Grateful Beyond Words 🙏✨
What a journey it’s been. Just one year ago, we released our debut album. Since then, we’ve made a historic Grand Ole Opry debut, been featured in national media, connected with thousands of new listeners, and now—stood alongside legends as Grammy® nominees.
Last year, this category was won by Joni Mitchell and lost by Paul Simon. The fact that American Patchwork Quartet was even in the mix is surreal. But more than anything, this moment reaffirms why we started this band in the first place—to celebrate the patchwork of American music, the resilience of immigrant communities, and the idea that our diversity is our greatest strength.
A huge thank you to Falu, Clarence, and Yasushi—your belief in this vision means everything. To our families, our team, our engineer Shani Gandhi, Echo Mountain Studio, The Kurland Agency, and all the incredible musicians who join us on tour—this moment belongs to all of us.
A huge congratulations to all of the Grammy® winners and nominees! It’s an honor to be part of this incredible community of artists.
We are so proud of what we’ve built together, and this nomination is just the beginning. Thank you for being part of this story. ❤️
📸 Photo by Getty Images for the Recording Academy®
#AmericanPatchworkQuartet #Grammys #Gratitude #MusicUnites #OurDiversityIsOurStrength
🎶 GRAMMY® Nomination 🌟
We are incredibly honored to announce that American Patchwork Quartet has been nominated for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Folk Album. This recognition is not just a milestone for us but a celebration of the sounds and souls that brought this album to life.
This nomination reflects our journey from diverse musical backgrounds—jazz, global, roots music—coming together to explore and express the universal truths embedded within a distinctly American musical identity — “e pluribus unum” — out of many, one.
This accomplishment has been shaped by every person who has supported and inspired us along the way. This nomination also belongs to YOU, the extended musical family, from every corner of the globe, that challenges us to dig deeper, and push further. Here’s to you, the creators who build bridges with your art. Your music inspires and unites, reminding us of the power we have to foster unity and understanding. Your work makes America (and the world) a smaller, more connected place and is needed now more than ever. We are thrilled to share this moment with you and look forward to all that the future holds.
THANK YOU, & CONGRATS TO ALL THE NOMINEES 🙏 ❤️🙏
#APQMusic #GrammyNominated #BestFolkAlbum #EchoMountainStudios #MusicUnity #DiversityInMusic #AmericanMusicIdentity #Grammys2024 #grammys #naras #narasmember #grammy #iamtheacademy 🎤🎵🎸 @recordingacademy
Falu Style: @poshparicouture
The story of this band starts before this band existed. Years on State Department cultural tours through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Kosovo. Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Mozambique, Côte d'Ivoire. Brazil. Kuwait, Oman. China, Cambodia, Thailand. Different rooms, different audiences, different musicians.
What kept showing up was that the songs from South Carolina kept turning up overseas. Sometimes the melody. Sometimes the rhythm. Sometimes just the shape of the story. The thought was always, I think I know this one. The melody's shaped a little differently but the sentiment feels somehow the same.
Those trips became this band. American folk music was never one culture's. The instruments wandered as much as the people, and the songs traveled the same routes the immigrants did. APQ exists because of that, and because of the collaborators who open the songs up in ways one of us couldn't on his own.
These songs were moving long before any of us got to them. We just started seeing them differently.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#FolkRevival #FolkArchive #RootsMusic #AmericanaMusic #ImmigrantSong
Falu singing Shenandoah. She said this melody felt instantly familiar, the way certain Indian folk songs feel familiar across regions. Some songs travel quietly across continents. From our APAP showcase, NYC.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#Shenandoah #APAP #FolkMusic #IndianFolk #AmericanPatchworkQuartet
A 30-second slice from the Houston show. Eastbound, drums and vocals locking into the dance feel. You can watch the audience decide to come with us.
That's the whole pitch of an APQ live set. We play the songs hard enough that the room can't stay still.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#FolkRevival #LiveMusic #FolkMusic #AmericanaMusic #RootsMusic
Alan Lomax spent 60 years recording American folk music for the Library of Congress. He once said America has a patchwork culture, not a melting pot. Every piece keeps its own pattern and color. The pattern is what holds the whole thing together.
When you listen to what he collected, you hear the patches. English ballads in Kentucky. West African field songs in Mississippi. Caribbean rhythms in Louisiana sea chanties. He was documenting a country whose music had never been American to begin with. It was always immigrant music.
That's the whole thesis of this band. The songs that feel most American almost always came from somewhere else first. We just keep playing them with the patches still showing.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#LomaxArchive #FolkRevival #FolkArchive #ImmigrantMusic #FolkwaysRecords
There's one sound underneath almost every song we play. Once you hear it you can't unhear it. It's the drone. A single note that holds while everything else moves around it.
Indian classical has it in the tanpura. Scottish bagpipes have it against the drone pipes. Appalachian dulcimer has it built in. The blues, in open tunings, has it in the low strings.
Same musical principle, every time. A note that doesn't move so the rest of the music has somewhere to push against. On our album, we layered guitars in open tunings to emulate it. Live, Yasushi's bowed bass holds it half the time. Falu's tanpura holds it on the Indian-rooted tunes.
Different rooms, different instruments. Same answer to the same question: how do you make a song feel ancient.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#FolkRevival #IndianClassical #AppalachianFolk #BluesMusic #RootsMusic
Shenandoah is 200 years old and no one knows for sure who it was about. Native chief, his daughter, a river, a trader. Pick your version. We took the solo on it at WNYC's New Sounds.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#Shenandoah #FolkMusic #NewSounds #WNYC #AmericanPatchworkQuartet
There's a song we play that started as one of the oldest crime stories in English. Two sisters fall for the same man. The older one drowns the younger one in a river. A traveling musician finds the body washed up downstream. He builds a fiddle from her bones. He uses her hair for the strings. The fiddle plays itself. What it plays is the whole story of what happened. It names her sister.
That's a 400-year-old song still in our set. Songs like this survived because they hold what people couldn't say out loud.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#FolkRevival #MurderBallad #AppalachianFolk #FolkArchive #RootsMusic
More Moto Fukushima at Philly Folk Fest. What he does in his right hand is closer to a percussionist than a bass player. The low end becomes a drum kit.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#MotoFukushima #BassPlayers #SixStringBass #PhillyFolkFest #AmericanPatchworkQuartet
The Devil's Nine is a 17th-century Scottish ballad about a soul-vs-devil riddle contest. Falu Shah sings a Hindi phrase right in the middle of our version: kehedo batado bolo. Please tell me. Speak up and let the world know.
Same conversation. Two languages. Four centuries apart.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#FolkRevival #LomaxArchive #HindustaniClassical #AmericanaMusic #FolkArchive
Wind and Rain is a centuries-old murder ballad. A girl drowns. Her bones become an instrument. The instrument names her killer. We got on a call with Falu to talk about why we keep coming back to it.
Up next: Roxbury Arts Group, May 29. Tickets in bio.
#WindAndRain #MurderBallad #FolkMusic #ChildBallads #AmericanPatchworkQuartet
