Get Lit with All Of It: Kaia Kater

Kaia Kater
( Polina Mourzina )

[music]

Allison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart. Kaia Kater is a Grenadian Canadian banjo player and songwriter who joined us as the musical guest at our May Get Lit With All of It event. Kaia has released three albums, her latest being 2018's Grenades, which was nominated for a Juno Award, the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy, and long-listed for the prestigious Canadian Polaris Music Prize.

Later this year, she'll release her fourth album, an orchestral record titled Strange Medicine, as she told us at our latest event. As you've heard in this hour, this month's book club pick was Lone Women by Victor LaValle. When we were talking to him about musical guests for this month, we had all these ideas floating around about the best vibe for the evening. Folk musicians, solo performers, women of color, musicians who could speak to the themes of movement and migration. Kaia was the perfect fit. We were delighted to have her join us. We kicked things off with a performance. Here's Kaia Kater with a special live performance of her song Nine Pin.

[MUSIC - Kaia Kater: Nine Pin]

These clothes you gave me don't fit right

The belt is loose and the noose is tight

I'm drunk out looking for a fight

I'm soft and heavy as the night

I've drowned the leagues of thirty men

And I've borne the wrath of each of them

Oh sugar cane and sugar plum

And the evils of a setting sun

The evils of a setting sun

I'll be your nine pin, eight ball, seventh day, six pound, diamond quarter quarter girl

Well the holy water caught my dress

And I fell down into a holy mess

O Lazarus here and Lazarus gone

Oh Lazarus won't you take me home

It poured down from the mouths of babes

Locusts in a land of grey

I am wild-eyed and gone astray

Oh brother dear, bear me away

This is no country for lovers

This is no country for me

It's not for me

For me

I'll be your nine pin, eight ball, seventh day, six pound, diamond quarter quarter girl

I'll be your girl

[applause]

Kaia Kater: Thank you.

Allison Stewart: Kaia, when did you first pick up a banjo or what made you pick up a banjo?

Kaia Kater: Oh gosh. I was 11 years old and I was living with my mother in Ottawa, Canada, and she had just gotten a job running the Ottawa Folk Festival, and I was just backstage at a lot of music festivals basically. The banjo was there and it had a particular sound that I just loved and I couldn't explain why, and so I got a lesson, and the rest is history.

Allison Stewart: When did you learn the history of the banjo?

Kaia Kater: You mean the Black history of the banjo?

Allison Stewart: Yes. I think a lot of people don't know that.

Kaia Kater: Of course, many of us associate the banjo with the white American south, white American Appalachia, but the banjo is actually an instrument that has its roots in West Africa. It was an instrument that was brought over during the transatlantic slave trade. I had no idea about the Black roots of the banjo until I saw this group called the Carolina Chocolate Drops who were this band of Black musicians out of Western North Carolina. They were talking to audiences about the true history, the true Black history of the banjo, and I was one of those audience members. I was maybe 14 or 15, so I'd been playing banjo for a while, but that came as news to me.

[laughter]

Kaia Kater: It was a really cool moment.

Allison Stewart: You've written about one of them who is Rhiannon Giddens.

Kaia Kater: That's right.

Allison Stewart: Just won a Pulitzer-

Kaia Kater: She just won a Pulitzer. That's right.

Allison Stewart: -and is in Our Native Daughters, which I know you were hoping to be a part of but scheduling didn't work out. You wrote this beautiful essay about Rhiannon for NPR, and you reflected on seeing her playing and you wrote, "I sensed immediately that I was seeing myself for the first time." How did that experience change your personal musical journey?

Kaia Kater: None of us thrive in isolation. We all want to see ourselves reflected in others. I think the thing that isolation brings is shame. I was dealing with a lot of shame at that time. "Why am I this mixed-race person that loves this instrument that's associated not only with white America but with quite a regressive side of white America?"

Seeing Rhiannon play, I just felt this wave of relief, like, "I'm normal. What I like is normal. This instrument actually has more ties to me and my people than I ever would've thought." I think it was just that sense of in real-time being brought into this, I'm going to cry, but being brought into this community and feeling so much less alone.

Allison Stewart: When did you know you wanted to pursue music professionally?

Kaia Kater: I'd always done it. It was like music was a compulsion for me.

[laughter]

Kaia Kater: It wasn't really a choice.

Allison Stewart: Wasn't a choice, right?

Kaia Kater: Yes, it's just something that I had to do. It was kind of this gnat in the corner of my arms. I was like, "Okay, fine, I have to write." I never really thought that I would pursue it professionally until I graduated college in 2016. I'd been doing it on this side and I could always look at it as like, "Ah, this is just this thing that I do and it's not really that important," but then when I graduated, I made the choice. Like, "Okay, now I'm going to really try to pursue this."

Allison Stewart: We've been talking a lot about history and families and family history, and I know that you've written a lot about your family history. What did you want to explore about your own family history, about your father, a little bit, if you would share a little bit about your dad?

