that.’ I consider myself someone who did not really find his skills until after he was an adult, so those moments, when someone in a position of evaluating me expressed such confidence in what I was doing, were really meaningful.” Even as Jake built his musical acumen with lessons and bands outside of school, his GDS High School experience added enriching harmony to the score. He got his feet wet as an educator, developed leadership skills in community engagement, and learned to take ownership of his own narrative.
Storytellers as Educators Jake Blount ’13 with his sister Julia ’08 in 2018 at their fifth and tenth GDS reunions, respectively. Julia, herself an educator, currently serves as Director of Upper Elementary (4–6) and Justice Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) at Echo Horizon School in Culver City, California, while continuing her studies as a doctoral student at USC Rossier Graduate School of Education. Previously, Julia taught Middle School history at GDS, where she helped develop the annual 7thgrade Power Project (see page 4, Learning Stability), and served as a co-advisor of Community Production, the annual show conceived, written, performed, and directed by Middle School students.
Each of the teachers Jake recalls the most have added important threads to the stories he weaves with his music today. C.A. Piling’s ecology and field biology—“easily the best and coolest class I’ve ever taken”—brought him into contact with Appalachia for the first time. “She took us to a mountaintop removal site in West Virginia, where we met Larry Gibson, who’d been really instrumental in the fight against mountaintop removal, even testifying in front of the U.N.” Now with his close musical ties to Appalachia, he spends a lot of time there. “I lean on the ecology elements of that class all the time now in conversation,” he said. Former GDS English teacher Stanley Lau was determined to create a “welcome and rewarding environment for students of color and queer students,” Jake remembered. jon sharp helped shake up Jake’s complacent thinking, exploring a range of ideologies, radical politics, and also Queer Theory, “which wound up being really central to what I would do later in life,” he said. Mike Wenthe’s English class read Beloved and Paradise Lost. The study of religious canon, folklore, and Black literature resonated deeply for Jake. Mike, also a musician, knew the medieval folk balladry that Jake was so taken with at the time and played a duet with him in a school talent show. (See Mike’s story about working with Jake in the sidebar on the next page). “I feel like it’s important to do education and performance alongside one another,” Jake reflected, looking back just weeks before a mid-October 2021 solo appearance at the Kennedy Center. At this apparent crossroads—a moment of increased awareness of historical disparities as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national reckoning on race—Jake explained that people in any field must acknowledge and explore historical inequities in their fields. “There’s an urgency to that now and [it] hasn’t always been respected in the past. I’m presenting this folk music and I have to teach about the folk people to understand the folk music. We all have an obligation to ongoing learning and education.”
In November 2019, Jake Blount ’13 performed and spoke in Middle School.
Weaving Tales and Traditions Together
Jake received his first banjo lessons from Dr. Lydia Hamessley at Hamilton College in the fall of 2013 and, according to his website,
GEORGETOWN DAYS FALL/WINTER 2021—22
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