Acadia Yasmin Williams

• 1 Cliffwalk (feat. Dom Flemons) 04:44
• 2 Harvest (feat. Kaki King & Darian Donovan Thomas) (48kHz) 04:05
• 3 Hummingbird (feat. Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves) 05:51
• 4 Virga (feat. Darlingside) (48kHz) 06:22
• 5 Sisters 06:57
• 6 Dawning (feat. Aoife O'Donovan) 06:27
• 7 Dream Lake (feat. Malick Koly) (48kHz) 04:12
• 8 Nectar (feat. Magro) (48kHz) 02:59
• 9 Malamu (feat. Marcus Gilmore & Immanuel Wilkins) 04:20
• Total Runtime 45:57

Info for Acadia

Composer and multi-instrumentalist Yasmin Williams releases her debut and new album, "Acadia". Today, Williams reveals lead single “Virga,” which features guest vocals from indie-folk outfit Darlingside.

“A virga is a meteorological phenomenon where streaks of rain hang from a cloud and evaporate before reaching the ground. I related this sentiment to how it feels for me to be an artist in an industry that doesn’t seem to always value art and reflection. I eventually realized that I needed to learn how to thrive ‘in virga,’ so to speak. To learn to be okay with feeling slightly suspended in time, with my hopes and dreams dangling in an environment I have no control over, never fully having my feet planted on the ground.” (Yasmin Williams)

Acadia consists of nine, largely instrumental songs, all written and produced by Williams. She also plays a host of instruments on the record: guitar, banjo, calabash drum, kora, and even tap shoes. Williams enlisted contributions from saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, singer Aoife O’Donovan, rhythm bones player Dom Flemons, and more.

"A place of rural peace and pastoral poetry (Italian), a refuge or idyllic place, (Greek and Italian), fertile land (Mi’kmaq), a place of plenty (French). All of this relates to the ethos of this album. The songs are seeds I planted, and the seeds grew into the album, Acadia: a place of peace, a place where creativity can blossom, a place where everyone can fit in together and collaborate effectively, a place where the fruits of my own labor in music can fully flourish without judgment or prejudice. One of my visions for this record was to expand the potential for current folk music to encourage collaboration across various genres. Blurring those somewhat arbitrary lines has been a natural tendency for me since I started writing music at twelve years old and Acadia is a full circle moment." (Yasmin Williams)

“Williams, 25, is one of the country’s most imaginative young solo guitarists. Released in January, her second album, Urban Driftwood, represents a clear break with the form’s stoic, folk-rooted mores." (Grayson Haver Currin, The New York Times)

"Above all, 'Urban Driftwood' is her challenge to widespread preconceptions about the music made by young Black people or acoustic guitarists. It’s Williams’s achievement that she makes that challenge sound so calming and beautiful." (John Lingan, The Washington Post)

Yasmin Williams

Yasmin Williams
Based in Alexandria, VA, Yasmin Williams is an acoustic fingerstyle guitarist and film composer. She has an unorthodox, modern style of guitar playing and utilizes various techniques including alternate tunings, percussive hits, and lap tapping in her music to great effect. Her “radiant sound and adventitious origins have made her a key figure in a diverse dawn for the solo guitar” (The New York Times). Williams’s music has been described as rich, harmonious, and “in a lot of ways, the joy and possibility she brings to the guitar reminds me more of Eddie Van Halen than any of the other fingerstyle guitarists to whom she's compared” (NPR Music).

She grew up in northern Virginia where various genres of music from smooth jazz to hip-hop were played in her household. She was introduced to the guitar after playing the video game Guitar Hero 2 and became interested in playing the guitar in 2009. She begged her parents to buy her a real electric guitar and once she received her first guitar and amplifier, she taught herself how to play the guitar by ear. After a few years of playing the electric guitar, she taught herself how to play the bass guitar, 12 string guitar, and classical guitar before eventually deciding to switch her focus to the acoustic guitar because of the instrument's versatility. While in high school, she released her first EP Serendipity in 2012, which she recorded and mixed herself.

She graduated from New York University with a BM in Music Theory and Composition in December 2017. Her first album, Unwind, was released on May 4, 2018. It charted highly on several Amazon and iTunes charts including top paid albums, including charting at #7 on Amazon’s top paid albums and #1 on iTunes‘s Folk chart, and charted at #15 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart. Her latest album, Urban Driftwood, was released on January 29, 2021 and has received critical acclaim from numerous major publications including The New York Times, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, NPR Music, The Fader, Wallstreet Journal, AllMusic, Paste Magazine, No Depression, and several other outlets. She was listed as one of the “25 New and Rising Artists Shaping the Future of Music in 2023” by Pitchfork. Most recently, Williams signed to Nonesuch Records and released a new single, titled Dawning, featuring Aoife O’Donovan on vocals, Kafari on rhythm bones, and Nic Gareiss on flat foot percussion.

This album contains no booklet.