REVELATIONS
ODETTA HARTMAN
Multi-instrumentlist New Yorker on casting her sonic net wide
WHEN Odetta Hartman was astudent, she wrote her thesis on Alan Lomax’s 1935 expedition to record traditional songs in Florida and Georgia. Her own music, including new album Swansongs, can sometimes feel like such ajourney, a slip in time that combines folk and found sounds with contemporary beats. “Music is itself asacred technology, spanning generations, cultures and dimensions,” she says. “Thus, the cosmology of sound will always be passed down in the folk vernacular, even as it evolves. Blossoming from that place of authenticity, I feel emboldened to explore sonic textures ranging from orchestras to futuristic frequencies, with the hope of discovering the overlapping magic in the middle.”