Jake Blount (pronounced: blunt) is an award-winning musician and scholar based in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He's a captivating live performer, talented multi-instrumentalist and powerful, soulful singer. He's playing GTSF as a trio.

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“On top of being wildly intelligent and knowledgeable, he's also a killer musician and it's an incredible combo.”

Rhiannon Giddens

 

He is a rising star of American roots music, and his work shines a light on the major contributions that Black, indigenous and LGBTQ artists have made to American folk traditions.

 

Jake’s solo debut album Spider Tales and follow-up The New Faith received glowing reviews from Rolling Stone, The Guardian and more, and he was nominated for Artist of the Year at the 2023 International Folk Music Awards. On The New Faith, Jake explores new sounds and tones, incorporating electric guitar and percussion alongside banjo and fiddle. Conceived, written and recorded during the darkest months of Covid lockdowns, the album imagines what Black music might sound like in a not-so-distant future world devastated by climate change, with radical new arrangements of Black spirituals and Blues. 

 

“I say that I play ‘traditional Black folk music’ because that allows me to be expansive,” Blount says in The Guardian. “It could mean I sing spirituals, or play string band music, make disco, house, rap or jazz. Really, all major American musical exports come from Black vernacular traditions and when I was visualising the music of the future, I knew that is what would survive.”

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“Banjoist-singer-scholar Jake Blount turned in 2022’s most innovative and forward-thinking roots collection"

Rolling Stone

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“Blount is a virtuosic multi-instrumentalist... with a hauntingly gorgeous voice and a bottomless, scholarly knowledge of American musical history.”

LA Times

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