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Bob Boilen | January 6, 2023

Jake Blount has an astonishing imagination. While a concert of folk tunes could simply be a singer and perhaps a fiddle or banjo, the young proponent of traditional music brought eight bandmates and told the NPR crowd that they were here to play “Black folk music from the future.” Most of the songs are from Jake Blount’s late-2022 release, The New Faith, on Smithsonian Folkways. It’s a dystopian Afrofuturistic concept album that reinterprets traditional Black spirituals.

His band includes the voice of Tiny Desk alum Kaia Kater, rap from Demeanor, fiery electric guitar from Augustus Tritsch and fiddle from George Jackson. It’s a talented crew with a mission to bring the voice, banjo and vivid imaginings of Jake Blount to fruition. “I spent many months during the pandemic alone in my bedroom coming up with these utterly oddball parts that these wonderful people have done a great job learning,” Blount explains. “This is the first time we’ve presented this music with the full instrumentation ever and it means so much to be doing it here.”

SET LIST
“The Man Was Burning”
“The Downward Road”
“City Called Heaven”
“Give Up the World”

MUSICIANS
Jake Blount: vocals, banjo, tambourine,
Kaia Kater: vocals
Resa Gibbs: vocals
Integriti Reeves: vocals
Demeanor (Justin Harrington): rap vocals
George Jackson: fiddle, vocals
Augustus Tritsch: electric guitar, banjo-uke
Huck Tritsch: drums
Nelson Williams: bass

TINY DESK TEAM
Producer: Bob Boilen
Director: Kara Frame
Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin
Series Producer: Bobby Carter
Videographers: Kara Frame, Joshua Bryant, Maia Stern, Sofia Seidel
Editor: Sofia Seidel
Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Marissa Lorusso, Hazel Cills, Ashley Pointer
VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins
Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

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