if ART Concert Series Presents Sarah Louise – November 30

Columbia’s if ART Gallery presents on Thursday, November 30 at 8:00 p.m., a solo concert by North Carolina American Primitive guitarist and singer-songwriter Sarah Louise.

Admission is $10; concert; doors open at 7:30 p.m.

Louise lives an hour outside of Asheville in the rural North Carolina mountains, and her music is, online publication Dying For Bad Music wrote, “like a direct translation of the region she comes from.”

The natural world is a major influence on her work. “Nature is the most constant interest I have had in my life,” Louise said in a 2015 interview with the British online music publication Various Small Flames. “Even when I was little I felt so bonded to it. I would literally read and memorize field guides.” In 2015, Louise released an album titled exactly that, “Field Guide.”

American traditional music is in her DNA, Louise has said, “and peeks out when it wants to.” Other influences include old hymns, Appalachian music, including the relationship she sees between the latter and Hindustani and Carnatic music. “For example, harmony was not allowed in some of the more conservative southern churches,” Louise said in 2015, “and was instead replaced by drones, rich melodies and melisma. These characteristics are also hallmarks of Indian music, as well as many other traditional music from the world. To me, these connections speak to the ancientness of some of these mountain melodies.”

Louise is part of a rich Asheville guitar scene based on traditional music that also includes Shane Parish and Tashi Dorji, who each also have played at if ART gallery in recent months.