SLOFolks Presents: Jake Blount Quintet

Friday November 18th @ 6:30pm – 9:00pm

Jake Blount is an award-win­ning musi­cian and schol­ar based in Prov­i­dence, RI. He is half of the inter­na­tion­al­ly tour­ing duo Tui, a 2020 recip­i­ent of the Steve Mar­tin Ban­jo Prize, and a two-time win­ner of the Appalachi­an String Band Music Fes­ti­val (bet­ter known as Clifftop). Blount, a spe­cial­ist in the ear­ly folk music of Black Amer­i­cans, is a skilled per­former of spir­i­tu­als, blues and string band reper­toire. Blount has per­formed at the Kennedy Cen­ter, the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val, and numer­ous oth­er venues across and beyond the Unit­ed States. He has pre­sent­ed his schol­ar­ly work at muse­ums and uni­ver­si­ties includ­ing the Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion, Berklee Col­lege of Music and Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. His writ­ing has appeared in Paste Mag­a­zine, No Depres­sion, and NPR, and he has been a guest on Radi­o­lab and Sound­check. His first solo album, Spi­der Tales, debuted at #2 on the Bill­board Blue­grass Chart, received pos­i­tive cov­er­age from NPR, Rolling Stone and Bill­board among oth­ers, and earned five out of five stars as The Guardian’s Folk Album of the Month. Spi­der Tales lat­er appeared on ​“Best of 2020” lists from NPR, Band­camp, The New York­er, the Guardian, and elsewhere.