Afrofuturist folk musician Jake Blount and indigenous bassist and composer Mali Obomsawin (Odanak First Nation) have announced a collaborative album, symbiont, which will be out September 27 via Smithsonian Folkways. “symbiont is a remix album,” they say. “The works included here synthesize instruments, songs, teachings, and oratory from different traditions with modern literary, political, and compositional sensibilities (and even a dash of ‘hard’ science). The interactions between these disciplines give rise to the musical, ideological, and spiritual synergisms that undergird symbiont—and also to points of intense conflict.”
An album in two acts, they say symbiont is a dialogue with the ancient and what’s in front of us and ahead. “Climate change’s many consequences travel like smoke, imperiling bodies and communities as surely as they shroud the sky,” Jake and Mali say. “The music of symbiont is an attempt to join our peoples in sound and movement as we stave off death together.”
They add, “This record reflects not only the natural harmonies that exist between our individual and cultural perspectives, but also an arduous process of reconciliation through remix. symbiont is a precisely honed sound mythography born from the same process it champions: the cultivation of a shared future through care, respect, and sacrifice.”
The album features contributions from Joe Rainey, Jeanne Meserve, Sidy Maiga, and Taylor Ho Bynum. The first single, “My Wayʼs Cloudy,” features Rainey, and is a great example of the unpidgeonholable, “genrequeer” (as they call it) music they make. Listen below.
Jake and Mali will support symbiont on tour this fall, including a NYC show at Joe’s Pub on October 20. All dates are listed below.
symbiont:
1. Prelude (feat. Jeanne Meserve)
Act I: To Death and Fire
2. Whatʼs You Gonna Do When the Worldʼs On Fire
3. No Hiding Place (feat. Sidy Maiga)
4. My Wayʼs Cloudy (feat. Joe Rainey)
5. Mother
6. Stars Begin to Fall (feat. Taylor Ho Bynum)
Act II: The Green Road
7. The Green Road
8. Live Humble
9. In the Garden
10. Come Down Ancients
11. Old Indian Hymn
Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin – Tour Dates
Thu. Aug. 22 – Boston, MA @ Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Thu. Oct. 10 – Providence, RI @ FirstWorks
Fri. Oct. 11 – Portland, ME @ Portland House of Music
Sat. Oct. 12 – Rockland, ME @ The Strand Theater
Fri. Oct. 18 – Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground
Sat. Oct. 19 – Northampton, MA @ The Parlour Room
Sun. Oct. 20 – New York, NY @ Joe’s Pub
Sat. Nov. 9 – Washington, DC @ Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center
Tue. Jan. 14 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
Wed. Jan. 15 – Portland, OR @ Show Bar
Thu. Jan. 16 – Santa Cruz, CA @ Kuumbwa Jazz Center
Fri. Jan. 17 – Mill Valley, CA @ Sweetwater Music Hall
Sat. Jan. 18 – Sacramento, CA @ B Side Theater at the Sofia
Sun. Jan. 19 – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon