Culture

Rowena Whaling, IPMA’s Best Female Artist, destined to be a singer

By |

NASHVILLE – Rowena Whaling says her mother “was terrified I would become a nun, but I never really thought of that because I knew I was going to be a singer.”

Instead Whaling became a Wiccan high priestess and a singer, and an accomplished one at that. At the Second Annual Pagan Music Awards, held in Nashville in September and presented by the International Pagan Music Association, Whaling was honored as Best Female Artist for the second year in a row. Samples of her sometimes dark, sometimes mystical, sometimes erotic, rock-oriented music — from her CDs My Mother’s Song and Book of Shadows — can be heard on her website, rowenaoftheglen.com. While Whaling’s spiritual path meandered until, she says, she “came out of the broom closet in 1995,” her musical destiny was set early. “I was raised on the road 32 to 36 weeks a year because my parents were theatricals,” Whaling says.