Yasmin Williams has released the original film score for Saving Etting Street, a documentary directed by Dena Fisher and Amy Scott that premiered at DOC NYC in 2025. The soundtrack is available now via Bandcamp from today.
KLOF readers will know Williams well. Her 2021 album Urban Driftwood was described in these pages by Ericka Severyns as the work of “a guitarist that does uniquely her own thing, free from tradition, geography, and time,” and her 2024 collaborative album Acadia was reviewed by Glenn Kimpton as “open and full of life.” Saving Etting Street is not her first score, others include her first ever film score Dusty and Stones and Finding Our Wild.
The film follows Shelley Halstead, a master carpenter in Baltimore, as she trains young Black women in carpentry, electrical work, and plumbing to renovate abandoned row houses in a redlined neighbourhood. If participants complete the programme, they become eligible to purchase the homes, building generational wealth and stability on a single transformed block.
Williams shared: “Working on this film was an absolute joy for me and I hope y’all listen to the soundtrack…I hope to do more of these soon.”
For the score, Williams plays acoustic guitar, 12-string guitar, piano, kora, and synthesizers, with Herman Burney on upright bass. Jeff Gruber of Blue House Productions handled engineering and mixing. It is a palette that extends the instrumental range Williams has explored across her catalogue, from the lap-tapped guitar and kalimba of her early work to the expanded ensemble of Acadia, here channelled into a score that serves the film’s themes of resilience, community, and renewal.
Stream and purchase the Saving Etting Street soundtrack via Bandcamp.
Find out more about the documentary and viewings here: https://www.savingettingstreet.movie/