Kathleen Yearwood
Encyclopedia
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
experimental singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, born in 1958.
From Subterranean Records description of Kathleen Yearwood:
- This powerful and very radical Canadian artist and her music have been described variously as a "folk banshee," "Joan BaezJoan BaezJoan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
meets Diamanda GalásDiamanda GalásDiamanda Galás is an American avant-garde composer, vocalist, pianist, organist, performance artist and painter.Galás has been described as "capable of the most unnerving vocal terror", with her three and a half octave vocal range. She often screams, hisses and growls...
," and "when angels and demons collide," among many other superlatives, but the descriptions tend to fall flat before the real thing.
In an 1993 interview with the Calgary, Alberta newspaper VOX, Yearwood notes that "what I have for sale are songs about spirit in a culture that denies anything spiritual." She believes that her life and her art have been shaped by familial abuse, poverty, sexism, battering, and the corruption and materialism of the Canadian society in which she grew up. She has contributed for many years to the Prison justice movement in Canada.
Music
Yearwood was 12 years old when she began singing professionally in CalgaryCalgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
, Alberta. She worked as musician in Vancouver, B.C. in her early 20's, and lived as well in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, where she studied experimental music and tape composition at McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
. Moving westward again, she ended up in rural Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, in the vicinity of Edmonton
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...
, where she assembled a band called Cheval de Guerre in the late 1980s.
Ordeal, Yearwood's more recent collaboration with Reg Elder and Paulus Kressman, "incorporate(s) noise, vocal multiphonics, improvisation, broken glass, silences, metal influences, literature and other unexpected devices".
She has performed throughout Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
and in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, playing shows at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival
Vancouver Folk Music Festival
The Vancouver Folk Music Festival is an outdoor multistage music festival. It takes place annually, on the third weekend of July. Founded in 1978, this annual festival uses eight outdoor stages, located at Jericho Beach Park on the west side of Vancouver, British Columbia.In the past it has...
(1998) and the Under the Volcano Festival
Under the Volcano Festival
Under The Volcano Festival Of Art & Social Change was an activist, grassroots gathering held at Whey-Ah-Wichen Cates Park on the traditional territory of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation in North Vancouver, BC in August. Under the Volcano was Canada's largest political arts festival and was 100% volunteer...
in 2003http://volcano.resist.ca/2003/waterfront.html#kyearwood. She has also performed at Victoriaville Festival of New Music (FIMAV) in Victoriaville, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
in 1999, and the Sergey Kuryokhin Festival of New Music (SKIF) in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2004
Writing
Kathleen Yearwood has published several short stories and one novel, published by the University of OsloUniversity of Oslo
The University of Oslo , formerly The Royal Frederick University , is the oldest and largest university in Norway, situated in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. The university was founded in 1811 and was modelled after the recently established University of Berlin...
in 2003. She describes Self Mutilation as a book about "the spiritual cost of poverty". The work contains some of the "folklore" collected in Canadian Prisons.
Discography
- Great Songs to Empty Rooms (2005)
- Ordeal (2003) with Paulus Kressman
- Dog Logic (2000)
- Little Misery Birds (1995) Subterranean Records / Voice Of The Turtle
- Book of Hate (1994) Subterranean Records / Voice Of The Turtle / Amatish
- Universal Incest b/w Fille D'un Laboureaux EP -, (7" Coloured Vinyl) (1991)
- Dead Branches Make a Noise (cassette) (1990) Subterranean Records
- Housework (cassette) (1989)
- Panik And Death (cassette 1988)