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Demeanor Live at the 2024 NC Folk Music Festival
Rap is Folk!
by Billy Ingram
You’ll want to be present when rapper-banjo enthusiast Demeanor tornados his self-reflexive pop smoke into the atmosphere. Charged with ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’ energy, this performance is sure to be a major highlight of the weekend that kicks off on September 6th.
Born and raised in the Gate City, “I come from a very musical family,” Demeanor states mentions casually. To say the least. He began playing banjo and bones around the age of 12, partially inspired by his aunt, Greensboro’s own Rhiannon Giddens. “She started the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Sankofa Strings when I was just learning what a banjo was. I grew up traveling around with her, listening to the music. It was just something so different than what I was listening to.” This young man mostly had New Edition, Bobby Brown, and hip hop CDs spinning at home but, “I’d go out with [Giddens] to these old-time festivals, bluegrass festivals, and I was like, whoa, this is very vibrant.”
Keep in mind, this was before his aunt’s astonishing rise to fame, before her landing a MacArthur Genius Grant, winning two Grammys and a Pulitzer, and NPR proclaiming her one of the “25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century.”
As a teenager whose mother was Giddens’ tour manager, Demeanor (he was Justin Harrington then) accompanied his family on the road during summer breaks from school. “We’re packed into a 10-seater van, just hoofing it in Missouri and the AC doesn't work . . . ” Insert multiple ‘anything that can go wrong will go wrong’ stories here . . . “I got the real-deal touring experience, which I don't think really exists in the same way anymore.”
His advanced education consisted of loading equipment in and out, rapping breaks on stage, working merch tables, learning every aspect of the touring process. “That's definitely impacted my career, having that background first — before streaming — understanding what selling records was like.”
In 2017, after a year at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Demeanor joined Rhiannon Giddens’ Freedom Highway Tour. “When I got back to Greensboro I started booking my own shows. There was a class of us; Reliably Bad, Bad People, Antion Scales.” Methodically, Demeanor built a reputation as an independent artist the old-fashioned way. “There weren't that many venues, so I was playing house shows. It was like bootcamp.”
In 2019, he participated in One Beat, a fellowship where musicians from some 20 countries come together to write and perform new music. Two years later, he became the first rapper to perform a full set at Newport Folk Festival. “They were kind of first looking at me as — a rapper who plays the banjo? Like, is this a gimmick? Or what is this?”
But, as Demeanor is quick to affirm, rap music is folk music. “I don't separate the root from the branch,” he explains. “I think that when it comes to music, we separate roots as its own thing. Whereas I'm kind of looking at it as, hey, even our roots have roots, and then those roots have roots.”
Immersed in a purposeful state of unwavering reinvention, transcending generational euphemisms, Demeanor attacks his original compositions with an unmistakable fearlessness, an almost undetectable vulnerability peering out from under rapturous lyrical onslaughts. As for his turn at the Folk Festival this year, “I definitely want this on the record,” Demeanor insists. “I'm so excited about my set. I think that this is going to be something that has never happened before, ever in America, ever. This is going to be one for the books for sure.”
I think he means it.
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Fun Fact: in order for a band that he oncemanaged to get paid, Billy Ingram was forced to confront Eddie Nash, one of LA’s most notorious mass murderers (Wonderland), who was crying poor behind a wall of at least $200,000 in bundled bills. Best believe band got paid!
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