Crafting Songs of Change: From Waldorf to World Stage
Emma Kieran Schaefer, a proud alumna of Shining Mountain Waldorf School, is a multifaceted artist whose music and storytelling are deeply rooted in her love for nature and social justice. With a background that spans states and continents, Emma’s journey is a testament to the power of creative expression and the profound impact of a Waldorf education. From winning prestigious songwriting competitions to launching meaningful projects like Project Particles, Emma continues to inspire and uplift through her art. Currently exploring global perspectives on music and climate action as a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship recipient, Emma’s story is one of passion, resilience, and unwavering commitment to making a positive difference in the world. You can see her perform soon in Boulder! Buy tickets for Emma’s AUGUST 29, 2024: CAFE CONCERT WITH EMMA KIERAN AT eTOWN.
SMWS: How did your time at Shining Mountain Waldorf School influence your passion for music and storytelling?
Emma: My eight years as a student at Shining Mountain were pivotal in helping foster my imagination. The curriculum provided a deep immersion into stories and song from traditions around the world, transporting us across time and continents to imagine other ways of being and other ways of life. From learning about ancient Greek and Hindu mythologies in 5th grade to engaging with Goethe’s Faust in 12th, so many of our classes centered around a story in some way. But I think what really enabled my love for stories to take root was the opportunity to step into them. With class plays and high schools musicals, we had ample opportunities to not just learn about stories but to actively imagine ourselves within them through acting.
In the years since Shining Mountain, story has been the throughline in everything I do. My little songwriting passion that I started exploring in middle school has developed into a love for sharing stories through song that has now taken me around the world to some of the places I’d learned about from stories at Shining Mountain. Meg Gardner’s 8th grade lesson about Wangari Maathai and her Greenbelt Movement in Kenya influenced me to go there on my Watson Fellowship and learn more about her environmental and social activism.
I’m fascinated by how stories enable us to imagine what it might be like to exist as another living being, and how ultimately this ability to empathize with others — be it humans, plants, animals — can be incredibly powerful in creating or sustaining a culture of care and respect toward all of nature, including humans. While I didn’t yet understand why I was so drawn to stories, I’m incredibly thankful for my many teachers during my time at Shining Mountain who saw this desire in me and helped to kindle it.
SMWS: Can you share a memorable experience or project from your SMWS school years, especially middle/high school, that shaped your journey as an artist?
Emma: Two experiences come to mind. One was in Susie Mitchell’s art class in high school where we created a cross-cultural collaboration with a group of art students at a university in Nablus, Palestine. This concept of collaborating with students across the world through visual art opened my mind to the possibilities of communally creating storytelling projects through a variety of mediums that connect cultures and continents. I’m really interested in using music, performing arts, and other forms of storytelling to co-create projects that enable intentional exchange of experiences and perspectives that open pathways toward connection, peace, and justice that may not have been visible before. The past year of traveling on the Watson Fellowship further expanded my view of the possibilities for this.
The other experience that comes to mind was my senior project. I created a short film called Tapestry which wove together my interests of interviewing, writing, acting, songwriting, and film. The opportunity to pursue so many of my interests within one project proved to be incredibly influential, as it led me to design a major at Grinnell College called Multimedia Storytelling which enabled me to study the topic of storytelling across numerous disciplines such as Sociology, English, Music, and Theater. I look back now on that project and my Shining Mountain education as a whole, and I see how impactful it was to be in an environment that allowed me to pursue so many of my interests without having to choose between them. This continues to be how I approach my life — viewing things from a “yes, and” perspective rather than from an “either/or,” asking myself frequently, “how can I combine all of these things in an intentional, meaningful way?”
SMWS: How do you integrate themes of nature and environmental justice into your songwriting?
Emma: My favorite way to write songs is to simply spend time immersed in a landscape and then just let that experience and that inspiration to come through in song form. If I allow this to happen, it doesn’t really even feel like I’ve written the song but instead like I just created space for the song of the land to move through me.
I’ve worked on two main projects over the last few years that center environmental awareness. The first was a children’s musical I wrote over the pandemic called Ponderosa, a story set in the Colorado mountains that explores the theme of learning to stand up for the environment and for oneself. The other project was my senior thesis at Grinnell. I researched Iowa’s four primary ecosystems and spent time immersed in them — in the tallgrass prairies, rivers, oak savannas, and woodlands. Then I wrote and recorded an album inspired by what these ecosystems taught me and created a live performance weaving in other contributing artists, poets, and dancers. It’s called Sowing Songs and you can listen here: https://open.spotify.com/album/42IAlJh0gmtPfIGz7svCCv
SMWS: What advice would you give to young aspiring musicians and storytellers who want to use their art for social change?
My first piece of advice would be to find people who inspire you and who are doing the work that you want to do. You could call these people your mentors. If you can, connect with them and learn from them, whether it be in person or from reading/experiencing their work. Some of my biggest inspirations are Anaïs Mitchell, the singer-songwriter and writer of the musical Hadestown, Sophie Strand, an author who writes about the intersection of mythology, ecology, and spirituality, Sam Lee, a folk song collector and visionary of the experience “Singing with Nightingales” which I got to volunteer for this past spring, and Mikaela Loach, a climate justice activist and author of “It’s Not That Radical,” a book that has recently influenced my view on the importance of collective organizing and the interconnectedness of capitalism, colonialism, and climate change. My second piece of advice would be something I read in Bono’s book Surrender that I still think about years later. He talks about how the art must move you first. If it doesn’t move you, chances are it won’t move anyone else. Finally, I believe that when creating art for social change, it’s important to think about how you’re building community while you’re doing this. At the end of the day, no matter what you’ve created or who you’ve impacted with your art, I think it’s just as important to see how you’ve built or sustained community in the process of making it.
SMWS: What inspired you to start Project Particles, and how has it impacted your music and activism?
[Trigger warning: suicide.]
In high school, I became close friends with two other students through our shared love of astrophysics, and together we started Space Club. We spent a lot of time together philosophizing over the universe, particles and dark matter, and our shared existence together on this planet. One of those friends was Ben Getchell, class of 2017. In my first year of college, Ben took his life. I found myself grappling with many questions within a community of people who didn’t know him, and a deep sadness that I could only articulate through songwriting. The song that emerged from that processing was “Particles,” and Ben’s friends and I performed it at his celebration of life [ceremony].
Over the years since Ben’s passing, I’ve become more aware of the impact that mental health has on many people. While I recognize the importance of being there for people in our lives and reminding them that they are not alone, I also know that if we try to be that person for everyone around us we may find ourselves burnt out and unable to provide the support they need. Instead, I’ve come to find the value in connecting people to resources that can help support and/or educate them. That’s what Project Particles is — a platform of resources to guide people toward professional support for mental health and suicide. This is the mentality I try to have in my activism and daily life — to connect people to resources. We might not be able to help everyone around us every step of the way, but if we can connect people to the resources they need, whatever they might be experiencing, then I believe that’s a much more sustainable way to approach supporting others.
SMWS: Can you tell us about your upcoming projects and what you hope to achieve with your Thomas J. Watson Fellowship?
Emma: After a year of traveling the world to explore the role of music within the climate crisis, I have an endless list of projects and ideas that I’d like to create and collaborate on. I’m feeling most eager to explore musical storytelling projects that are rooted in community and that amplify marginalized voices most impacted by the climate crisis. I’m also interested in creating some musical project that allows for global collaboration with some of the musicians I met over the past year. Another hope of mine is to create or facilitate gathering spaces where people come together to share ideas, meals, music, and art for collective and individual healing. Finally, I’m planning to spend more time learning from Indigenous traditions around the world and connecting with the Native American communities here in the US in ways that center reciprocity and reparation.
Right now, my most tangible project is putting out a live album of songs that I wrote over the past year inspired by the insights shared from the people and places I encountered. I’m really excited to be sharing these songs and some stories from my travels in a concert at eTown at the end of the month where the live album will be recorded (https://www.etown.org/events/cafe-concert-with-emma-kieran/). I can hardly wait to share my year in this way with friends and family who have supported me over the years, and as a way to honor some of the people and stories that have shaped my journey around the world.
AUGUST 29, 2024: CAFE CONCERT WITH EMMA KIERAN AT eTOWN, BUY TICKETS NOW!
