20 May Telluride Bluegrass: New Dangerfield Debuts Sunday, 6/22!
The 52nd annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival (TBF) takes place June 19 – June 22.
Passes/tickets and camping still available. Go here to secure your reservation.
Learn more about Planet Bluegrass at www.bluegrass.com.
Go here for more about the history of Telluride Bluegrass. (Back to 2009.)
And scroll down to listen to a podcast featuring Nelson Williams of the Black string band New Dangerfield. The group debuts on the Main Stage of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival on Sunday, June 22.
Image, courtesy Groton Hall.
The theme of the recent Costume Institute’s 2025 Met Gala was”Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” The goal? To shine a light on Black dandyism to bring attention to the significant contributions of Black individuals to fashion, an area where Black culture has historically been underrepresented.
Similarly the Black supergroup New Dangerfield aims to reignite the Black string tradition, a rich tapestry of musical genres the sound borrowed from and influenced, including blues, jazz, and earlier folk music styles.
Per No Depression, “a century of forgetfulness and erasure led to diminished public awareness of the Black string band tradition” – and similarly diminished numbers of Black string bands, which flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (and continued to play into the 1970s). Unfortunately, many of thOse bands were not commercially recorded, making their music difficult to document and preserve.
New Dangerfield was originally conceptualized by award-winning bluegrass banjo iconoclasts Tray Wellington. He enlisted three other acclaimed Black roots musicians: multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Kaïa Kater; bassist Nelson Williams (Chris Jones & the Night Drivers); and Afrofuturist fiddler and singer Jake Blount.
According to online sources, the members of New Dangerfield cut their teeth at fiddler’s conventions and folk festivals, and in the jazz bars of New Orleans. Community and tradition are the roots of their creative practice – but the branches have spread wide, and are yet unfolding. Embodying the innovative aspects of the Black string band tradition, Wellington, Kater, Williams and Blount are well-acquainted with the contemporary, the experimental, and the speculative. Deploying groove, technical skill and historical knowledge in the revolutionary spirit of their namesake, Dangerfield Newby.
For the record Dangerfield Newby (ca. 1820–1859) was a free mulatto and the first of John Brown’s raiders killed during the attack on Harpers Ferry on October 16, 1859.
A rebel with a cause – like New Dangerfield.
In addition to playing with New Dangerfield, Nelson Williams is a member of the acclaimed bluegrass band, Chris Jones and the Nightdrivers. He has been seen supporting artist such as Jake Blount, Eva Lovullo, Katie Martucci, Lizzie No and others.
Nelson Williams, Image courtesy Kevin Slick.
Check out Nelson’s podcast with Telluride Inside…and Out for a deeper dive into the band’s past, present and future.
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