Jake Blount’s Afrofuturist Salon

Jake Blount (pronounced: blunt) is an award-winning scholar and performer of Black folk music based in Providence, RI. Initially recognized for his skill as a string band musician, Blount has charted an unprecedented, Afrofuturist course on his pilgrimage through sound archives and song collections. In his hands, the banjo, fiddle, electric guitar and synthesizer become ceremonial objects used to channel the insurgent creativity of his forebears. From transfixing solo sets to full-band festival appearances complete with crowd-surfing and ecstatic chants, Blount’s performances – like his recent Smithsonian Folkways releases, symbiont (2024) and The New Faith (2022) – seamlessly merge centuries-old traditional songs with the trappings and techniques of modern Black genres. This “genrequeer” approach to the traditions has earned his music a place in the very same archives from which he extracts his repertoire. In defiance of genre categories, revisionist histories and linear time, Blount fashions an “Afrofuturist folklore” that disintegrates the boundaries between acoustic and electric, artist and medium, and ancestor and progeny.

Balancing his taste for arcane source material with his desire to reach diverse audiences, Blount has shared his music at venues including Carnegie Hall, Newport Folk Festival, the Library of Congress and NPR’s Tiny Desk. His knowledge and skill have deepened over the course of his still-young career, and his vision has grown more ambitious – but his music has only grown in popular appeal. Starting with his full-length debut Spider Tales (2020), each of Blount’s records has appeared on “best of year” lists from outlets including Bandcamp, The New Yorker, NPR, The Guardian, and Rolling Stone. Blount also served as a music consultant on Ryan Coogler’s Oscar-winning 2025 film Sinners, scored by Ludwig Göransson, and contributed music to Ken Burns’s The American Revolution (2025) alongside Rhiannon Giddens.

2pm: Musical performance + break
3pm: Music videos and talkback + break
4pm: Panel discussion with Jake Blount, Samuela Mouzaoir, and Micah Ling

Samuela Mouzaoir (PhD) is a scholar of education and an artist. She studies how Black futurities become portals for learning, and examines the ways afrofuturist art and frameworks teach us to hold hope and history simultaneously.

Micah Ling (PhD) is a folklorist, musician, and curator. Her research explores the intersection of music and material culture, with an emphasis on dress and adornment. A proud Michigander, she serves as curator of the Michigan Traditional Arts Research Collections at the MSU Museum and as Associate Director of MSU’s Michigan Traditional Arts Program which documents, presents, and supports the state’s folklife, traditional arts, and everyday culture.

This event is presented in partnership with the Distant Planet Project, an afrofuturist programming initiative co-founded by Audrey Matusz and Samuela Mouzaoir through CCFF. Join us in using film, music, and conversation to explore afrofuturism and the diasporic art movements that imagine Black futures into being.

This project is funded in part by Michigan Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Michigan Arts and Culture Council.

*NOTE: If you’re a CCFF passholder and interested in attending this event, please email Dylan@therobintheatre.com to reserve your spot.