Zaki Ibrahim's Taking Chances

Zaki Ibrahim has used Toronto's vibrant live music scene to hone her craft over the past few years. From the El Mocambo to The Mod Club, not to mention her killer performance opening for Erykah Badu earlier this year, each time she hit the stage, she revealed a little bit more of herself.

ChartAttack caught up with Ibrahim a couple of days before her most recent gig at Toronto's Phoenix Concert Theatre. Not only did she provide some insight into her creative process, but she also talked about the rush of taking chances with her music.

ChartAttack: Every time I see you perform, no matter what the venue, it's always intimate and personal. How do you do it?
Zaki Ibrahim: I'm not even sure how to make it otherwise. The show is evolving in a way, my performing and things like that. But performing is always an intimate thing. It's always a raw thing because, yeah, the word is raw. That could very well be the word to describe what I feel, and the songs, they're personal and you're putting your voice out there and kind of doing something where you're not sure how it's going to pan out. It's always an exciting kind of thing. I like to keep it open to go in places where I never know what it's going to be.

If you were to compare recording and performing, how do you find the two are different? Or do you channel some of the same things you get out of a live show into recording?
Sometimes I take pieces of those very different experiences into... like, I'll take a feeling or experience from recording into the live show and kind of try to describe it in a way or illustrate it in some kind of way or vice versa, so I am influenced sometimes by some of the shows and some of the interactions and the intimate and interactive performances. And I get inspiration from both experiences, which are completely different and give you different satisfactions, I guess. Like, I come away with different things from both, but they definitely influence each other.

Based on your music to date, do you have a favourite song to perform, a song that kind of touches you more than the other ones?
It depends. Like, there's been times where me and Tanika [Charles], whom I sing with, she sings in my shows. We've been friends since teenage years, and sometimes I'll be stopped on the street to sing, and they're like, "You guys are singers, sing something." Or we'll just do a mini-jam session and we'll just do a cappella stuff and we like to sing "You Choose," an a cappella version with finger snaps, or we'll just like beat box "Grow" and add a few more things into it. There's that kind of performing, which is fun.

It seems like you like to see where things can go. You always appear to be testing your own boundaries.
Actually, it was quite funny. There was a performance on CBC and they were saying we could perform three songs and we went there to go to track, like a little bit to track and a little bit with guitar and percussion, and then at the very last minute it was like, "Wait a second. Let's try it this way." And we did it a cappella with just snapping fingers and harmonizing, and we didn't practice it, which is a brave move because it could have gone in so many different ways and it was live-to-air. So I guess taking chances is always exciting. It spices things up a little bit.

When do you think a full-length album will be out?
I don't have a date for it. I'm working on it still right now, and I'm actually getting more excited about the new sounds that are coming out and there are some songs I've revisited. I'm taking the moments that I have now to really enjoy the process of recording this... I'm making beats a little bit on the road with friends and listening to a lot of producers' beats and listening to a lot of musicians and stuff as well, so I'm still in a gathering stage.

Although I could have released an album a little while ago, and was really thinking I was going to be releasing this album this year. So it could have happened, but I'm very glad that it hasn't happened because I'm really enjoying what's happening right now with the music.