Category: American Routes

5:30 pm: ArtTalk with Jake Blount: “Inherited Black Futures Shaping Tomorrow Through Ancestral Craft”

A powerfully gifted musician and a scholar of Black American music, Jake Blount speaks ardently about the African roots of the banjo and the subtle, yet profound ways African Americans have shaped and defined the amorphous categories of roots music and Americana. His 2020 album Spider Tales (named one of the year’s best albums by NPR and the New Yorker, earned a perfect 5-star review from the Guardian) highlighted the Black and Indigenous histories of popular American folk tunes, as well as revived songs unjustly forgotten in the whitewashing of the canon. Blount’s new album, The New Faith, is a towering achievement of dystopian Afrofuturism and his first album for Smithsonian Folkways (released September 23, 2022). The New Faith is spiritual music, filled with hope for salvation and righteous anger in equal measure. The album manifests our worst fears on the shores of an island in Maine, where Blount enacts an imagined religious ceremony performed by Black refugees after the collapse of global civilization due to catastrophic climate change. Blount’s music is rooted in care and confrontation. On stage, each song he and his band play is chosen for a reason—because it highlights important elements about the stories we tell ourselves of our shared history and our endlessly complicated present moment. The more we learn about where we’ve been, the better equipped we are to face the future.

This is Jake Blount’s San Diego premiere.

Opening Set by Professor King Britt (DJ Set)

Throughout her fruitful independent career, spanning three EPs and multiple collaborations, Madison McFerrin has earned accolades from the New York Times, NPR, The FADER, and Pitchfork—who named her a Rising Artist in 2018. Her genre-bending work has led to Questlove dubbing her early sound “soul-appella.” In addition to a stirring performance on the renowned COLORS Studio platform, McFerrin has also performed at Lincoln Center, Central Park SummerStage, and BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn, and shared stages with the likes of De La Soul, Gallant, and The Roots. Off the stage, Madison’s music has been featured in episodes of Comedy Central’s Broad City and HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness. Working at the intersection of artistry and community building, McFerrin co-curated programming for the BRIC Jazz Festival in 2021, and in 2022, aligned her MAD LOVE initiative with the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy to present three installments of Summer Fridays—a series focused on themes of RELEASE, RESTORE & REJOICE with DJs, comedians, and musicians providing some much needed space for healing from the collective trauma and grief of the pandemic. Most recently, McFerrin has performed at the Saint Joseph’s Art Society in San Francisco and Joe’s Pub in New York City to support fundraisers benefiting the National Network of Abortion Funds.

Dirk Powell is a musician whose emotional understanding of American tradition has enabled him to expand on roots extending back more than nine generations in the southern mountains. His new group is a hard-driving, exciting testament to the power of the living old-time music tradition. Powell’s ability to unite traditional and historical forms with modern sensibilities has led to work with many of today’s greatest artists, from Sting to Jewel to Loretta Lynn to Joan Baez.

The late Dewey Balfa once said “A culture is like a tree, you have to water the roots, but you can’t go cutting off the branches every time the tree tries to grow”.  Well, Racines (which means “roots” in French) both waters the roots and stretches outward.  A collaborative project of five gentlemen who are all well-known Cajun musicians in their own right, Racines explores the varying musical traditions that call Southwest Louisiana home: Cajun music, Zydeco, blues, and more.

Spearheading the emerging generation of Cajun and Creole musicians, Cedric Watson is a fiddler, vocalist, accordionist and songwriter of enormous talent and potential. With an apparently bottomless repertoire of songs at his fingertips, Watson plays everything from forgotten Creole melodies to more modern Cajun and Zydeco songs, even occasionally throwing in a bluegrass fiddle tune or an old string band number. 

Cedric Watson & Bijou Creole resurrect the ancient sounds of the French and Spanish contra dance and bourré alongside the spiritual rhythms of the Congo tribes of West Africa, who were sold as slaves in the Caribbean and Louisiana by the French and Spanish. Moving with ease between fiddle and accordion, and adding his strong blues-inflected vocals, Watson’s albums are a tapestry of pulsing rhythms and Creole poetry, and his live performances are unforgettable, at once progressive and nostalgic.

Charly Lowry, a musical powerhouse from Pembroke, NC, is proud to be an Indigenous woman belonging to the Lumbee/Tuscarora Tribes. Since her teenage years, Charly has established a career as a professional singer-songwriter with unique passion and voice. In addition to performing solo, for over ten years Charly has been the front-woman for the multi award-winning band, Dark Water Rising.

Among her community, Native women are traditionally barred from the hand-drum, singing behind the men’s drum and/or dancing instead. Lowry defies that norm, following in the footsteps of her mentor, an artist and heir to the Tuscarora Indian Nation, Pura Fé; choosing to battle with her songs, hand drum, and guitar to deliver songs that not only tell the plight of her people but all humankind that face oppression.

She serves as a voice for her ancestors, as well as the youth of today, and remains committed to music that honors roots but lives vibrantly in the here and now.