Danielle Caruana

Danielle Caruana, known professionally as Mama Kin, is an Australian singer-songwriter. She has released two albums, Beat and Holler and The Magician's Daughter. She lives with her family in Fremantle.

Caruana grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Newport, the youngest, by some years, of six siblings by parents of Maltese extraction. The family was musical and she studied classical piano from the age of five to 16. Every child in the family was expected to play an instrument and to play in the family band in church and for members of the Maltese community who visited their house. Her strongest musical influence was her sister Carmen, 14 years older, with whom she sang and who taught her to harmonise, and who introduced her to lasting musical influences: blues and gospel, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, the Pretenders and Joan Armatrading. Other family influences were country, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, the crooners, Stevie Wonder, Dr John, The Cure, The Police, Prince and Michael Jackson. Caruana says, "I loved all of it, because my brothers and sisters were into it. I couldn't imagine a life without music", but also that the musicality of her family inhibited her own career: "I was completely petrified. After having grown up under two really incredibly, incredibly diverse musical brothers and a really musical family, I think I just made a decision really early on that I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't as good as them."

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