Every now and then, an artist comes along who defies one’s ability to classify them as they transcend labels, genres, and expectations. Bethany Yarrow is the epitome of such an artist as she mesmerizes music lovers across the board. With a powerful voice full of soul and emotion, she reaches straight into the heart of the listener taking them on a journey across time, continents, and cultures. “Folk music is like a train that you get on,” says Bethany. “If you let it, it will take you on the most amazing ride… . It is traditional music that roots me -- but that doesn’t mean that I have to stay in one place. It means that I can explore and incorporate the other musics of the world without losing sight of where I come from…

 

" Bethany is best known as one half of the dynamic duo Bethany & Rufus that she formed with ground breaking cellist Rufus Cappadocia. “In 1999 I heard Rufus playing with the Paradox Trio at The Knitting Factory in NYC," recounts Bethany. "I thought he was an amazing musician and I needed a bass player for a gig. He told me that I should hire him, so I did. Eventually, we started experimenting as just a duo. His groove is incredible and the combination of the 5 string cello and voice was so simple, real and beautiful that we started to just focus on that. Now it's 15 years later and we are still experimenting,” she adds with a laugh.

 

As the daughter of the folk icon (Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul & Mary), Bethany grew up surrounded not only by folk music, but also deeply influenced by her father's belief in music as a way of bringing people together -- of reaching into their hearts and dissolving prejudices to create a common humanity. Some of her earliest childhood memories are of marches and rallies... of people singing together in an open hearted way that is unusual in today's world.

 

"I now realize how formative that was for me," says Bethany, who continues to be a passionate activist especially around issues of climate justice, and the honor the earth movement. "These songs remind me where I come from and, like a compass encoded into my DNA, show me the way forward. Once I had that root experience of music in my own culture then I began to experience the musical spirit messenger inside of root traditions from other cultures in Africa, the Carribean, Brazil, as well as Native American music. Now it sometimes feels like it is all one song, one long woven braid of musical memory."

 

Yarrow also made a documentary film in South Africa about the women in the townships outside of Cape Town during apartheid. "Mama Awethu!," was an award-winning film which aired nationally on PBS and won numerous awards at film festivals around the world including the Sundance, Berlin, Human Rights Watch, and Bombay Film Festivals.

 

Although Bethany put film making aside many years ago, she recently revisited to her cinematic roots to help with the filming of the feature documentary "The Grandmothers Speak: For the Next 7 Generations" a film about the Council of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers (for which she and Rufus also contributed to the film score).

 

"That was such an important film for me to help make", says Bethany. "All the prophecies say that it is time for the grandmother's to speak and for ancient wisdom to show us the way forward. In the same way, I am listening to the wisdom inside of our own folkloric musical legacy. These are the songs that changed a Nation many times over. They will always be there for us when we need them again. I am just keeping the flame lit, my lamp trimmed and burning, as the Reverend Gary Davis would say..."