Biography
Singer/songwriter Bethany Yarrow grew up as the child of folk-pop legend Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul & Mary. Although she lives in Brooklyn, film rather than music first captured her attention, and she has discussed in multiple interviews her extended rejection of the musical background she inherited. While still in college she turned toward documentary work, securing a fellowship that took her to South Africa to helm the feature-length film Mama Awethu!, which examined the experiences of women living in the nation’s townships. The documentary aired nationwide on PBS and screened at festivals worldwide, ultimately earning awards at Sundance, Berlin, Human Rights Watch, and Bombay. Once her time in cinema concluded, Yarrow gradually embraced the deep folk-music lineage that had surrounded her childhood. As someone engaged with politics, she linked the cultural, political, and historical layers within canonical folk songs and began presenting them, reimagined with added and newly created instrumentation, at intimate clubs and coffeehouses throughout New York. The outcome of those performances was her first album, Rock Island, released by the Little Monster label in January 2004. With production assistance from Kevin Salem (Mercury Rev, Bad Brains) and Knox Chandler (Siouxsie & the Banshees), the record revisits material from the American and Celtic traditions and reframes it through contemporary production methods and fresh approaches to songwriting and delivery. In contrast to synthetic DJ treatments of folk music, which commonly strip away original meanings and obscure initial purposes, Yarrow’s own compositions and reinterpretations supply fragments of insight relevant to the present while preserving the strength of the source material. Her film-informed method of recording stands out as both welcome and invigorating. Beyond her solo release, she contributed backing vocals to Claudia Acuña’s album Luna. A subsequent collaboration with cellist Rufus Cappadocia, the voice-and-cello project Born to Roam, was slated for release later that same year.
Albums
