the idea of me going against the current of whatever is currently being done and that made me want to do it even more,” she says. “It’s not like the pace of the world is something I need to follow. I feel it is going too fast. And sometimes it does not leave space for connecting on a deeper level with an artist.”
The trilogy was well received. Now she has begun her second, with Our Roots Run Deep as the first album of three.
She’s currently on a North American tour, starting in Ontario, then on to Alberta.
“I’m excited to come back,” she says. “We’ve been lucky enough to come already a few times [to Alberta] and honestly every time we’ve had a blast. I have nothing but good memories.”
The Montreal-based jazz artist will be at the Arden Theatre in St. Albert on February 14 and has two appearances February 17 at Calgary’s Block Heater. Check out her website for concert details.
Dominique will also be Terry David Mulligan’s guest on the February 17 episode of Mulligan Stew. Tune in for that!
“Our Roots Run Deep” from Dominique Fils-Aimé’s latest album of the same name:
