The Wild Hunt Sessions: In Conversation with Kyle Benor
See how this producer is documenting the future of folk
By Sophie Montague
Wild Hunt is a documentation project that focuses on highlighting diverse voices in the world of modern folk music by connecting audiences to a more accurate story of American folk tradition. Its founder, Kyle Benor, has traveled around the country to record live performances from primarily BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists. After having completed Season 1 of The Wild Hunt Sessions, organizing a festival, and releasing a compilation album, he recently opened up a studio in Kentucky.
I spoke with Kyle in a candid interview last January, as he was in the midst of trying to get Season 2 off the ground. He shared how the vision for Wild Hunt was developed, and how he made it happen. While working with a number of indie folk artists in production, management, and marketing, he began to identify a major problem with other live session series he saw: There was a lack of demographic diversity within these folk spaces, as well as a lack of accessibility into the industry for those without prior connections.
In addition to seeking a solution for these issues, Kyle also yearned for something that he could truly call his own in a creative sense. To get the project started, he turned to his vast network of musician friends. He wanted a way to help all of them out without the pressure of an exclusive producer/artist relationship. He shared, “Wild Hunt– in its essence, not its mission– is the hooking up version of music production. You don’t have to get committed to somebody. We meet up for two hours and make an EP.”
The first artist he came to was Rae Chen, better known as tofusmell. They recorded three stripped-back original songs. “In my mind, tofusmell is the poster of what I want Wild Hunt to be — going to an artist from a marginalized background who doesn’t have a large following and making music together that isn’t at cost to the artist,” he said.
He especially loved the travel that came with filming the series. “I would go on these 8 hour drives every day to get to the next city. That’s when I came up with what the actual mission of Wild Hunt was going to be.”
“It takes a lot of work to connect the people who live in Oklahoma, New York, and New Mexico as one culture. On these recording tours, it feels like I’m coming more into my national identity. Doing all this traveling has helped me weave together a tapestry of what America actually looks like. An integral part of that is showing how artists experience the world.”
“Oftentimes I tell artists that I want them to choose a location that is important to making music for them. I got to record my friend Anya in the abandoned theater in her town. I got to record the artist Purser in the church they grew up in. You get a much more emotionally connected performance. I want to create a mini-documentary about the artists I’m filming.”
I was curious to hear his perspective on the nature of genre as someone who has done song marketing campaigns in an era where the categorizations are rapidly changing. “For the past year and a half, I’ve wanted to change what textbooks say about folk music. We’re seeing this anthropological shift where folk doesn’t mean what it used to mean in the 70’s. Folk now just means anything where you skip putting a full production around it. I’ve had a lot of discussions with people about why that is, and how marketing shapes the way we use language.”
“Instead of making folk a more diverse genre by means of making acoustic music folk, I want to recognize more of its African-American roots. I encourage artists to think
about how they fit into a tradition of music, rather than just how it is about Story A — to recognize how they benefit from a culture, and how they can give credit where it's due.” Kyle has big visions for the project, but an ever-present roadblock has been the lack of funding. He aspires to continuously expand his network of musician friends, and highlight more international, ethnic folk music. I asked Kyle about what motivates him to keep going with the series. “In everybody who’s making a career, there’s this constant and deep down fear of mortality. Maybe you have another term for it, but I just call it the fear.”
“It is a huge driving force behind the fact that I sit down with people to talk about how we can make more Native spaces in folk music. We “share” [scare quotes] land with the people who were here before us, and we do not communicate with them. We have no awareness of their life and their culture. I was passionate about it before. But now that I've met a bunch of Native musicians, I want to scream about it.”
He also said that those who reach out to say they appreciate the series are a huge motivating factor. In an industry that is hardly forgiving, Kyle Benor remains true to his passion for change on Earth. Folk music may mean a lot of things, but it should tell a story of humanity. And Wild Hunt shows us that “recognizing diversity is the future of folk.”
Check out The Wild Hunt Series!!
Thank you so, so much for this article Sophie! It was so great to talk with you, and I'm so excited to share this!!!