Word: banjo
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...transform previously-unexplored styles. Newsom’s voice takes on only the slightest, airy twang so that the song recalls the style of Neko Case. But the track, which approaches ten minutes in length, goes beyond a mere regurgitation of alternative country. Haphazard slips of electric guitar and banjo accent a languid harp—which, in typical Newsom style, she fits perfectly into this country song—and as the song proceeds, dramatic harp and guitar cadences alternately build up and descend. Haunting vocal harmonies and forceful drum beats later give way to an Asian...
Lead singer and songwriter Jamie Stewart arranges his music to prod and engage listeners. Underneath Stewart’s vocals—which alternatively whimper, sing, and shout—layers of instrumentation and programming juxtapose guitars, drums, a banjo, a cello, and synthesizers, among other noisemakers. “Apple for a Brain” is composed particularly with provocation in mind, its bouncing beats and chirping drums suddenly giving away after two minutes into what seems like a completely different song. This is far from an isolated example of the group disregarding musical conventions—just...
...continues the band’s habit of making songs that shout and lament over a din of schizophrenic, yet somehow coherent compositions. But the band also continues to experiment, as on the song “Cumberland Gap,” where the twanging of a banjo surprises listeners as it accompanies Stewart’s vocals, both moving over the same notes in unison. The song is a reworking of a famous folk tune named for a pass in the Appalachian Tennessee, an origin which reveals another of the group’s diverse influences: bluegrass music. Though...
...mandolin, notes that bluegrass is one of the few subsets of American folk music that was largely pioneered by one person. Mandolin player Bill Monroe formed the Blue Grass Boys in 1939, and was later joined by banjoist Earl Scruggs and singer/guitarist Lester Flatt. Bluegrass, whose instrumentation includes guitar, banjo, mandolin, double bass, and fiddle, emerged as a kind of commercially disseminated folk music a decade later. It then began to permeate early rock music in unexpected ways: the offbeat mandolin chop characteristic of bluegrass music, for example, eventually evolved into the snare-drum offbeat in rock and roll...
...Harvard emerged years ago. Brown expressed interest in coming back to the college to perform after playing in a concert for President Drew Faust’s inauguration in 2007. O’Connor had dreamed of organizing an event of bluegrass music since he founded HCAMA with banjo player Clayton D. Miller ’10 that same year. “We built on jam sessions and thought we should try to represent the style of indigenous music on campus more,” O’Connor says...