Kamara Thomas is a singer, songspeller, mythology fanatic and multidisciplinary storyteller based in Durham, NC. She is a Princeton Arts Fellow and has commissioned work for Duke University, the University of North Carolina and Cassilhaus.
Kamara's storytelling is collaborative and multi-faceted– weaving together musical and theater performance, community art-making, ritual, and visual elements including film, masks, archival material and photography.
Currently, she is developing “Tularosa: An American Dreamtime'' in collaboration with Boulder, CO-based theater company Band of Toughs. Based on her 2022 eponymous album and song-cycle, the storywork interrogates the mythology of the American West as it seeks to excavate, reinvent and heal the American mythologies that underpin collective cultural identity. The storywork will be the final, integrative installment of a series of experimental, multidisciplinary works including #9 - a pandemic performance for nine social-distancers (2020), the videos Good Luck America (2018) and Oh Gallows (2016), and Soapbox (2018), a community-based agitprop performance that traveled throughout public spaces in downtown Durham.
Kamara also spearheads Country Soul Songbook, an artist-driven and -focused media platform and production team rooted in the mission to amplify historically marginalized voices (BIPOC/LGBTQIA+) in Country, Americana and American roots music.