Storytelling Through Song and Memoir
When Mary Hargreaves Norbury moved from Vancouver to northern India in 1948, she felt as though she was living a fairytale. Shortly after arriving there, she married an English carpet manufacturer and led a privileged life as a post-Raj Memsahib. When her eldest daughter, Judy, contracted polio at the age of four, the family moved back to Canada, and Mary began writing her memoir.
Judy Norbury, now 59, lives in the Comox Valley and is well known in the community as a singer-songwriter, both solo and as part of the folk duo Norbury & Finch. She can often be seen playing at farmers’ markets and folk jams, but has also performed at folk festivals across the province. Her voice has a whimsical, uplifting tone, and her style ranges from bluegrass to folk rock.
In 1998, Judy travelled to India for the first time since she left her birthplace almost 50 years earlier. When she returned from her trip, she realized that her account of India was the perfect ending to her mother’s unpublished memoir. She began working on the manuscript for *Come Back, Judy Baba*, a fusion of her story with her mother’s. With the book now in publication and two albums to her name, Judy is an established West Coast artist.
For as long as she can remember, music has been a part of her life.
“Music is always being played in India and I am sure that hearing Indian rhythms as a child contributed to the development of my sense of rhythm,” she says.
When she was young, Judy would dance to passing gypsy bands in the village near her home.
After moving to Vancouver and spending a year in the BC Children’s Hospital to treat her polio, Judy was raised on the east side of Vancouver. When she turned six, she received a transistor radio that she says changed her life. She immediately became obsessed with 1950s rock ‘n’ roll, and then moved on to the works of Bob Dylan and Buffy Sainte-Marie.
At eight years old, she sang for an audience for the first time. Judy and Mary were on a ship travelling back to Canada from Lourdes, France, a trip that her parents had saved for nearly a year to fund. Each day that she spent in the holy city, nuns would immerse Judy in baths of cold spring water, hoping to help her walk again. The ship’s orchestra accompanied her singing debut and she sang “Que Sera, Sera,” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”
“My performance kindled a lust for an audience I would never lose,” she writes in her memoir.
As a youth, Judy participated in choir and music classes, but didn’t begin to write songs until she acquired her first Appalachian Mountain dulcimer, a string instrument similar to the Indian sitar.
“The music of Tim Buckley inspired and spoke to me and I realized that I could speak about my feelings and desires through songwriting.”
She was introduced to the dulcimer at the age of 20 when she lived in Pender Harbour on the Sunshine Coast. At the time, she lived across the bay from Rick Scott, an accomplished dulcimer player and his friend, J.R. Stone, a talented dulcimer builder.
“I was visiting their house one day and saw and heard my first Appalachian mountain dulcimer,” she recounts. “I immediately fell in love with the sound, the drone strings reminiscent of a sitar.” She is sure the Indian-like sound is what initially drew her to the instrument. Shortly after, Judy negotiated a bank loan to buy her first J.R. Stone dulcimer.
Today, she enjoys performing for an audience, and lacks the nerves that prevent many people from stepping on a stage. The two readings that have accompanied the publication of *Come Back, Judy Baba* are completely different, though. Surprisingly, Judy feels anxious speaking in front of a crowd and says that it’s not like singing. However, with every reading, she feels more comfortable, and looks forward to her book tour in April.
At this stage in her life, Judy doesn’t see a correlation between her trips to India and her songwriting, with the exception of the song “Trains,” which takes inspiration from the many trains she travelled on while in India. She does, however, attest her positive personality to her brief but shaping time as a child in India.
“I think parts of my character, such as patience, acceptance, belief in the divine nature of all things and good humour may have been influenced by my first four years, when I spent so much time with the Indian staff,” says Judy.
Her most recent experiences in her birthplace, however, have made her thankful she grew up in Canada, with the privileges afforded in North American society. In *Come Back, Judy Baba*, Judy recounts several challenges she experienced while travelling in a wheelchair, including doors that displayed the international wheelchair symbol, but had no washroom behind them.
“I have always been quite comfortable with my disability,” says Judy. “But being in India as a disabled adult made me accept myself in a new way, and thankful for how I was raised and the privileges of being a Canadian. Disabled folk in Canada have it easy. There is disability everywhere in India; it’s not easy for them, but it’s all part of the varied stream of life.”
With her new album, *Did You Find the Door* out, and the music festival season quickly approaching, Judy is hopeful she will have the chance to play in some of the larger festivals, such as the Vancouver Island Musicfest. While she feels that the Comox Valley has plenty of opportunities for artistic expression, it’s difficult to get a spot at the major festivals.
“It’s not like the old days of the Renaissance Fairs that Courtenay was famous for, where it was easy to get a spot, even on main stage,” she says. As the festivals gain popularity and corporate sponsorship, they are turning to more mainstream musicians.
This hasn’t deterred Judy’s creative spirit, and while she doesn’t actively seek gigs as often as she used to, she still performs regularly. She is modest about her writing abilities, and says it doesn’t always come easily to her.
“Writing songs comes from a need to express a feeling or idea,” she says. “Writing memoir is a totally different and, I believe, unrelated activity for me. I pretty much have to force myself to begin either discipline, but can become obsessed once I get rolling.”
Mary now suffers from dementia and resides in a long-term care facility in Vancouver, and Judy looks forward to showing her the published memoir.
“It makes me a little sad that my mother cannot appreciate the achievement that she and I have created, but I am satisfied that I have brought her manuscript to print during her lifetime.”
By Candice Schultz, Writing Victoria
As published in Senior Living Magazine