Jake Blount's incendiary album Spider Tales hit right in the middle of a global pandemic in 2020, during a period of massive unrest. Drawn from the lost Black and Indigenous histories of Appalachian roots music, Blount's timely vision showcased not only these lost voices, but the rage and anger that was encoded into the music early on and has remained ever since. It was, simply put, one of the most powerful explorations of American roots music in 2020, chosen as one of the Best Albums of 2020 by The New Yorker, NPR, Bandcamp, WNYC's The Takeaway, Folk Alley, Country Queer, Out Smart, The Vinyl District, PopMatters, Songlines, and more. Blount also received the Steve Martin Banjo Prize in 2020 in recognition in part of the power of his album! The music of Spider Tales is haunted, full of “crooked” instrumental tunes, modal keys, stark songs, and confounding melodic structures. Jake Blount spins effortlessly through this music, playing his instruments with a focus on subtlety and on relaying meaning even in the melodies that have no words. 

To make the album, Blount assembled a band of mostly queer artists, including himself, digging deep into the roots of the music, pushing all the way back to Africa; the album’s title, Spider Tales, is a nod to the great trickster of Akan mythology, Anansi. “The Anansi stories were tales that celebrated unseating the oppressor,” Blount says, “and finding ways to undermine those in power even if you’re not in a position to initiate a direct conflict.” Blount is also drawing out the coded pain and anger in the songs to give voice to those who were shunned from America's musical canon. “There’s a long history of expressions of pain in the African-American tradition,” Blount says. “Often those things couldn’t be stated outright. If you said the wrong thing to the wrong person back then you could die from it, but the anger and the desire for justice are still there. They’re just hidden. The songs deal with intense emotion but couch it in a love song or in religious imagery so that it wasn’t something you could be called out about. These ideas survived because people in power weren’t perceiving the messages, but they’re there if you know where to look.” Blount is determined to show that this music didn't form in a vacuum, but in the face of ruinous hardship.
 

Mali Obomsawin is a bassist, composer, improviser and citizen of Abenaki First Nation (Odanak). Her genre-defying work has led her to perform at premier venues and festivals across the US and Canada as both bandleader and accompanist, and her compositions have been featured in television (Reservation Dogs, 2023) and documentary (Sugarcane, composer, 2024) in recent years.

Mali is currently touring with her band Deerlady supporting their latest release “Greatest Hits” (2024). She also performs regularly with her quintet and the Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band. Mali’s score on the acclaimed documentary Sugarcane (Nat Geo) directed by Julian Brave Noisecat and Emily Kassie is now in theaters.

Mali has been lucky to work and perform with notable musicians including Esperanza Spalding, Taylor Ho Bynum, Dave Holland, Angelica Sanchez, Kris Davis, Billy Hart, Jeff Parker, Peter Apfelbaum, Craig Harris, Bill Cole, Althea Sully-Cole, Tomas Fujiwara, Mike Formanek, and more…