Jake Blount

Jake Blount is an award-winning musician and scholar based in Providence, RI. A specialist in Afrofuturism and string band music, Blount has synthesized his academic and artistic pursuits into a performance practice that has taken him to Carnegie Hall, Newport Folk Festival, NPR’s Tiny Desk, and beyond. Widely known for his experimental interpretations of traditional material, Blount tours internationally as a solo artist and a member of the Black string band New Dangerfield. His music challenges audiences to confront timely and difficult questions: what is our relationship to the planet and to the dead, and who is allowed to be human?

Blount holds an A.M. in Musicology and Ethnomusicology from Brown University, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in the same program as well as an A.M. in Anthropology. He recently worked as a music consultant on Ryan Coogler’s 2025 film Sinners, and performed alongside Rhiannon Giddens on the soundtrack of Ken Burns’s The American Revolution. His first academic essay, “Jail the Zombie: Black Banjoists, Biopolitics, and Archives,” was published in Volume 7, Issue 2 of Modern American History. Blount has three full-length albums out on Free Dirt Records and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, each of which has appeared on annual “best-of” lists from outlets including The New Yorker, NPR, Rolling Stone, Bandcamp, and The Guardian. His next record is coming in late 2026.