On the closing track of his debut album, Jordan Stewart-Burton raps about how Haida Gwaii sounds.
“Listen,” he starts, “This is how Sah’laana talks.”
“The waves and rocks, the rain when it drops, the wind when it wails, the inlets and whales, the wake on the docks, the rivers and bogs emitting their songs like crickets and frogs, likewise we sitting on logs collecting our thoughts…”
All 16 original songs on Sound Waves & Sun Showers are deeply rooted in Haida Gwaii culture.
Rapping as JSB 3:33, his lyrics shift between the islands’ highs and lows: sunshine and storm clouds, clearcuts and forest walks, losing focus and becoming sharp as a carving tool.
Above all, the album hits a note of abiding gratitude for this place, his family, and a moss-to-treetops sense of the divine.
It’s a big project. Sound Waves & Sun Showers was seven years in the making and is a long way from the first track Stewart-Burton recorded as a Masset teen.
At 15, he and friends rapped into a cheap mic about a U.S. gang culture they didn’t know, parroting the West Coast 90’s hip-hop they were listening to.
“I wasn’t saying anything meaningful,” he said. Still, it was a start.
“Even though we were not being authentic and honest, we were learning how to write and how to rap.”
Encouraged by day-one friends like Konrad Russ and Nathaniel Edwards, who helped him record and made beats, Stewart-Burton picked up more confidence and a love of wordplay.
Masset teacher David McLean gets one of the nearly 100 thank-yous in the album notes. McLean’s Grade 12 Writing class is where Stewart-Burton first found his way around metaphor, meter and complex rhymes.
Two songs really changed his game.
“Land of Haida Gwaii,” which he wrote at 17, was the first where Stewart-Burton rapped about his own life.
People liked it, and it matched Edwards’ beats so well he said it felt meant to be.
The next one came much later, in 2017, the year JSB headlined the Edge of the World Music Festival. He had already played a Sunday daytime slot three years before, rapping with a guitar and backed by local music anchors Charlie Robertson on keys and Greg Williams on drums.
But now, as a headliner, he stripped everything down to beats and a mic. He also had a new song, ‘Here By No Mistake,’ that really hit the crowd. In the middle of it, a bunch of friends came on stage unplanned and started Haida dancing.
“I felt like when I wrote that song, I kind of levelled up in a different way,” he said.
From then on, he took friends’ advice and started saving up new songs for an album rather than releasing them one-by-one on SoundCloud. Dwyer Cross, who joined him on stage at this year’s festival, helped a lot with the production.
At a time when singles are the big thing in streaming, Stewart-Burton wanted to make a full album, on CD and maybe LP, with a strong theme running the whole way through. Four or five songs in, he realized the theme was there by nature. The album is full of thanks for Haida Gwaii.
“I just love it here,” he said. “I love everything about the culture here, like fishing and being out on the land.”
Although he raps about times he’s lost his way and “too many trees leaving the island laying sideways,” the album is ultimately uplifting.
In ‘Vessel,’ the last song he wrote, he sings, “In hindsight, your time’s tight / So don’t forget to keep your lines tight / The ocean helps to keep your mind right / You’re always guided by divine light.”
On ‘Gratitude,’ the closing song, Stewart-Burton isn’t shy about what he is most grateful for. He saves his biggest thanks for his mom and dad.
“I love them and I’ll always let them know,” he said.
CD copies of Sound Waves & Sun Showers are available at several local shops, including Funk It!, Hygge Home, Gin Kuyaas Haida Art, and the Haida Gwaii Beach Stop.