Yasmin Williams
June 30 @ 9:00 PM PDT
Yasmin Williams sits on her leather couch, her guitar stretched across her lap horizontally withits strings turned to the sky. She taps on the fretboard with her left hand as her right handplucks a kalimba placed on the guitar’s body. Her feet, clad in tap shoes, keep rhythm on amic’d wooden board placed under her. Even with all limbs in play, it’s mind boggling that themelodic and percussive sounds that emerge are made by just one musician, playing in real time.With her ambidextrous and pedidextrous,multi-instrumental techniques of her own makingand influences ranging from video games to West African griotssubverting the predominantlywhite male canon of fingerstyle guitar, Yasmin Williams is truly a guitarist for the new century.So too is her stunning sophomore release,Urban Driftwood,an album for and of these times.Though the record is instrumental, its songs follow a narrative arc of 2020,illustrating both apersonal journey and a national reckoning, through Williams’ evocative, lyrical compositions.