Local Melodies

Photos: Backstage Flash

Southern Soul

Saja Butler uses African instruments, South Carolina style to produce uplifting soul and bluegrass music

By Steve Graham

Saja Butler just wants her audience and students to feel at peace. “Music is a gift, it’s a present in the present,” she said in a phone inter view from her home studio. “I hope people use my music to just sit on the porch and listen.”

The soulful northern Colorado “afrobanjo” player and guitarist recorded her first “real” solo album in that studio this year. She is also working on a new album with her band, Lois and the Lantern, and she uses the studio for remote and in-person music lessons.

She offers her voice, guitar, ukulele and banjo students a cozy and welcoming space to relax and be themselves. On stage, at least when concerts can take place, she exudes natural bliss and confidence.

“I’m a naturally happy, bubbly-assed person,” she said. “… I’m a cool person, I’m a nerd, but I’m also sexy as hell.”

On the other hand, Butler makes clear that blissful doesn’t mean ignorant. Particularly in the past year, she has been ver y active and outspoken in the Black Lives Matter movement and other social justice causes. After the police killing of George Floyd, a “Saja Speaks” blog post went viral, and sparked an intense online conversation. She wants people to have the difficult conversations, and seek out differences.

“A lot of people don’t stray outside of their race, number one, and don’t stray outside of their political and cultural spaces,” Butler said.

Although she lost friends over her blog post, she refuses to give up on the opportunity for healing and positivity. “The cynicism shouldn’t be the only emotion,” she said. “ You cut out people in your lives, but you cut out yourself.”

Butler’s music is also infused with her politics and passion, and she said she can’t make art that avoids these realities.

“If you’re just going to be a piece of wet bread, how do you even write music that’s fulfilling?” she asked.

Butler grew up in South Carolina, and started singing and playing clarinet in the fifth grade, when she discovered her passion for music.

“It opened up a world for me and opened up something that was so natural for me.

After playing “the 20,000 hours that I needed,” she had a solid grounding in music theor y.

She moved to Tennessee for college courses in religious studies and African American studies, then started singing with friends at open mic nights.

She also went to a music store to tr y some new instruments.

“I picked up a banjo and it was like finding your soul mate,” she said.

At first, she faced some skepticism as a black woman playing the banjo, but she learned about the banjo’s African roots.

Slaves originally brought the instrument to the South. Black musicians only stopped playing banjo when it became a central part of offensive black-faced minstrel shows. Butler is proudly helping bring back the black banjo tradition, and said she gets fewer skeptical glances today as a black banjo player.

She eventually followed some friends to Colorado. At first, she wasn’t playing music. Instead, she worked at a food co-op and lived a fairly nomadic life.

“I met this guy and we got hippie married,” she said. “ We traveled the countr y with our two dogs.”

After returning to Colorado and breaking off the relationship, she went to a small contemporar y music college in Fort Collins, and met Aaron Youngberg and some other prominent northern Colorado banjo players and musicians.

Butler recorded a solo album, but said that work no longer reflects her music or life, so she has removed all traces of it from the Internet.

She opened a studio for performances and lessons in 2013, and played in a couple of local bands. She started sitting in on a regular all-girl jam session they called the Clam Jam.

She met the other women in the bluegrass collective Lois and the Lantern, and believed it was a good fit.

“I thought ‘I really want to join this group,’” Butler said. “ What I didn’t know is that they were saying ‘I really want her to join this group.’”

The current lineup has been together for about five years, and has played several festivals and prominent stages. Butler has described their sound as a “female Béla Fleck and the Flecktones,” and said she channels her Southern “blackneck” side in the group’s work.

Her other side, which is channeled into her recently released solo album, is more sensual and soulful. She said the new album is grounded in a ver y percussive guitar sound.

“I bake the cake with the guitar and the frosting is banjo,” she said. “I’m seeing another side of myself.”

She said she used the low end of her voice and minor chords to craft a “ ver y sensual, relaxing album.”

“If Norah Jones was a Southern black chick, that’s what it would sound like,” she said.

S t e v e G r a h a m i s a f r e e l a n c e w r i t e r a n d f o r m e r n e w s p a p e r e d i t o r w h o t a k e s h i s t w o b o y s b i k i n g , h i k i n g a n d b r e w e r y - h o p p i n g i n n o r t h e r n C o l o r a d o .