Mandarin pluck

BLEW GRASS Béla Fleck, Abigail Washburn, Ben Sollee and Casey Driessen—the Sparrow Quartet—perform a concert in hell.

Photograph: Mickie Winters

In 2000, Abigail Washburn moved from Vermont to Beijing to take a job at a consulting firm. For her new life abroad, she packed practically: lots of business suits and, amid her office wear, the banjo that she was just learning to play. “Being in the Chinese business community, I knew I would end up having nights of karaoke,” says Washburn, 30, speaking from her Nashville home. “Instead of singing ‘Ebony and Ivory,’ I thought I’d pull out the banjo and do an Appalachian ballad. In retrospect, I realize I had fallen so deeply in love with Chinese culture that I was looking for something American to draw me back to where I came from.”

That particular Beijing excursion lasted less than a year—and, one successful karaoke night notwithstanding, Washburn barely touched her instrument. Yet her interests in both China and bluegrass not only continued to flourish, but developed in unusual tandem. A few years later, while preparing to return to Beijing to study law, a chance encounter with a music executive led Washburn to Nashville, where she cut a demo. She wrote a pair of songs—one in English, one in Mandarin. “I had never done any creative writing,” says the singer, who learned fluent Mandarin as an Asian-studies major in college. “So it felt natural to draw from whatever felt inspiring. Before I knew it, I had written a Chinese song.”

The musician jettisoned her law-school plans to settle in Nashville, immersing herself in the city’s bluegrass community and joining the band Uncle Earl. Washburn was performing at a “picking party” when her music fell on the ears of Béla Fleck, the famed banjo virtuoso. The next day, Fleck listened to her demo in the car. “I thought, Wow, this is one of those really special voices,” Fleck says. “There’s a purity, a simplicity, a naturalness. I really lost myself in it. And before I knew it, I got pulled over for speeding.”

Putting the traffic ticket behind him, Fleck helped produce Washburn’s debut album, 2005’s Song of the Traveling Daughter; the pair also became a romantic couple. Musically, however, their union cemented itself in the wake of the debut, as Washburn was assembling a group to tour China. She rounded up a quartet: Fleck and herself on banjos, plus Casey Driessen and Ben Sollee, an accomplished fiddler and a cellist, respectively. The ensemble’s instrumentation was unprecedented—Fleck even considered playing guitar to avoid the unusual collision of banjos—but they decided to give it a shot. “We got to Beijing, sat down and figured out how to make music together,” Washburn says. “The mix of instruments was so unconventional that it set us up to be completely creative. There was nothing to compare us to.”

The eccentric group, christened the Sparrow Quartet, attracted high-powered fans overseas. “Blending indigenous American bluegrass music with Chinese folk ballads leaves listeners of both countries feeling as if they are close to home,” Clark T. Randt Jr., the U.S. ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, says via e-mail. In 2006, the embassy invited the group to tour Tibet on a government-sponsored cultural mission. The musicians initially balked—“Nobody over here likes what’s going on over there,” Fleck says. Encouraged by the Dalai Lama’s writing on peaceful engagement, they ultimately acquiesced, becoming the first American musical group to officially tour Tibet. The four were instructed to remain onstage after shows; otherwise, they might speak with audience members.

The Sparrow Quartet is currently touring more hospitable environs in support of a new self-titled album. The record straddles worlds: bluegrass and classical; Washburn’s old-fashioned claw-hammer banjo and Fleck’s virtuosic three-finger plucking; the dueling lure of Tennessee and Beijing. Though most of the songs are delivered in English, the most arresting performance is “Taiyang Chulai,” a Szechuan folk tune that Washburn learned off a Beijing cabdriver. “I had my banjo, so he asked if I could sing any Chinese folk songs,” she recalls. “I started singing ‘Taiyang Chulai.’ He pulled over, opened my door and said, ‘Get out of the car!’ He was like, ‘That’s not how you sing “Taiyang Chulai”!’ And at the top of his lungs, looking at the sky, he launched into the song. Then we got back into the cab.”

The driver’s performance was on the meter. Washburn says she got her money’s worth.

Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet is out now on Nettwerk. Abigail Washburn & the Sparrow Quartet play Castle Clinton Thu 29.