Yasmin Williams – Urban Driftwood
Spinster – Out Now
To call Virginia-based Yasmin Williams a fingerstyle guitarist would be an injustice, and to label her sophomore album ‘Urban Driftwood’ an instrumental record wouldn’t encompass the depth and the originality of the musician’s skills. Williams subverts the idea of how a guitarist should be in more ways than one – with her guitar placed firmly in her lap, a kalimba on the guitar’s body, dressed in tap shoes with her feet keeping rhythm. She remains aware that not only her multi-instrumental techniques draw attention, but that, as a Black woman, she stands firmly outside the canonical white male guitarist tradition.
The album offers an insight into the young musician’s year. The record begins with the fast-paced Sunshowers that sounds like the hopeful New Years’ resolutions of the 24-year-old Yasmin at the start of 2020. I Wonder is more ruminative, with its repetitive guitar hooks that imitate dwelling thoughts. The lack of lyrics doesn’t translate into a lack of lyricism. The smooth fingerpicking flows with the ease and harmony of driftwood along the river, which is maybe where the album got its name, and emotions spill out of its riverbanks.
In Dragonfly and Into the Woods, the gentle taps on the close-miked guitar bring intimacy and immediacy to the compositions, sweep you up with the current. A sense of urgency is also found in Adrift, where Taryn Wood joins in on the cello. The cello does not serve as the accompaniment to the guitar – the instruments are in dialogue. The song was written to describe “the political unrest, chaos, and floundering of the country as it reckoned with the persistence of white supremacy and vast inequality” after the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, but nothing about Adrift sounds angry or outraged. Instead, it drips with compassion, sent off into the world to console, unite, and bring peace to a country riddled with grief.
Williams also pays homage to the music she grew up with. The title track, Urban Driftwood, features the hand drumming of the 150th generation djeli of the Kouyate family – the griot Amadou Kouyate and Jarabi, meaning ‘Beloved’, is based on a traditional kora song written after Mali gained independence from France. The significance of the song for Malian independence also contributed to the decision to include the song on this record. With these tracks, the album comes full circle. After the Storm is the epilogue, in ways reminiscent of the early optimism of the opening track Sunshowers, yet devoid of its naïveté, flowing forth from hope and a sense of peace.
‘Urban Driftwood’ doesn’t fail to inspire, console, and cajole the listeners into contemplating some hard truths. This is only the more impressive since Williams accomplishes this without words, showing the true universality of musical language. She is a guitarist that does uniquely her own thing, free from tradition, geography, and time – a storyteller that makes the audience lean in to listen.
Order Urban Driftwood via Bandcamp: https://yasminwilliams.bandcamp.com/album/urban-driftwood