Community News

 When Kaïa Kater was a little girl growing up in Quebec, she learned piano and cello and began writing songs by age 12.

But she didn’t embrace the instrument she’s known for until her teens, when her musical mentor, the late Mitch Podolak, encouraged her mom to send her to “banjo camp” at the Swannanoa Gathering folk art workshop in Ashville, N.C.

During a week spent playing “old-timey” music and learning the Appalachian “claw-hammer” style of banjo picking, she realized she had found her voice. She has hardly put the banjo down since.

Kater, now 32, has won a big following among folk, bluegrass and American roots music fans for her deep and soulful songs accompanied by her smooth and skillful banjo playing.

Her credentials include appearances on National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk concerts and World Café, rave reviews from Rolling Stone and Folk Alley, and a new album, “Strange Medicine” (her fifth) that won Contemporary Roots Album of the Year at the 2025 Juno Awards, Canada’s equivalent of the Grammys.

She’ll be bringing her banjo to Oswego for a duo show with bass player Andrew Ryan at the Oswego Music Hall on Saturday, Nov. 1, as part of the fall season for the non-profit music venue, a 200-seat space on Lake Ontario whose formal name is the Ontario Center for the Performing Arts.

Oswego Music Hall Artistic Director Tom Lambert and his wife, Ann Buchau, traveled to Kingston, Ont., on a friend’s recommendation to see Kater in concert last year and “I was drawn in to her Appalachian-style banjo playing and captivating vocals,” Lambert said. “I immediately knew that I wanted to bring her to the Oswego Music Hall,” he said.

“I saw her perform again in February at the 2025 Folk Alliance International Music Festival (in Montreal), where she was one of the most sought-after musicians at the conference and played to standing-room only audiences,” he added.

Kater said she felt a great rapport with the music hall folks that made her want to come to Oswego. “The older I get, the more I believe that a lot of things are about relationships,” she said.

Kater made her first album, “Old Soul,” as a teenager who has since drawn from her experience as a woman, a person of color and the child of a Canadian mother and a Caribbean father playing what is often considered a Southern white man’s instrument. She has since studied the music of Black and female banjo players and woven her own style of story-songs and poetic lyrics.

Kater said she was fortunate to be raised by a single mom, Tamara Kater, who has been an arts administrator for folk and bluegrass festivals in Canada for over 25 years. Kater grew up hanging around the Winnipeg Folk Festival (founded by Podolak) and other venues, often meeting musicians who encouraged her interest.

She said Podolak introduced her to the banjo when she was 11, but it didn’t stick until her banjo camp experience at age 13 or 14. Then she began devoting herself to becoming “a songwriter who blended my music with banjo.”

At 17 she won a scholarship to enroll in the first class of a four-year Appalachian Studies program in music at Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia, “which allowed me to dedicate years-long practice to this style of music,” she said.

“Banjo gets a bad rap where it’s considered twangy,” she said. “It can be that, but I really like the earthiness in its tone. I’m interested in making it sound more melodic or reflective, slower-paced, and I love that.”

“I also like the way it’s able to be played communally with other people, which is harder to do with piano and cello,” she added.

As she began writing more personal songs, she tapped her father’s background as a refugee from Grenada who left the Caribbean island in the midst of a period of unrest and government coups that led to the U.S. invasion in 1983.

At age 25, she traveled there alone for the first time and immersed herself in Grenadian culture – “the beautiful positive sides of hospitality and humor and joy and its history of slavery, insurrection and instability,” she said. Her fourth album, Grenade, is about the island and her father’s experience.

Her new album is even more introspective, with songs that celebrate the power of women and oppressed people throughout history as well as meditations on her own life. It features guest vocals by Taj Mahal, Allison Russell and Aoife O’Donovan.

In a new partnership for the music hall, Kater’s opening act comes via a new Syracuse venue, Pink Rock Culture Co-op, whose founder, Amanda Rogers, recommended Khalil Jade, a CNY singer-songwriter and guitarist whose style “has a rootsy, Americana, bluesy feel that’s a nice match for Kaïa’s music,” Rogers said.

Tickets to the November 1 show are $20 to $25 in advance, depending on the café-style seating, and $25 at the door. Children under 16 can attend for half-price and under 5 for free. Doors open at 7 p.m. for the 7:30 p.m. show.

The venue does not sell alcohol but other refreshments, including $1 popcorn and homemade baked goods, are available for purchase. For more info on the music hall, visit oswegomusichall.org.