Jake Blount Wins The Steve Martin Banjo Prize After Releasing 2020 Album 'Spider Tales'

Washington DC's Jake Blount has just won the Steve Martin Banjo Prize, more accurately called the "Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo & Bluegrass." Hosted by the FreshGrass Foundation, Steve Martin's Banjo Prize has now expanded to five awardees this year with a total of $50,000 divided between them.

According to the Prize website: "The award is given to a person or group who has given the board a fresh appreciation of this music, either through artistry, composition, innovation or preservation, and is deserving of a wider audience."

Jake Blount is the second Black artist to receive the Banjo Prize after Rhiannon Giddens, and his win comes with the reminder that the Banjo is first and foremost an African and African-American instrument. Blount's new album, released in May of 2020, Spider Tales, highlights Black and Indigenous stories in Appalachian music.

Blount has this to say about being chosen for the award:

"I've known about the Steve Martin Banjo Prize since I stumbled upon previous recipient Noam Pikelny's work at the beginning of my slow voyage from rock music to bluegrass and old-time. In the intervening years I saw it go to seemingly untouchable musical talents, including my inspiring friends Rhiannon Giddens and Victor Furtado, and my respect for the committee and the prize only deepened. I'm not sure I'll ever feel like I can match the technical skill or musical vision of the other awardees I so admire, but I can say I'm profoundly touched to know that the banjo legends and respected industry professionals on the award committee even know I exist. That they found my music deserving of such recognition means more than I can say."

His recent album’s title, Spider Tales, is a reference to the great trickster of Akan mythology, Anansi.

Blount explains:

“The Anansi stories were tales that celebrated unseating the oppressor, and finding ways to undermine those in power even if you’re not in a position to initiate a direct conflict. There’s a long history of expressions of pain in the African-American tradition. 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.”