The Glory-Beaming Banjo

This year has already been pretty  extra , but the stakeholders behind the Steve Martin Banjo Prize just said, "Hold my beer." According to a No Depression article today , five banjo players have won the 2020 award. You may recall that after the 2019 award was announced, there was some uncertainty as to whether the prize would continue. In August, which according to the calendar I have here was only two months ago, the non-profit FreshGrass Foundation signed on to continue awarding the prize into its second decade.  In the past, there was only one winner per year, with a cash prize of $50,000. With FreshGrass taking the reins, the organization announced that the prize would an annual award of $25,000 to one or more banjo players across the stylistic spectrum including both five- and four-string banjo masters.  "However, in light of the tremendous need in the musical community this year, the 2020 prize will be $50,000 split equally between five banjo players," accor...

Jake Blount's Spider Tales has come at the perfect time. Exploring historical black string band music and its antecedents and performed by mostly queer musicians, Blount's latest full-length album on Free Dirt Records is an expression of the zeitgeist amid the mass protests in response to George Floyd's killing by Minneapolis police, systemic racism and aggression toward the LGBTQ+ community, and the continued fight for equal rights in the United States. As a gay black man playing traditional banjo and fiddle music, Blount uses his music and voice to bring recognition to the role of people of color, queer people and other marginalized communities in American roots music. In the liner notes to Spider Tales , Blount explains that the album title stems from "Anansesem," the stories of Anansi the Spider, a figure in the folklore and religion of the Akan people of West Africa, who was known for "his wit and wisdom — and his aptitude for weaponizing them a...