Songs Without Words by Guitarist Yasmin Williams
"Yasmin Williams reinvents the guitar with a dazzling array of two-handed techniques, hammering, bowing, and percussion effects – but all in the service of the music. Music that dances, and, in its own way, sings." (John Schaefer)
Guitarist, composer, and songwriter Yasmin Williams is both a multi-instrumentalist and multi-tasker. She’s a fingerstyle lap-tapping guitar player who sits and rests the guitar in her lap, to make the guitar into a table on which she sometimes mounts a kalimba; her distinct style also leaves her tap shoe-wearing feet available for her to make beats. Williams also plays banjo, bass, kora, and as she puts it - “anything with strings.”
Her keyboard-like percussive approach might have come about from playing (and eventually beating) the Guitar Hero 2 video game. She then got a “real” electric guitar, figured out how to master it her own way, and learned about other guitar heroes – Elizabeth Cotten, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Eddie Van Halen, and Jimi Hendrix. Yasmin Williams’ wide variety of influences also includes hip-hop, classic blues, and a degree in music theory and composition from NYU.
During the conversation, Williams explains that her use of extended techniques: tapping the guitar from above with both hands, playing the strings with a cello bow, hammering with what looks like a Patellar reflex test hammer in a dulcimer-like fashion, a pick that she sometimes wears on her thumb, the hammer-ons and pull-offs, and beat-making on the guitar (and with her feet) – are all in the service of her songwriting. Her next full-length album, Urban Driftwood, both a beautifully melodic and, of course, percussive affair, is due out in January 2021. Yasmin Williams shares her latest songs without words – featuring all her multi-tasking limbs - remotely, from her home in Virginia. - (Caryn Havlik)
Set LIst: "Through the Woods" "Juvenescence" "Restless Heart"