Jake Blount has an astonishing imagination. While a concert of folk tunes could simply be a singer and perhaps a fiddle or banjo, the young proponent of traditional music brought eight bandmates and told the NPR crowd that they were here to play "Black folk music from the future." Most of the songs are from Jake Blount's late-2022 release, The New Faith, on Smithsonian Folkways. It's a dystopian Afrofuturistic concept album that reinterprets traditional Black spirituals.

His band includes the voice of Tiny Desk alum Kaia Kater, rap from Demeanor, fiery electric guitar from Augustus Tritsch and fiddle from George Jackson. It's a talented crew with a mission to bring the voice, banjo and vivid imaginings of Jake Blount to fruition. "I spent many months during the pandemic alone in my bedroom coming up with these utterly oddball parts that these wonderful people have done a great job learning," Blount explains. "This is the first time we've presented this music with the full instrumentation ever and it means so much to be doing it here."

SET LIST

• "The Man Was Burning"

• "The Downward Road"

• "City Called Heaven"

• "Give up the World"

MUSICIANS

• Jake Blount: vocals, banjo, tambourine 

• Kaia Kater: vocals

• Resa Gibbs: vocals

• Integriti Reeves: vocals

• Demeanor (Justin Harrington): rap vocals

• George Jackson: fiddle, vocals

• Augustus Tritsch: electric guitar, banjo-uke

• Huck Tritsch: drums

• Nelson Williams: bass

TINY DESK TEAM

• Producer: Bob Boilen 

• Director: Kara Frame

• Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin

• Series Producer: Bobby Carter

• Videographers: Kara Frame, Joshua Bryant, Maia Stern, Sofia Seidel

• Editor: Sofia Seidel

• Tiny Desk Team: Suraya Mohamed, Marissa Lorusso, Hazel Cills, Ashley Pointer

• VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

• Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

• Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.