Jake Blount
North Street Cabaret 610 North St., Madison, Wisconsin 53704
Tadin Brown
Jake Blount
media release: The Sugar Maple Concert Series continues with a return of Jake Blount in September!
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Acclaimed musician and scholar Jake Blount’s new rendition of “The Downward Road,” featuring Greensboro-based rapper Demeanor, is out now. Listen/share HERE.
Reflecting on the song, which was made familiar by singer Jim Williams and first recorded in the 1930s by Alan Lomax, a well-known ethnomusicologist, Blount shares, “‘The Downward Road’ was the proving ground for much of the sonic experimentation on The New Faith. I think these were the first vocal harmonies I ever recorded - and definitely the first fiddle solo. My co-producer, Brian Slattery, used this track to show me how to put percussion loops together. We wound up re-recording harmonies, fiddles and percussion as we learned to perform the parts better and get better sounds with our home recording rigs. Demeanor threw some incredible verses on it. ‘The Downward Road’ was the first song we began to work on for this release, and the last one we finished - and it does a better job than any other track at encapsulating the backstory behind The New Faith.”
“The Downward Road” is the third song unveiled from Blount’s highly-anticipated new album, The New Faith, which will be released September 23 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings—Blount’s first project in partnership with the esteemed non-profit label (pre-order/pre-save).
Ahead of the release, Blount has shared two additional tracks: “Didn’t It Rain,” made famous by Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson, and “Once There Was No Sun,” made familiar by legendary American folk singer Bessie Jones. Of the latter and its accompanying music video, Rolling Stone praises, “a gorgeous clip that belies the endangered state of the planet,” while American Songwriter declares, “it’s a stunner with eye-popping choreography and delightful musicality. It’s a cup of coffee in your otherwise bleary-eyed day.”
In celebration of the album, Blount will tour through the end of the year with upcoming headline shows at Seattle’s Tractor Tavern, Portland’s Show Bar at Revolution Hall, Los Angeles’ Hotel Café, Nashville’s The Analog at the Hutton Hotel, Atlanta’s Eddie Attic and New Orleans’s Gasa Gasa among many others. In addition to the headline dates, Blount will also make appearances at Bristol Rhythm & Roots Festival, AmericanaFest and Bourbon and Bluegrass Festival this fall. See below for complete tour itinerary.
A dystopian Afrofuturistic concept album, the record features ten reimagined and reinterpreted traditional Black spirituals across twelve tracks in addition to two original spoken word pieces. Conceived, written and recorded during the darkest months of lockdowns—while Blount himself was still recovering from what he now knows was likely a bout with long COVID—and just after the unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd, the album aims to envision what Black religious music would sound like in a not-so-distant future world devastated by climate change.
Of the ambitious project, Blount shares,
“I have long felt a powerful draw to the old spirituals passed down in my community. I am an unlikely devotee; I only rarely attended church as a child, declared myself an atheist at the tender age of eight and developed a strong antipathy toward Christianity when I began to understand my queerness. Nonetheless, spirituals are the songs I bring to communal singing events. They are the songs I teach. In moments of homesickness, sorrow and fear, they are the songs I turn to for solace.
This record envisions Black American religious music in a future devastated by warfare and anthropogenic climate change. The record is based on field recordings of Black religious services from the early-to-mid 20th century, but it is composed entirely of new arrangements and subtle rewrites of traditional Black folk songs. To make an informed prediction, I referenced a more diverse cross-section of the African Diaspora’s music than I ever have before. This album incorporates sounds from Belize, Georgia, Jamaica, Texas, Mississippi, New York and beyond.
It is not surprising to me that the most paralyzing time of my life, and the deepest dive into history I’ve yet taken, have resulted in an Afrofuturist album. I believe our most likely future bears a close resemblance to our past.
The end result is an album comprised of songs and sounds heard in traditional African and African American ceremony, but updated with modern techniques. Drums, banjos, fiddles and song meet rock and roll, rap, looping, and contemporary arrangements. Ambient sounds and drone material collected on Cushing’s Island, Maine, establish the soundscape. I discerned the sound of the future by listening to the past and present.
The destruction of a way of life entails both loss and growth. The traditional songs I adapted for The New Faith originally developed among a people who had but recently been robbed of home, history, family, culture, and society. The unique history of African American people made our musical tradition an ideal candidate for my ambitious task. The New Faith is a statement of reverence for our devastating, yet empowering past; of anticipation and anxiety toward our uncertain future; and of hope that, come what may, something of us will yet survive.”
Produced by Blount along with Brian Slattery, the album was recorded mainly in Blount’s own bedroom in Providence, RI. In addition to Blount on vocals, fiddle, banjo, bass, percussion and strings and Slattery on percussion, guitar and strings, the album features guest appearances by Demeanor, D’orjay The Singing Shaman, Samuel James, Kaïa Kater, Lizzie No, Mali Obomsawin, Brandi Pace, Rissi Palmer and Lillian Werbin.
Based in Providence, RI, 26-year-old Blount is an award-winning banjoist, fiddler, singer and scholar specializing in the folk traditions of Black and indigenous Americans. In 2020, his debut solo album, Spider Tales, launched at #2 on the Billboard Bluegrass chart and received overwhelming critical praise landing on year-end best of lists at the The New Yorker, NPR Music and more. In addition to his solo work, he is half of the internationally touring duo Tui, a recipient of 2020 the Steve Martin Banjo Prize, a two-time winner of the Appalachian String Band Music Festival (better known as Clifftop) and a founding member of Bluegrass Pride. Blount has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Newport Folk Festival and numerous other venues across and beyond the U.S. He has presented his scholarly work at museums and universities including the Smithsonian Institution, Berklee College of Music and Yale University. His writing has appeared in Paste Magazine, No Depression, and NPR Music.
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. The label's mission is to document music, spoken word, instruction and sounds from around the world, continuing the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948. The Smithsonian acquired Folkways from the Asch estate in 1987 and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings has continued the Folkways tradition by supporting the work of traditional artists and expressing a commitment to cultural diversity, education and increased understanding among peoples through the production, documentation, preservation and dissemination of sound.
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