Today marks the release of ‘Spider Tales’, the new album from Jake Blount which we reviewed here. Blount is one of the few African-American voices in Appalachian music today, and he’s also part of a queer wave of artists that have been sweeping the genre and pushing it in new directions. To create his new album, he went deep into the historical records of Black music in America, pulling out songs so full of coded messages and raw anguish that they sound almost apocalyptic at times.
Though the music of Black America has been endlessly copied and disenfranchised, Blount’s album shows that the deep subversion at the heart of this music has rarely been showcased. Just like the African tales of Anansi the spider, from which the album’s title comes, the subversion in these songs helped the singers survive and allowed them room to criticize the powerful without fear of retribution.
The album is haunting, beautiful and deeply personal as well. Many songs in the Black tradition deal with disappearance and people torn out of communities by violence or state-sponsored poverty. Blount saw this same kind of disappearance in the queer communities he worked in as an activist.
To celebrate the release of Spider Tales on Free Dirt Records, watch his new video for ‘Old-Timey Grey Eagle’ (a tune learned from Manco Sneed) on which he’s joined by Tatiana Hargreaves on fiddle.
Blount shares the following on the liner notes: “Sneed lived in Cherokee, North Carolina, and was part of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. He was part of a very musical family. Most recordings feature him as an old man, playing unaccompanied. This tune came from an earlier set of recordings provided by the Sneed family, wherein Sneed is accompanied by his daughter Mary and son-in-law J. Laurel Johnson.”
There’s something remarkably raw about this tune and the interplay between Blount and Hargreaves really bring it alive… it’s electric, just like the rest of this brilliant album.
You can also listen to a track on the latest Folk Radio Show here: https://klofmag.com/2020/05/lost-in-transmission-episode-57/