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I’ve just posted a profile of and conversation with Washington DC old-time musician, activist and musicologist Jake Blount. Link follows the excerpt…
Blount has become a prolific artist and educator in a short span of time. He released the EP Reparations in 2017 as a collaboration with fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves. In 2019 he won the prestigious Clifftop Appalachian banjo contest and opened a series of shows for Chocolate Drops founder Rhiannon Giddens, while also putting out an album with fiddler Libby Weitnauer as the duo Tui. Meanwhile, he’s lectured at universities and music programs about traditional music and race. But when folks look back on Blount’s career and mission, it will be hard to identify a more important landmark than his 2020 album Spider Tales.
The title references a folkloric figure from West Africa that made its way into the culture of enslaved people in America. Stories about Anansi the Spider were used to subvert and oppose oppression in the old world and the new. Each song is its own tale, drawn from a primary or period source, chosen for telling some aspect of the story of Black music in America, in all its early diversity and influence. “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” comes from the relatively familiar oeuvre of Huddy “Leadbelly” Ledbetter. Less known might be “Blackbird Says To The Crow” from Fentress County, TN fiddler Cuje Bertram, who was denied the chance to make records in his prime because of his race. “Mad Mama’s Blues” is a ferocious and violent number drawn from little known blues queen Josie Miles. There are other songs drawn from Native Americans and the Gullah-Geechee people of the southeastern sea islands.
It’s a masterwork of relevant, living musicology that dances in the modern ear, sometimes literally. Besides the return of collaborator Tatiana Hargreaves on fiddle, plus Haselden Ciaccio on bass and Rachel Eddy on guitar, we hear subtle, syncopated foot percussion from the innovative dancer Nic Gareiss, as on the opener “Goodbye, Honey, You Call That Gone.” (MORE)