Abigail Washburn
Abigail Washburn
Abigail Washburnis an American clawhammer banjo player and singer. She performs and records as a soloist, as well as with the old-time bands Uncle Earl and Sparrow Quartet, experimental group The Wu Force, and as a duo with her husband Béla Fleck...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBanjo Player
Date of Birth10 November 1977
CountryUnited States of America
china fell felt intimate love process time truly trying
China was the first time I truly felt like an outsider. I fell in love with the process of trying to become intimate with the culture.
kept looked realized visit
In China, I realized that if you visit often enough and learn the language, you will be assimilated, but you'll still be kept at arm's length; you'll always be looked on as a foreigner.
call music obsession played
My parents played the radio, but music was never an obsession or something that I thought I could call a career.
chinese feels music
For most Americans, my Chinese music feels like a novelty, and it's not what it is for me.
belong both chinese gene music musical scale seem understand whenever
I'm no ethnomusicologist. There is a connection between the five-note scale used both in traditional Chinese music and the blues, but I don't really understand it. All I know is, whenever I play with Chinese musicians, we seem to belong to the same musical gene pool.
music
You can enjoy many different types of music. I think that's something more Americans should think about.
luther martin sends speech trajectory
Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech always sends me down some path, some trajectory of some creative idea.
flute girls played tried
I played piano and was always in the choir. I tried to play flute because all the pretty girls played flute.
carried huge life
One thing I carried my whole life, especially from my grandparents in Chicago, was a huge idealism for the world.
elements felt gotten life moved music separation situations time
I've moved around so much my whole life, and I've gotten so used to being the Other in situations - the foreigner, the outsider. The first time I've ever felt like there was no separation between me and the other elements was in music.
common complete ground home music nation universal
I do see music as complete refuge. It's a universal home, complete common ground between everyone; it comes from a place that has no nation and no boundaries around it.
area becoming brought china divine industry intention living miraculous music powers
I had no intention of becoming a performer, and yet under miraculous circumstances I was brought into the music industry fold. If divine powers hadn't intervened, I'd still be living in China working in some area of Sino-American comparative law.
china close delight felt level local moments opened relationships since time touring visited whenever
Whenever I visited China in the past, the relationships always felt superficial; there was no time where I felt those moments of conflict and delight that make you feel close to another person. But since I started touring there in 2004, I would always collaborate with local musicians, and that opened up a new level of intimacy.
asked comment grandpa home jesus nursing pictures visit wrote
'Halo' I wrote with my grandpa in his nursing home. When I went to visit him, he'd often comment on my halo. But of course, I couldn't see. And he always - he had pictures of Jesus with these beautiful halos. And so I asked him if he'd write a song with me about Jesus' halo.