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...
How to learn to stop worrying and love the twang. A journey into old-time music.