Kaia Kater: Sure. My dad is a refugee from Grenada. He came to Canada in 1986 after, some of you might remember, the United States invaded Grenada in 1983 and the leader there, the Socialist leader, Maurice Bishop was killed. It was just a really, really bad scene. My dad ended up coming to Grenada when he was 15. Sorry. Came to Canada from Grenada when he was 15 and he came alone. Then my mom and dad had me when they were 21, so it was babies raising babies. My dad and I always had more of a relationship of friends, maybe, but a distant one. When I wrote Grenades, my last album, it was just this attempt to understand my history through him and attempt to come to some point of forgiveness for the ways in which he wasn't really there for me as a kid.

Allison Stewart: How did thinking about the family history and thinking about leaving one country for another, how did it make you think about movement and why people leave places and why people go to places?

Kaia Kater: That's a whole world. That's a very complex thing because in order for people to emigrate somewhere, there are people who have to be displaced and violently displaced at that. We're living on stolen land, plainly. Black folks who live in America, there's an extremely painful history there as well and a history of unpaid reparations that need to be paid. I've thought of it a lot as the more that you can look at your roots and be real about them and be real about the violence that has taken place for you to get to where you are and for you to be where you are, I think that gives us all a lot more humility and context to who we are.

I think it's more than just saying, "Oh, I have Irish ancestry." It's like, "Yes, but your parents came over and assimilated into whiteness." What does whiteness mean? I think that whiteness is not examined enough and taken to be as this ethereal thing. I think that's part of why I explore the complex history of my roots in parentage and why I feel like more people should explore it with more of a critical lens.

Allison Stewart: And openly.

Kaia Kater: Yes.

Allison Stewart: And openly.

Kaia Kater: And openly.

Allison Stewart: Let's talk about it.

Kaia Kater: Let's talk about it.

Allison Stewart: New album is called Strange Medicine.

Kaia Kater: That's right.

Allison Stewart: It was recorded in Montreal. What can you share about it?

Kaia Kater: It is an orchestral album. There's tons of woodwinds and horns. It's one of the most personal albums I've made to date. I play a lot of banjo on it. If you listen to it fair warning, there's a lot of banjo on it. I'm just really excited for everybody to hear it.

Allison Stewart: When does it come out?

Kaia: Oh, yes, it comes out at the end of this year. End of 2023.

Allison Stewart: That was my conversation with banjo player and songwriter, Kaia Kater from our May Get Lit with All Of It book club event. Now here's a special performance from that event. This is Kaia Kater with a song dedicated to the character Elizabeth in Victor LaValle's novel Lone Women. The song is called Saint Elizabeth.

[MUSIC Kaia Kater – Saint Elizabeth]

Rise up and fall, Saint Elizabeth

I am keen to your call in the mist

I am tied to your land

I will die by your hand

Elizabeth

The church it did call me, Elizabeth

To sing in salvation and joy

But the carriage is stained

I am broken and plain

Elizabeth

Take me up to your glory Elizabeth

On white and screeching wheels

For the serpent has dined

I remain by your side

Elizabeth

Can't you hear me calling from beneath

With black and rotten teeth?

White roses all around, and covered on the

Can't you hear me calling from beneath

With black and frozen feet?

White roses all around, covered on the ground

On the ground, the ground

I'm the Devil's disciple Elizabeth

On white and screeching wheels

Take me up to your breast

I'm broken Elizabeth

Let the Earth fall around us, Elizabeth

Let it sink into the valley below

Let them come tear us free

We are bound eternally

Elizabeth

So sin with me now, Saint Elizabeth

Away from this mountain town

Take me into your breast

I am broken and blessed

Elizabeth

Can't you hear me calling from beneath

With black and rotten teeth

White roses all around, covered on the

Can't you hear me calling from beneath

With black and frozen feet

White roses all around, covered on the

Can't you hear me calling from beneath

With black and rotten teeth

White roses all around, covered on the

Can't you hear me calling from beneath

With black and frozen feet

White roses all around, covered on the ground

On the ground

Kaia Kater: I spent most of my childhood growing up in Montreal, Quebec and we all have very particular relationships with our hometowns and this is just about that. It's called In Montreal.

[MUSIC In Montreal - Kaia Kater]

You're in the state of suspension

Tectonic plates stacked in your sink

Your body is a country putting some to live in

The sticking ticking of time

Screw tap wine and you turn 29 at midnight

Allison Stewart: That was Kaia Kater with a special performance of her new song In Montreal from her forthcoming album. Kaia was the musical guest for our May Get Lit with All of It book club event with Victor LaValle. That is all of it for today. I'm Allison Stewart. Have a great Memorial Day weekend and I'll meet you back here next time.

[MUSIC In Montreal - Kaia Kater]

[unintelligible 00:18:51] belongs to you concrete steel in Montreal

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