Today we’d like to introduce you to Kaeley Pruitt-hamm

Hi Kaeley, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.

I’m Kaeley Pruitt-Hamm, and I perform and record music and stories under the name “KPH & The Canary Collective” because I believe that sensitive “canaries” who feel deeply are often at the cutting edge of social change. We sing the warning signals of the need for change and we sing for hope for that change. For example, people whose lungs can’t handle wildfires are signaling the need for action for climate stability and for honoring of our Earth’s ecosystems. And people whose bodies aren’t fitting within the cookie cutter model of the U.S. broken healthcare system are calling for an equitable, holistic, and affordable system of care for all.
Besides performing and recording as a musician, it is my goal to eventually make a full-time living as a “Musical Change Doula,” supporting individuals and groups to move through life and societal transitions with healing music and art. I have made custom songs (or “Canary-grams”) or sung and played live during births, during deaths and memorials, during proposals, during weddings, and I have even led groups to sing during protests in which thousands get arrested in the name of calling for more people power and less power in the hands of big corporations. I offer this work in the spirit of the “gift economy,” on a sliding scale and by donation.
The reason why I got into this nontraditional line of work is that my body showed me the way. I got really sick and was nudged to focus on music again.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

I was on a track to become a basic career activist. As a kid, I loved writing songs on the piano and recording them on my rainbow Fisher Price cassette recorder. But I didn’t think it would be possible to make a living as an artist, and I also wanted to be a responsible human citizen and help address environmental degradation, war, poverty, and other issues I saw the world facing. For several years after college, I worked in the nonprofit field and landed my dream job in Washington, D.C. organizing and training young people to tell stories to their members of Congress about why something must be done about climate change. I saw a need for the policy-makers of the world to really FEEL the urgency of doing something about injustices on the planet, and I thought the main way they could break out of their current concrete and business-suit-ridden lives was to be shaken up with a bit of creative story-telling through music and art.
I loved my job, but my body was getting sicker and sicker with endometriosis and related complications, which is a whole-body reproductive organ disease that affects 1 in 7 people with a uterus but takes an average of 10 years to be diagnosed because of our broken and biased medical systems. No doctors would end up telling me what was going on or what I could do to heal my own ecosystems within my own body, so I had to go on a decade-long disability leave from my office job.
That forced me to get creative again and find a job that aligned with my newly-disabled body. I turned back to pursuing music alongside health, and I realized that through birth, illness, death, and trials in life, one constant that could help someone harmonize whatever challenge was song and story-telling for not only an articulation of the angst and grief but also an articulation of being less alone, being part of a purpose and a story and a collective.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

I am also especially passionate about supporting other disabled artists, others impacted by environmental toxin-related illnesses and who’ve fallen through the cracks of the healthcare systems, and other survivors of misogyny and sexual assault find healing through music.
When I provide songwriting and voice lessons or custom songs, I love to learn about other people’s long and winding roads and encourage them to love themselves where they’re at. Every sound is perfect if it’s what you need to express, and you don’t have to own $6,000 worth of music gear or singing bowls to be a musician or songwriter. You can pick up a stick and a spoon near you and write a 90-second song right at your kitchen table and call yourself a musician. If you don’t have the energy to dance standing up or don’t have legs, of course you can still be a dancer and express yourself by any means that feel accessible to your body!
This year, I’ve also been organizing “Canary Artist Gatherings” and made The Canary Collective a Community Partner with the Seattle Parks Foundation. The gatherings are virtual and in person outdoors for better airflow so that more immunocompromised and disabled folks can gather and make music and play together.

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?

I have lived in LA, Joshua Tree, Seattle, Bellingham, DC, and elsewhere, and have had to be essentially nomadic due to Environmental Illness and pandemic and climate crises dictating where I can breathe well. I love the jackfruit bowls at vegan food trucks in LA and the great local chapter of Sunrise Movement in LA, I love singing with orca whales near Bellingham and Seattle in the Salish Sea, and I’ve loved living in the desert with all the life in a seemingly desolate place. The thing I dislike about any of these cities is the continued lack of reparations to Black and Indigenous communities who deserve justice for land and lives being stolen by white colonizers.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.canarycollective.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kphcanarycollective/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmHQaCukm0OMExjU2T1nJJg
• Other: https://www.patreon.com/kph

Image Credits

Doug Indrick, Chelsea Rose, Layna Bennehoff