I think the only kind of conversations Kamara Thomas has are wide-ranging. She is a musician, artist, activist, and community builder, and she brings all of those roles to our conversation for this edition of the Red Line Roots podcast.

Kamara released Folklore: Live at Cassilhaus in September. It’s a really striking collection of songs. The sound is both rich and spare and these are the types of songs that shift and breathe with you the more times you listen. But that’s not all Kamara’s up to. 

Later this week, she will bring the Country Soul Songbook Summit to the world. Country Soul Songbook was the first event during the pandemic that I watched on a stream. It was switched to a virtual event one or two days before its date and I can honestly say that witnessing the joy and possibility of those folks that day gave me a lot of hope. Kamara has been curating iterations of CSSB for years, as we talk about in the podcast. But the Summit takes this work even further: Kamara, in partnership with Heather Cook and Kym Register, has brought together a diverse group of artists to reimagine what a vibrant, and just, arts community could look like. 

As Kamara says: “We created The Country Soul Songbook Summit to meet this moment, and to build what our Country-Americana community needs right now. We need the music and the conversations that feed us to be intersectional. We need BIPOC & LGBTQIA voices to be centered. We need the creative friction of many diverse viewpoints to provide the momentum to drive us toward the change we wish to see and be — in these genres and in the world. We need these voices to redefine what it means to be Country, what it means to be Southern, what it means to be Western, and what it means to be American.” 

Check out the conversation with Kamara here and register for the CSSB Summit! It’s by artists, for everyone!