Biography
Upon his return from a 1997 visit to war ruined Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jon Brooks traded guitar for pen, claiming his faith in popular music as a source of healing had been challenged.
In 2005 - after 8 years of neither writing music nor performing - Brooks conceded the opposing view to be equally true: that "only the art of song carries within itself the means toward greater social justice and community survival.” I want my songs to be three and half-minute pills which, if digested, induce upon the listener empathy toward others.”
Though Jon’s music is filled with grey and morally ambiguous characters living on the outskirts of approval, his mandate is unequivocal: “I’m not interested in ‘happy songs’ – I’ve chosen to write healing songs and, for that reason, I’m obliged to reveal a wound or two now and then. I’m even less interested in writing unhappy songs: I want to write hopeful songs, inspiring songs and I expect I owe today’s listener some hopeful argument – some legitimate reason - as to why we should believe our present world could be improved, or healed. The highest aim of song is to invoke empathy - to offer that rare sight of ourselves in others. In this sense, the folk singer is simply trying to politicize love, hence, my contention that today’s songwriter should be a lobbyist for compassion to be our principle representative in government office.”
In 2006 he released No Mean City, a weighty and conceptual exposition of the modern urban soul’s homelessness and moral fatigue. 2007 afforded Brooks only superlative acclaim with the release of Ours And The Shepherds, a CD of Canadian war stories inspired by James Loney, Senator Romeo Dallaire, Sgt. Tommy Prince, and John McRae among others. The collection earned Brooks a Best Songwriter nomination at the 2007 Canadian Folk Music Awards. Penguin Eggs deemed it “a thoroughly wonderful and truly important addition to the canon of Canadian folk music.” Ours And The Shepherds is now among the collections of The Canadian War Museum and The John McRae Society.
Jon is also a published essayist with Guernica Editions’ Barry Callaghan Essays On His Works (2007) with contributions by Margaret Atwood, William Kennedy, Joyce Carol Oates, and others.
His 2009 CD, Moth Nor Rust, looked inward to all that neither moth nor rust can touch: love, hope, trust, memory, inspiration, justice, and faith. More than a celebration of the inner life, Moth Nor Rust reminds us how the song is a necessary and moral means toward lifting humanity in the 21st century.
Moth Nor Rust earned Jon his second Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for Best Songwriter and its lyrics were published by Canada’s esteemed literary quarterly, Exile Editions.
Jon also made The Toronto Star’s annual list of Top 10 Artists To Watch In 2010.
