Jake Blount

The New Faith

Smithsonian Folkways

23 September 2022

The New Faith, a follow-up to the musician, scholar and activist Jake Blount’s 2020’s breakthrough debut, Spider Tales, is an impressive and timely recording – effortlessly and evocatively, re-interpreting traditional songs with a keen ear for more contemporary voices and sounds. At its heart is a consideration of the impact of climate change, spirituality and race. In many ways, The New Faith is a concept album set in a post-climate catastrophic world, focusing on an island in Maine and the experiences of an imagined religious ceremony by Black refugees. As the track ‘Parable’ explains, in a spoken word intro:

“After humanity’s debt to the planet came due, our ancestors crawled from the wreckage of their sunken cities and out of the deserts where once they had grown food enough for millions. Chance brought 30 survivors together, hundreds of miles to the south of here. Worn down by storms and starvation, they set their sights northward, and followed the coast to find a new home….”

Following the Bessie Jones spiritual ‘Take Me To the Water’ the album opens with a spoken prayer from Blount, setting the album’s narrative:

For it is the fate of all humankind to be judged.
Our forefathers took without giving, took without need — took things that they had neither desire nor use for, and threw them away.
They covered the face of the ancient planet in new-born desert.
They melted the ice at the ends of the earth, drowned the coast,
Emptied seas and forests of life,
Filled the very oceans with fire,
And were judged.
You see the verdict there, in yonder drowned city.
We, their children, are cursed to wander,
Deprived of land that can sustain us by our own ancestors.
But we keep the stories.
What set man on the downward road?

It quickly shifts gear into ‘The Downward Road’, a pounding, energising track which melds a song from Jim Williams and a recording by Alan Lomax from the 1930s, with additional material from ‘Angola’, a song from enslaved Africans in Jamaica and collected by Hans Sloane in 1688 with a rap from artist Demeanor. It feels more like a call to arms than a warning; with an effective clapping/fiddle combo, Blount’s considered and scholarly knowledge of historic songs and contemporary voices perfectly blends old and new. It’s a powerful illustration of the familiarity and timelessness of the original song’s themes and stories, but an equally breathtaking and potent contemporary listen.

The New Faith is released as part of Smithsonian Folkways’ African American Legacy series – co-conceived with and supported by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. It’s a sublime collaboration. Originally founded in 1948 by Moses Ashes and acquired by the Smithsonian in 1987, the non-profit record label of the Smithsonian Institution’s mission is to “document music, spoken word, instruction and sounds from around the world”. The label’s concentration, and support, of traditional artists, alongside a commitment to cultural diversity and education, ensure a freedom that sets them apart from many other labels. In this respect, as Blount notes, The New Faith:

“… envisions Black American religious music in a future devastated by warfare and anthropogenic climate change. The record is based on field recordings of Black religious services from the early-to-mid 20th century, but it is composed entirely of new arrangements and subtle rewrites of traditional Black folk songs. To make an informed prediction, I referenced a more diverse cross-section of the African Diaspora’s music than I ever have before. This album incorporates sounds from Belize, Georgia, Jamaica, Texas, Mississippi, New York and beyond.”

Produced by Blount and collaborator Brian Slattery, The New Faith was recorded mainly in Blount’s home in Providence, RI. with Blount taking the lead on vocals, fiddle, banjo, bass, percussion and strings and Slattery on percussion, guitar and strings. Blount also enlisted an impressive guest list with a wide range of artists from the worlds of rap and country, including the aforementioned Demeanor, country stars D’orjay: The Singing Shaman and Rissi Palmer, roots artist Samuel James, Kaïa Kater on vocals, harpist Lizzie No, bassist Mali Obomsawin, multi-instrumentalist Brandi Pace, and the banjo/uke of Lillian Werbin. It’s an intoxicating blend of influences.

Whilst the album naturally has anger, grief and trauma at its root (the history of slavery, Jim Crow, police brutality, and the impact of Covid-19 on the Black community are all subtly touched upon), it is also a hopeful, spiritual recording, with Blount’s reverence for old time songs clear:

“I have long felt a powerful draw to the old spirituals passed down in my community. I am an unlikely devotee; I only rarely attended church as a child, declared myself an atheist at the tender age of eight and developed a strong antipathy toward Christianity when I began to understand my queerness. Nonetheless, spirituals are the songs I bring to communal singing events. They are the songs I teach. In moments of homesickness, sorrow and fear, they are the songs I turn to for solace.”

The past, present, and future are intricately linked in The New Faith; Blount selects songs that have associations to the past, lined to such figures as blues stalwarts Skip James (‘They Are Waiting For Me’) and Blind Willie McTell (‘Just as Well to Get Ready, You Got to Die’), civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer (‘City Called Heaven’), and trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe (‘Didn’t It Rain’), ensures familiarity for listeners interested in historic song but with a dynamic and thorough knowledge of modern sounds – hip-hop, for example, is regularly included in the mix.

Despite the seriousness of the subject matter and the potential hopelessness of the narrative, The New Faith is an album rich with themes of hope, resilience and salvation. With a keen sense of tradition, Blount has cleverly delivered a bold, thought-provoking and judicious album, but one which is also a thoroughly, staggeringly thrilling listen. Glorious.