Our Tune of the Day comes from Yasmin Williams. I only came across Yasmin’s music recently when trawling through Bandcamp. I’ll be honest, when I read that she combined fingerstyle and percussive tapping I was not expecting what I heard – a lot of the percussive playing that I do hear tends to be very showy, often leading the sound rather than the artist using those elements to create something original. With Yasmin Williams, her whole sound has an innovative appeal and her fingerstyle/ lap tapping style is used to serve her sound rather than the other way around. She certainly transcends the norms…
With Urban Driftwood, the title track of her forthcoming new album out January 29, 2020, on SPINSTER, she demonstrates its deeply mesmerising journey-like quality.
She says the following:
The narrative plot of Urban Driftwood culminates in the repetitive, meditative sounds of guitar, kora, kalimba, and hand drums on the penultimate title track, creating a sonic landscape that communicates the feeling of movement and evokes images of the natural beauty that persists within urban spaces. As she wrote the song, Williams was reflecting on her personal role in the context of the current societal moment, considering her position as Black female guitarist within a white male dominated field. Yasmin says, “There are not many Black guitarists within this genre and particularly with all of the political and social discord that was/is happening in the United States in 2020, I felt it was extremely important to include a song on the album that was inspired by my heritage and paid homage to who I am, the household I grew up in, the music I listened to as a child. ‘Urban Driftwood’ is more like the music I grew up listening to than any other song I’ve released so far.”
The video, Directed by Drew Hagelin, which features Yasmin busking and guest musician Amadou Kouyate, perfectly compliments the contemporary nature of her music and that feeling of time being briefly suspended. Yasmin’s music is filled with blissful treasures and I for one am looking forward to hearing more.
Pre-Order Urban Driftwood via Bandcamp: https://yasminwilliams.bandcamp.com/album/urban-driftwood
More: http://www.yasminwilliamsmusic.com/