About
Atop the West Allegheny mountains, in the least populated county east of the Mississippi, Elana Brody grew up on a farm surrounded by untamed forests as far as the eye could see. Every season, she’d see new plants and animals appear. Rhododendrons, mountain laurel and wild orchid lady slippers. Beavers in the pond and barred owls in the spruce forests. Brody’s family kept a reverential practice of going on quiet walks where she learned to keep her eyes and ears wide open, like a tracker. She brings this kind of attunement to her music—listening for the new, noticing the earthly details and staying agile in every moment. On her forthcoming album, The Garden, Brody brings us back to her childhood homestead, with its fireside harmonies and songs to celebrate the earth’s glory.
With no sonic stimulation outside of the winds and wild animals, Brody began making music early. She sang folk songs with her sisters and strung together lines of ecstatic poetry at age four. With the nearest grocery store an hour and a half away, they would listen to, memorize and re-enact musicals on the long drives over the mountains in their gold Ford Explorer. When her family moved to the small town of Staunton, Virginia, she went to the local performing arts high school where she honed her piano skills and learned to catch the wild melodies that flew through her imagination. Brody has remained a prolific songwriter with her honeyed vocals at the center of songs that bloom in a musical ecosystem full of pop, folk, cabaret and gospel sounds.
After a stint at the Berklee College of Music, Brody moved to New York City, playing coffeehouses, dive bars and subway stations. She cites busking as her most impactful musician education. She learned how to connect with strangers, read people’s emotional states and use her vocal range to magnetize a crowd. She learned that the poorest people give you money and the richest don’t even turn their heads. She had the confidence and curiosity to follow her mellifluous voice anywhere it wanted to go—down the darkest alleyway or up to the brightest city lights. Soon after, Brody reconnected with her Jewish ancestry and the ancient poetry of its liturgy. She stopped performing her original music for five years as she dove and dissolved into her new-found community to become a prayer leader and Hebrew priestess.
The Garden is a return to Brody’s roots. These are songs about how the holy rests on the earth—how the sacred is always findable if you listen for it. The title track is an appreciation for her mother’s hard work tending their homestead garden. Grounded in gospel piano, “You Are the Sun” is an ode to the wondrousness of nature and the power of both human and more-than-human love. “The Insect” was written on a spiritual pilgrimage through Central America. Brody started it in Lake Atitlán in the Guatemalan Highlands and completed it at goddess Ixchel’s shrine on Isla de las Mujeres in the Yucatan. It’s a worshipful song about the power of prayer and being ready to receive true love. Throughout the EP, Brody borrows lines from poets Mary Oliver and Pablo Neruda as well as the biblical Song of Songs. The Garden features Samara Jade, Erik Kertes (Shakira), Jason Burger (Big Thief), Alec Spiegelman (Cuddle Magic), Kiara Ana Perico (Adele) and more. It will be released on September 20.
Brody is a passionate performer who bewitches her audiences and creates space for collective singing and community rapture. One of her teachers, Bobby McFerrin, described her presence as “cosmic” and producer Susan Rogers (Prince) called her “my favorite genius,” saying, “whatever she does will be ahead of its time.” She has played at The Middle East (Boston), Club Passim (Cambridge), Rockwood Music Hall (New York), The Living Room (New York), Barbes (Brooklyn), Grey Eagle (Asheville), Laughing Goat (Boulder), The Sabes Center (Minneapolis, MN) and more. Brody leads an annual songwriting and communal singing retreat called “Sing a New Song” in Woodstock, NY.
