The BEAT Network Presents
KINNIE STARR
Live in Guelph!
Friday September 16th
@ ebar
41 Quebec St.
9pm doors
$12 advance @ Eventbrite $15 door
with DJ M’Damn D

Kinnie Starr: The anti-star’s Starr

“…edgy and enchanting.” – The New Yorker

“…sensual, spiritual, self-possessed original… blazing her own influential trail.” – The Record Magazine (Philadephia, USA)

“…raw and feral talent.” – The Globe and Mail

Kinnie Starr is a genre-defying artist blazing her own influential trail. In 2000, after leaving Mercury/Island/DefJam, she was one of the first beatmakers to mix powwow and hip-hop/EDM on her trilingual underground classic, Red % X, featuring Ulali. Entirely self-trained, Starr moves from hip hop to art-pop, folk to spoken word to EDM with eclectic grace. Her music is fearless, intuitive, politically charged and melodic challenging listeners while making them bounce and nod. Starr produces her own music, making her one of the 5% of female producers worldwide – a growing populus she spearheads by example. She investigates the complex conversation around the gender gap in music production and authorship with her 2016 feature length documentary, Play Your Gender, directed by Stephanie Clattenburg in collaboration with Starr, produced by Sahar Yousefi, and co-written by all three women.

Starr’s music career has taken her around the world — across Canada, the U.S., Europe and Japan, but she is first and foremost an activist. Her activism began before her career in music through the visual arts. Her current drawings continues to touch on her areas of continued interest: race, home, feminism, the land and water, and humanity. Starr was featured in 2013 at Vancouver’s Bill Reid Gallery as part of Rezerect, a 6 month show on modern indigenous erotic art. In 2014, Starr showcased indigenous law and water activist Caleb Behn in her video Dream Bigger – an anthem of sorts that we can all do better. She also collaborated with Haida Raid in 2015 to make a humorous yet powerful animated video about the urgent need to protect our water. That video, directed by Amanda Strong, won Best Music Video at Toronto’s prestigious ImagineNative festival.

Kinnie Starr is a published author and illustrator (How I Learned to Run, 2008, House Of Parlance). She has worked in youth arts activism and mentorship since 2006 as a founding staff member for Amp Camp through Manitoba Audio Recording Industry Association (MARIA), and is a presenter for Canadian School Presenters Online and Artstarts In Schools. Starr teaches a playful, self-esteem boosting, rhythm-based hip hop program aimed at empowering kids, especially LGBT and First Nations youth.

Calgary-born of French, German, Irish and Mohawk bloodlines, the trilingual (English, French and Spanish) Starr has a BA in Race and Gender Studies from Queen’s University, Ontario. Raised in Calgary, university educated in Ontario, she now calls Sechelt, BC home and shares her life with partner, Gwaai Edenshaw, renowned carver, son of Guujaaw.