Abigail Washburn: Building U.S. – China Relations by Banjo
Abigail Washburn wanted to be a lawyer improving US – China relations until she picked up a banjo. She tells a moving story of the remarkable connections she’s formed touring across the United States and China while playing that banjo and singing in Chinese.
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ABOUT Abigail Washburn
Abigail Washburn pairs venerable folk elements with far-flung sounds, creating results that feel both strangely familiar and unlike anything anybody’s ever heard before.
Abigail says, “I see the power of music to connect cultures. I see it when I stand on a stage at a Bluegrass Festival and I bust out into a song in Chinese, and everybody’s eyes just pop wide open.”
Abigail is a singing, songwriting, Illinois-born, Nashville-based clawhammer banjo player and is every bit as interested in the present and the future as she is in the past, and every bit as attuned to the global as she is to the local.
She pairs venerable folk elements with far-flung sounds, and the results feel both strangely familiar and unlike anything anybody’s ever heard before. To put it another way, she changes what seems possible. If American old-time music is about taking earlier, simpler ways of life and music-making as one’s model, Abigail Washburn has proven herself to be a bracing revelation to that tradition.”
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