Jake Blount (pronounced: blunt) 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). A specialist in the early folk music of Black Americans, Blount is a skilled performer of spirituals, blues and string band repertoire. Blount has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Newport Folk Festival, NPR's Tiny Desk, 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 Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, No Depression, and NPR. His most recent album, The New Faith, is the latest installment of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings' African American Legacy Series.
Blount enrolled at Hamilton College in 2013. He received his first banjo lessons from Dr. Lydia Hamessley the same fall, and started to structure a course of study around the early traditional music of Black communities in the United States. An electric guitarist since age twelve, Blount shifted his focus to string band music after taking up the banjo and fiddle. In the years that followed, Blount studied under modern masters of old-time music: Bruce Molsky, Judy Hyman (of the Horse Flies), and Rhiannon Giddens and Hubby Jenkins (of the GRAMMY-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops).
Blount first achieved widespread recognition within the old-time scene when his band, The Moose Whisperers, claimed first place in the traditional band contest at Clifftop. Blount was the first Black person to make the finals in any category, and he has repeated the feat multiple times since. He launched his career in earnest in the summer of 2017: he received his B.A. in ethnomusicology and released his debut EP, Reparations, with Tatiana Hargreaves. The next three years saw the release of Tui’s Pretty Little Mister, Blount’s victory in the Clifftop banjo competition, and his selection both as a 2020 Strathmore Artist in Residence, and as a member of the International Bluegrass Music Association's Leadership Bluegrass Class of 2020.
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