eYs ARTIST
KYVA
Emerging Musician and Artist
Story and Interview by Deme McDonald
T
he KYVA project, is a profound expression of the courage of self-reflection to stand firm in your truth to enact personal growth and societal change. KYVA, Sydney, Australia-based artist invites us to join him on a journey of self-discovery fearlessly encouraging all to stand firm in your truth, embrace and value our differences while inspiring all to reflect on the societal marginalisation and inequalities from culture to sexuality with a call for change.
One writes out of one thing only — one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art. James Baldwin“Autobiographical Notes” from Notes of a Native Son, (1955) Kyle Linahan grew up in Avalon, a small coastal town on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia, and experience which has profoundly shaped his artistry. I had the pleasure of interviewing our Native Son, Australian singer songwriter, Kyle Linahan, with who performs
using the moniker KYVA (pronounced K-eye-Vah) on the Frenchkiss Records label. KYVA’s lyrics are exploding with truths of the human condition with a unique sound that beautifully weaves alternate pop influenced by The Cure with the Funk of Prince and the rich sounds of his Caribbean ancestry which envelops the listener and is a melodic treat for the senses. Tell us about the origin of your name KYVA and how it represents you as an artist. The name KYVA represents my experience as a child growing up in Avalon, Australia. It is multifaceted about identity and place and the feeling of trying to create a home within music. As a person of mixed raced heritage, you are torn between two worlds and how the world perceives you physically and culturally. There are some incredible things that come from that because can see through the experience of different worlds that others would be able to see, but it also leaves you separate from the two places as well. These ideas about identity played into the project and I wanted a name that directly referenced this place where I am going with identity and the journey of the music understanding that this might be a place that is never truly reconciled and might just paint different experiences on a canvas. I split my name Kyle – KY and Avalon -AV to represent this duality. Tell me about your background. I am a singer songwriter based in Sydney. I grew up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, which is a specific group of people, it’s very Anglo and pretty homogeneous and I found it was difficult growing up in an area like that because it’s not an area that champions or looks to celebrate people are different.
eYs Magazine, Winter 2020 | 5
