NEW RELEASE
Acadia by Yasmin Williams
Acadia is Yasmin Williams’ third album
CONTENTSPLAYLISTS
Acadia on Spotify and YouTube
VIDEOS
Tiny Desk (Home) Concert / October 2021 (23:15 mins)
This set was my introduction to Yasmin Williams four years ago.
The 4-song solo performance demonstrates some of the considerable
dexterity she brings to her craft.
The best way to hear her is to watch!
SINGLE SONG VIDEOS
See below for six YouTubes
ESSAY by Yasmin Williams
Williams argues that Beyoncé’s country album Cowboy Carter is an affront to the Black music history it claims to celebrate
The piece was published in The Guardian in April and offers an on point challenge to the pop superstar
WEBSITE
Check out the site and her biography
In this screen grab from her Instagram page, Williams is playing both her guitar and the kalimba (aka thumb piano) taped to the soundboard.
STRETCHING HER MUSICAL STRINGS
On her superb third album Yasmin Williams broadens her reach into new sounds and collaboration
The best way to hear Yasmin Williams play acoustic guitar is to watch her. Do that and you’ll hardly believe your eyes. Her dexterous moves seem like sleights of hand as she conjures sound from varied techniques: She draws a cello bow over strings or taps them with a dulcimer hammer; lays the guitar flat, slapping and knocking the soundboard or finger picking the frets with two hands. Sometimes she’ll attach a 17-key kalimba (thumb piano) to the guitar with tape and play it while she finger picks with her left hand.
It’s remarkable to watch and hear. Small wonder this innovative 27 year-old neo-folk musician is called “One of the country’s most imaginative young solo guitarists,” by the New York Times.
But Williams does more than mess with guitar techniques. She’s part of a growing movement of acoustic musicians – like veteran picker Kaki King who has performed with her – challenging the traditional parameters of the acoustic guitar and its place.
And that’s the triumph and beauty Williams achieves on Acadia, her stellar third album.
Williams and Kaki King
A work in three phases
Writing on her website, Tom Moon explains how Williams structured the wide ranging musical document: “The opening set of songs evokes the wily exuberance of old-time music, then gently stretches its conventions; the second explores lush, layered textures and zones of vast atmospheric ambience; the third, which introduces electric guitar(s) and drums, has an experimental, improvisational spirit.”
Williams notes that her boundary bending approach “… wasn’t about emancipating myself from genre, because I never felt attached to genre in the first place. I put together folk traditions from various places and various time periods,” she told The Guardian in October. She includes “jazz, rock, cosmic country and classical” among her musical favourites.
She adds, “I fell in love with Hindustani classical music in college, and west African classical music – kora music, specifically – in high school. The syncopation, the note choices, the different timbres all made me reevaluate what I was doing. Acadia brings all this music together.”
By way of background you need to know that the 12 year-old version of Yasmin Williams learned her first guitar chops playing Guitar Hero II – a 2006 video game – and quickly mastered Nirvana and Hendrix.
“The game shaped my experimental approach to guitar,” she says. In turn this urged her to bear down on music in high school practicing guitar for up to five or six hours a day. And high school led her to New York University where she earned a degree in musical theory and composition.
Nine songs
The through line for Acadia’s meticulously crafted nine songs is Williams as composer and facilitator bringing together a talented team from different musical backgrounds to set the stage for creative collaboration.
The opening trio of songs share traditional folk sounds featuring artists Dom Flemons and Kaki King and contemporary old-time stars Allison De Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves who contribute clawhammer banjo, guitar and fiddle.
The middle section – dubbed by one critic as New Age/ Windham Hill-influenced – presents daydreamy sounds including vocals from quartet Darlingside on the tune Virga (which is the term for falling rain that evaporates before it hits the ground) and Aoife O’Donovan singing wordlessly on the ethereal Dawning.
On the closing section Acadia takes off into another zone altogether. Williams goes electric and plays fuzzed guitar on Dream Lake blending with jazz drummer Malik Koly in jazz/rock fusion. Nectar sits on a trip hop beat and synthy bass line dropped in by drummer/producer Margo. Album closer Malamu shares her love for rock, funk and folk. Again Williams leads with electric guitar while Immanuel Wilkins’ soars on the saxophone over the drum groove of Marcus Gilmore.
The musical range and intelligence on display with this album points to any number of musical directions and possibilities for Williams. She’s an inventive and searching artist who’s gathering speed.
With Acadia she makes another leap forward confirming her formidable talent and vision for making music. She appreciates that her audiences weren’t necessarily expecting her latest tuneful turn. “If people want to place me within the folk genre, fine,” she says.
“I’m trying to expand people’s notion of what folk music is. It’s the music of the people. But if you consider ‘the people’ to be just one kind of people, well … that’s simply not correct.” She pauses for a second and then smiles. “There’s a whole universe here.”
Williams questions Beyoncé for her “capitalist gesture”
Williams is confident and forthright. She worked hard to hone her musical craft and also has a strong awareness of Black struggle personally, politically and culturally. In April she wrote an on point op-ed for the Guardian criticising Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album as “a capitalist gesture” in the world of Black country and folk. She titled it “Beyoncé’s country album drowns out the Black music history it claims to celebrate.” You can read it here.
01 February 2025
VIDEO LIST
Six videos featuring Yasmin Williams on YouTube
Nectar – (3.13 mins) on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Hummingbird – (5.59 mins) w/ Allison De Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves
Dawning – (6.34 mins) w/ Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, Kafari on rhythm bones, and Nic Gareiss’ percussive dancing
Juvenesence – 2021 (4.05 mins)
On a Friday Night – 2018 (4.22)
Harp Guitar lesson – (7.34 mins)
PLAYLISTS
On Spotify
On YouTube
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_m7_3xSK1pSUki5TMY249ISciE_MI5SPXg
