I’ve waxed poetic about my Spotify Discover Weekly playlists before—but let me do it one more time. Every Sunday, at the stroke of midnight, my Spotify undergoes a baptism. The 30 songs from 30 artists that I have never heard before make their way into the playlist. I never have a clue as to what awaits me.
I press shuffle.
On some of these excavations, I’ve been introduced to the likes of Nigerian pop (William Onyeabor), 60s Italian psych (Le Orme), and North African synth (Mamman Sani). I’ve closed my eyes and been transported far and wide.
However, sometimes these songs don’t take me as far as I would’ve thought. Sometimes, they take me right back to Toronto. This is the case with an artist whose name has been seared into my mind for the last year: Jackie Shane.
Toronto in the 60s: Honest Ed’s had opened roughly a decade before, Yorkville was an area for poets and aspiring musicians to roam, and venues like The Saphire Tavern—the lack of a second ‘p’ in the name is still a mystery—stood at the corner of Richmond and Victoria. I wonder what it would have been like to walk these streets. One person who did was Jackie.
Born in Nashville in 1940, Jackie made her way to Montreal and then to Toronto, where she performed on stages like the Saphire’s and the Holiday Tavern’s. She was effortlessly cool, an alluring presence in dramatic eye make-up and suits. But she was also quite reserved, navigating the waters as a Black trans woman in times even harsher than the present. This privacy continued on throughout most of her life, an exception being a rare interview granted to Elaine Banks of the CBC in 2010.
When I first Googled Jackie, I didn’t realize I was holding my breath. Black women, and specifically Black trans women, disproportionately face incidents of discrimination and violence in North America. According to the Legal Council for Health Justice, “the life expectancy for a Black trans woman is 35.” Jackie passed away at the age of 79, in the city where she was born, during February 2019. Her mark on the city that she made her home still persists.
As Jackie was someone who so strongly valued her privacy, I think the best way to honour her is to know her through her music. In 2017, Numero Group released her music on an album called Any Other Way. The album is split into two sides: the first 12 songs are studio recordings, followed by 13 live recordings. You may have heard some of these before, such as Ray Charles’ “Sticks and Stones,” which begins the album. But I guarantee you haven’t heard a rendition that straddles the lines between soul and play so perfectly. On “You Are My Sunshine,” Jackie belts out the final 30 seconds, her voice getting hoarse with passion. And she breaks your heart on “Cruel Cruel World”: I know, I know you have an ocean / And I know, I know you possess the seas. Her voice has the power to make you believe that inside of you, there really are oceans and seas. Her voice has the richness to imbue you with these magnitudes.
Despite the 60 years that separate her initial performances in Toronto with her showing up on my Discover Weekly playlist, her voice carries forward, constantly inventing and re-inventing itself. And it will continue to do so, despite venues shutting down and being replaced with condos. When it is safe to do so, I will take a walk to the corner of Richmond and Victoria. I will know that 60 years ago, there lived a woman by the name of Jackie, whose voice was inimitable and compelling, and whose soul was fiercely unapologetic.
And the world was better with her in it.
