Margaret Fairlie-Kennedy was a composer who wrote music for chamber groups, orchestra, contemporary dance, and mixed media. She graduated from the Juilliard School of Music and held a Masters degree from Converse College School of Music. Her works were widely performed, and she was affiliated with Bennington College and Cornell University. She also studied film-making at Ithaca College, and she filmed and recorded the music and dance of various cultural groups in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka with her husband, Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, who was a professor of anthropology at Cornell University.