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Kaia Katers new album, Strange Medicine (coming May 2024 on Free Dirt Records), opens with a haunting vision. Accompanied by Aoife ODonovan, Kater sings of the women burned at the stake as witches in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts and their wish to strike back: I dreamt I moved through you and / Burned my name into your chest. Its an opening salvo from an album that celebrates the power of women and oppressed people throughout history as they rise up and turn the poison of centuries of oppression into a strange kind of medicine. Katers songs are dialogues with these historical figures and meditations on her own modern life as well. In the years since her 2018 album, Grenades, on Smithsonian Folkways, Kater has taken time to reinvent herself and hone her skills, first attending film school to learn composition, then diving deeper into her songwriting to come up with her most personal album yet. Feeling the pressure as a talented young songwriter, banjo player, and bandleader with three successful albums and an NPR Tiny Desk Concert under her belt, Kater struggled initially with the expectations of her adopted genre, Americana. I was factoring everybody elses perception into my songwriting, she says. Would I write more honestly if I knew that no one would ever hear this? With that in mind, Kater retreated to her apartment in Montral. Sitting at home with her banjo, the songs unfolded in personal intimacy, revealing windows into the perspective of women and revolutionaries through history. Co-producing with Joe Grass (Elisapie, The Barr Brothers), Kater invited close friends and colleagues ODonovan and Allison Russell to sing on the album, along with longtime hero and American legend Taj Mahal. With lush arrangements and unexpected musical ideas drawn from genres as surprising as minimalist composition, jazz drumming, and film scores, Strange Medicine is the bold next step in Katers career. Its an album made beyond the white gaze of Americana, unbeholden to a music industry that so often tokenizes and silences marginalized voices, a Black Feminist perspective on a genre that refuses to cede power to Black women. But ultimately its a celebration of the self. The words of the poem wont you celebrate with me by Lucille Clifton echoed in Katers ears throughout the process of making this album:
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