– Devendra Banhart – live At Summer Sundae – August 13, 2005 – BBC6 Music
–Devendra Banhart to start the week. The practitioner of Freak-Folk, Lo-Fi, Latin and by critical acclaim, the face of New Weird America, Devendra Banhart had been dividing his time between sonically dosing audiences with his music and visually challenging them with his art.
On the scene since 2000, and splitting time equally between Music and Visual Arts, Banhart managed to have both feet planted in both worlds and achieved critical and audience acclaim in both – a nice feat, if you can pull it off.
This morning, it’s a concert from the Summer Sundae Festival in Leicester in 2005 and was recorded by the venerable BBC 6 Music. It was the final concert of his tour and it came during a time a lot of buzz about Banhart the Musician was circulating, and during the release of his 5th album, Cripple Crow which did well both in UK and U.S. album charts.
On December 14 and 15, 2019, Banhart curated a two-day event at Hauser and Wirth Los Angeles titled Other Flowers. The event featured his photography, paintings, a pop up store with limited edition merchandise, as well as a series of performances featuring musicians Rodrigo Amarante, Tim Presley, and Banhart himself. It also included performance art from Jasmine Albuquerque and Friends, Invisible Women, and Nao Bustamante.
In March 2020, Banhart had his first solo art show in Los Angeles at Nicodim Gallery. The show was titled The Grief I Have Caused You and featured his first series of oil paintings as well as drawings from 2019 to 2020.
Banhart’s music is often referred to as psychedelic folk, freak folk and New Weird America; it is associated with acts such as singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom, musical group CocoRosie, and contemporary folk band Vetiver. The New York Times has called his work “free associative work” and SPIN magazine has described it as “ashram-appropriate guitar strums” and “trippy-hippie tone poetry.” Critics have compared Banhart’s style to that of 1970s band Tyrannosaurus Rex, an early version of British rock musician Marc Bolan’s T. Rex, though in a 2004 interview Banhart stated that he was unaware of Tyrannosaurus Rex until after he began writing and recording music.
If you’re familiar with Devendra Banhart’s visual side, rather than his musical side, here is a sampling of what he was up to in 2005.
Play loud – or not – just dive into it. Long and insane week ahead.
