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About Ruth Barrett |
Ruth Barrett
Musician, Singer, Songwriter, Author, Priestess and
Educator
|
Photo by Jaime
Blackbird
|
Ruth Barrett is an award winning fretted dulcimer
recording artist, singer, and songwriter with numerous releases to her credit.
She is also an author of Women's Rites, Women's Mysteries: Intuitive Ritual
Creations (Llewllyn, 2007) and co-founder of the Temple of Diana, a
national Dianic Wiccan tax-exempt religious organization.
Ruth's compositions are counted among the pioneering
musical works in the Goddess Spirituality Movement. For almost three decades
she has shared traditional folk music and her original and traditional Goddess
songs with audiences throughout the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. |
From 1981-2000, with musical collaborator Cyntia Smith,
Ruth co-produced five critically acclaimed recordings: Aeolus, Music
of the Rolling World, Deepening, A Dulcimer Harvest, and
The Heart is the Only Nation. As a solo artist, Ruth's 1990 release,
Parthenogenesis won an INDIE award from the National Association of
Independent Record Distributors in the category of Women's Music. In 2002,
Ruth's original composition, "Romp of the Canyon Kitties," was released as the
opening track on Masters of the Mountain Dulcimer, Volume Two. In 2003,
Ruth released a two-volume CD set The Year is a Dancing Woman: Goddess
Chants, Songs and Invocations for the Wheel of the Year. Her song, "Every
Woman Born," is included in the popular CD compilation, The Best of Pagan
Music (Serpentine Music, 2004).
Ruth Barrett has performed at numerous venues and
festivals nationally and internationally including the Michigan Womyn's Music
Festival, the National Women's Music Festival, Winter Festival of Acoustic
Music, the Harvest Festival of Dulcimers, The Glastonbury Goddess Festival, and
Pagan Spirit Gathering. Ruth has directed the Candlelight Concert, the Michigan
Womyn's Music Festival's closing spirituality concert since 1993.
Other credits include Ruth's transcriptions of Joni
Mitchel's dulcimer arrangements for the songbooks, Hits and Misses (Warner
Brothers) with Joellen Lapidus.
Ruth is also an ordained Dianic High Priestess, ritualist,
and author of Women's Rites, Women's Mysteries: Intuitive Ritual
Creation (Llewellyn 2007). Her writings on women and ritual are included in
Daughters of the Goddess, (Wendy Griffin, editor), Lesbian Rites: Symbolic Acts
and the Power of Community (Ramona Faith Oswald, editor), and Creating Circles
and Ceremonies (Oberon and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart).
Since inheriting Z Budapest's Los Angeles ministry in
1980, Ruth has taught magic and ritual arts at women's festivals and
conferences in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. She served the Los Angeles
Goddess community of Circle of Aradia for two decades before relocating to
Wisconsin in 2000 where she co-founded Temple of Diana, a national and
federally recognized Dianic religious organization.
With her partner Falcon River, Ruth co-facilitates The
Spiral Door Women's Mystery School of Magick and Ritual Arts, a national Dianic
clergy training program.
In 1997 Ruth was honored as recipient of the L.A.C.E.
award for outstanding contributions in the area of Spirituality from the Gay
and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles. |
