A is for Abigail Washburn
I love bluegrass. I love Chinese cultures. So you can imagine my delight in discovering Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet, a bluegrass group that fuses Chinese and Central Asian music themes into old-timey traditionals, to create a mesmerizing unique sound!
Abigail's Sparrow Quartet includes the famed Bela Fleck, and the instruments you can hear on the album cover everything from claw-picker banjos to five-string fiddles to cellos and even the hammered dulcimer. Abigail's lilting voice switches fluidly from Mandarin to Appalachian twang over complex string harmonies until you feel like you're in a West Virginia barnstomp AND a Ming Dynasty Beijing alley, at the same time.
Here's a quote from her biography page: While previewing new material at Coachella, the LA Times hailed, ""Washburn stomped and skipped through fiery Appalachian takes on the local songs of Sichuan. Her bilingualism's no gimmick; she nails the dips and peaks of pitch while leading her band in scorching variations on simple, repetitive traditional melodies… she ended one Chinese song about the pan-ethnic subject of baby-making by saying "That's some hot stuff from the Sichuan province there."
Here's two videos of Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet performing songs from their self-titled album. Enjoy!
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