SHAYNA JONES

A rural Black voice rises

by Erin Maconachie

Shayna Jones is an award-winning professional storyteller and performance artist based in Kaslo. She specializes in African and Afro-Diasporic folklore, and her work incorporates song, movement and rhythm.

Jones was born in Chicago and grew up in Vancouver. She was introduced to the Kootenays by her husband and felt “compelled by heart and soul” to raise their three children here.

Jones’ Black & Rural Project grew from her experience as a member of a very small visible minority in her small Kootenay town. “It stems out of my own lived experienced, especially in this hot political time,” Jones explains. “It forced me to reflect on my life and my skin.”

Jones felt isolated by news coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement around the globe in 2020. She refers to the way the Black perspective is typically portrayed in the media as “the Monolith.” She argues that it does not reflect her own experience or that of other Black people like her, who choose to live outside urban centres.

“I don’t see myself as reflected in the media,” said Jones. “How easy it is to cast a certain group with one story, one dominant idea of what would matter to them. There is a very narrow role for what the Black voice is right now.”

“To be Black doesn’t just mean to be in a city,” Jones continues. “I want to add more colour, more depth to ways Black people in this time are living their lives. I want to be a part of that: defying the Monolith.”

Jones noticed that people like herself who lead “quiet, rural lives” were rarely handed “the megaphone,” and that their stories were not being told. She wondered if other people experienced similar feelings of isolation. “Is it because I live in a rural location? What changes my perspective? It inspired me to investigate: are there others who are Black and live rurally and have a different perspective?”

Through the Black & Rural Project, Jones is connecting with other Black people living rurally across the country. Her goal is to weave their unique stories together with folktales, music, movement and rhythm to create a new performance piece that she can tour around B.C. and across Canada.

“My end goal is to showcase the experience of asking the question, ‘What it is to be Black and rural?’ I plan to create a one-woman show that brings these stories to life on stage.”

In September, Jones received funding from the BC Arts Council, and was named one of the first four Artists in Residence at Nelson’s Civic Theatre. This financial support allows her to spend a full year researching traditional Afro-centric folklore and exploring what it means to be Black and rural in Canada today.

“I’m very grateful for the funding,” she says. “It’s most nurturing for me as an artist.”

Jones has invited individuals to connect with her through Facebook and has researched communities and reached out to individuals across the country. She acknowledges that it can be challenging to connect with people who are “tucked away.” She prioritizes “finding these stories in an honourable way,” and working “at the pace of relationship—one story, one connection at a time.”

Jones is one of 15 locals featured in the Missing Voices project, a collection of video shorts produced by Watershed Productions and exhibited at Touchstones Nelson: Museum of Art and History. The project attempts to tell some of the stories that have largely been ignored in the museum's collection.

“The magnitude of this need cannot be overstated,” says Touchstones executive director Astrid Heyerdahl. “Touchstones is of our community. The objects, the artifacts, the museum, the archives—they are the individual and collective chronicles of Nelson and area. All people, all stories. It is paramount that everyone is authentically heard and represented in their own words, in order to share the full history of Nelson. The Missing Voices project is one small step in sharing the diversity of our community while exposing our own colonial capitulations in order to carve a different path forward.”

Jones comes from a long line of orators, preachers and musicians, and discovered theatre at age 19. “I come by it honestly,” she says. “My work as a storyteller is a concrete way to connect to my ancestry. It comes from a deep place within me. It feels like a connection to my lineage.”

In her 20s, Jones was reintroduced to folktales when she rediscovered an old book of folklore given to her by her father.

“Old stories are gritty, full of hard lessons,” she says. “They offer a window into part of the psyche, part of the human soul, the wisdom of collective consciousness and humanity in general, that we need in this contemporary day and age.”

Jones performed the song “Where Are You Now” with local dancer and choreographer Slava Doval as part of the Nelson and District Arts Council’s Dance Showcase 2020.

Photo: Louis Bockner

“What stands out about Shayna is her soulful embodied expression,” says Doval. “Art plays an important role in communicating our lived experience as it has the power to touch on places and emotions that analytical words can’t reach. Culture is what gives us meaning and connection. Art, in the broadest sense, is culture. Culture is identity. Identity is connection. Who are we in connection to each other, to where we live? The way Shayna weaves her craft and includes others is inspiring and important work.”

Jones’ newest work, a touring show called Grandmama Speaks, explores Black motherhood and the role of the mother in Black culture.

“A lot of my material is directly related to my experience being a mother—the self-sacrifice and joys of raising kids,” she said. “My life as a mother, a reflective person, an artist, is all integrated. Everything I do—motherhood, artwork—starts from a place of heart.” wearestoryfolk.com

Header photo: Carlos Alcos