About Daniel Deardorff (1952-2019)

On November 8th, 2022, in the 70th year of his birth, Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. published the 3rd edition of his book “The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture and Psyche.”

Since 2022 the Mythsinger community has grown online and at-in person events. We gather from around the world on the last week of each quarter year to hear archival recordings of Deardorff singing and telling ancient tales around the virtual storyfire on Zoom. After listening, all are invited to  “feed the story” and each other, in conversation.

When music industry prejudices closed doors due to his visible disabilities, he returned to Seattle to produce albums for himself and notable Northwest artists (1980s-90s). As post-polio sequelae required him to retire from production work, he delved into myths and myth-making, facing each paradox and hardship with cunning and grace and teaching us to do the same.

He collaborated extensively with his mentor and friend, poet Robert Bly, authored “The Other Within: the Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture and Psyche” and mentored generations of younger mythtellers (2000s-2010s).

Deardorff taught that the greatest oppression is the suffering of meaningless wounds. He showed us how old stories, which take 10,000 years to make, “tell truth without the use of facts” and hold medicine, meaning and healing for the entire culture. His vision was to restore the power of myth to culture and community. 

The Mythsinger Legacy Project is now carrying forth Daniel Deardorff’s work in its multivalent forms.

On 9/19/19, Daniel flew “out of this story into the next,” leaving a legacy that includes a significant body of recent unpublished work: three albums of recorded, as-yet-unreleased songs, story podcasts, poetry, essays, curriculum for his course on myth and ritual, pen and ink drawings and 40 hours of audio and video interviews with his life-partner Judith-Kate Friedman. He and Friedman had begun envisioning a documentary film about his life in the context of social, medical and musical history.

On November 8th, 2022, in the 70th year of his birth, Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. is publishing the 3rd edition of his book “The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture and Psyche.”

Past events in 2022 have called in the Mythsinger community from around the world to hear archival recordings of Deardorff telling ancient tales around a virtual storyfire and “feed the story” in conversation with each other afterwards. Check out our book launch events here.