Telling Stories With Music: Featuring Kenny Kirkwood

How can music help us get in tune with ourselves, our stories, and our communities? What is cathartic and healing about certain sounds? What can the musical traditions of indigenous cultures teach us? My guest on this episode, Kenny Kirkwood, discusses these questions with me and more.

Kenny Kirkwood is a musician, educator, and folktivist. A Juno award-winning Canadian musician, he has toured internationally. Kenny spent his childhood in Zambia. This experience influenced his songwriting, his craft, and immersed him in the communal and spiritual aspects of music.

We talk about:

• Why certain songs are cathartic to us
• The lost art of music as an oral tradition
• How music can help us tell our stories
• Tips for learning how to play a musical instrument as an adult
• What we can learn from the indigenous cultures in our area
• Why humming can help us learn rhythm, increase awareness, and keep us in the present moment
• How trauma from early musical education as a youth can impact us as adult learners

Find out more about Kenny and his music at kennykirkwood.com