When guitarist and composer Yasmin Williams sits down to compose music, she doesn’t scour her subconscious for unheard melodies or clever chord progressions. Instead, she goes granular—fixating on a single note. She’ll play it over and over, sustaining it, varying the attack or the release to change its essence, eventually adding notes to form chords. In addition to the crisp fingerpicked guitar that helped establish her as a fast-rising star of instrumental folk, Williams plays kora, harp guitar, banjo, and electric guitar and bass—all with authority.
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Yasmin Williams grew up in the Northern Virginia town of Woodbridge in a family with a deep reverence for music. They’d harmonize together on car rides, with Yasmin handling the highest parts. She recalls listening to a wide range of artists, including Chuck Brown, the pioneer of Washington, DC’s go-go sound. She describes herself as an ordinary rock kid (favorites: Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana) in high school; her listening broadened while earning a degree in music theory and composition at NYU. It was there that she began to explore nontraditional approaches to the acoustic guitar, developing a fingerstyle technique with the instrument resting on her lap.
She’s recorded two previous albums—her debut Unwind (2018) and Urban Driftwood (2021)—and used each to expand her array of sound tools and techniques: She sometimes positions her kalimba, the African thumb piano, atop the guitar so she can play both at once. She also plays kora, harp guitar, doubleneck guitar, banjo, and percussion instruments. Though many of those instruments are prevalent in folk and oldtime music, Williams doesn’t regard herself as a folk musician. “I don’t subscribe to the folk idiom,” Williams says. “It’s not like I listened to folk as a teenager. I feel folk music now is very much in a corner. It doesn’t allow itself to ... accept new influences. It promotes conformity in some aspects, and to me that’s the opposite of what folk music is about.”
This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.
// This program is generously supported by Dan and Sally Breen and Steve Houston.