Abigail Washburn’s voice, underlaid with the distinctive rhythms of the clawhammer banjo, is plaintive, soulful, and strong. Her sound both echoes and pulls into the 21st century voices from deep in America’s rich musical past. You’d be forgiven for thinking she was raised in Appalachia at the feet of the masters — but that’d be before her tunes break into Mandarin! Washburn’s journey to making music has taken a highly unconventional path, from studying Chinese language and law to — just a few weeks ago — winning her first Grammy Award for Best Folk Album with her husband, bluegrass icon Béla Fleck. To celebrate, we caught up with her during her busy touring schedule to get the story of how she got here.

You started out studying Chinese culture and language. That’s a pretty far cry from old-time Appalachian music! How did you get so deeply immersed in both?

It was actually partly because of my interest in China that I started exploring old-time music. When I was first introduced to traditional American music, I was studying law and Mandarin Chinese, and had become obsessed with the language. I was traveling to China and immersing myself in the culture there. At the same time, back in the United States, I was also dating a guy who played bluegrass music. I’d sing backup sometimes, just for fun. Through bluegrass, I started learning about old-time Appalachian music.

Meanwhile, people I was meeting China would ask, “Tell me about American culture — what is it, anyway?” That made me think a lot. I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about the heritage of America, having grown up in suburbs of DC and Minneapolis and Chicago. What I knew of as culture was the radio and my public schools and strip malls and working at a pizza place. But when I heard that old-time Appalachian music, I thought, “You know? This is a real window into early America, and where we come from culturally.”

What are the origins of Appalachian music, anyway?

When I think of old-time Appalachian music, I think of the sound of the African traditions that were brought over with the first Africans who were slaves. The banjo is an instrument from Gambia, brought over on the slave ships.

One of the most tragic things I’ve ever heard was the story that slave traders started to realize that if they had instrumentalists playing on the slave ships from their homelands in Gambia or Mali, more of their cargo would live to the other side of the ocean. It speaks to the power of music — and it speaks to the wretchedness of humanity. Their spirits would just attach to the sound and stay in place, despite the absolute deepest anguish. But Appalachia and the South got quite an influx of instrumentalists from West Africa as a result, helping to create the unique and poignant sound we still hear today.

You clearly decided to abandon law and devote yourself to music. What was the turning point, for you?

This is a piece of my story that I don’t really ever get to tell, and it’s a big deal. I went on a Insight Meditation retreat for five days. I’d never meditated before, and I haven’t since. But during that time, I went into a deep state of meditation for about six hours — and when I came out of it, it felt like time had stopped, and everything had disappeared. My whole shirt was covered with tears and snot. I knew that I’d somehow let go of something. I realized that every single action I make is a choice to move in a certain direction. This may sound obvious, but actually most people don’t believe in that. For me, I became ready for whatever it was my purpose was — and I was open to different possibilities.

So weeks later, I found myself in West Virginia, at a fiddler’s convention. It was the first time I’d played banjo and sang a few songs I knew in public, and people just really responded to me. They said, “You sound like old Aunt Molly Jackson, you sound like Ginny Hawker.” These are the elder women of old-time Appalachian music, and the audiences were moved by me. I never thought of myself that way before.

Bear in mind that I still only knew four or five songs, and was still very much a beginner. Yet very soon after this, I began, to my surprise, to be approached to record. My plan had been to move to Nashville to be with my boyfriend before I’d go off to law school China. While I was there, I got offered another record deal — just a woman in line at a coffee shop who said, “I like your shirt,” and I said, “Oh, thanks.” And she said, “Are you a musician?” And I said, “Well, I’m not sure. I do play a little banjo and I sing a few songs.” She said, “I work for a record label, just send me a demo.” And I was like, “I don’t have a demo.” And she was like, “Well, make a demo and send it to me!”

I sat down and I wrote a couple songs for that demo, and the first one came out in English. “Oh, rock-a-bye my Dixie child” — that was my first one. For the second one, I was reading a Chinese poem, so I wrote it in Chinese.

Was writing songs in Mandarin a conscious decision on your part? Or did they just come out that way?

For me, it was very, very natural. I know it seems like an unnatural progression for a young white girl from the suburbs of the United States of America. But it was what I was loving, it was what I was reading, it was what I cared about most deeply and honestly: Chinese language, Chinese culture, and Chinese poetry.

Half of my songs came out in English, half of them in Chinese. Meanwhile, I decided to go with the record label. Amazingly, it was receptive to the songs in Mandarin. They said, “Chinese? Great! We want you to share that, it’s beautiful.” So that was my first record.

Is there a similarity between Chinese music and Appalachian music that help make them complementary?

Yes, the pentatonic scale is just a basic part of most early music traditions around the world. When we think about folk music, the early stuff is really just things people find around them, you know — like gourds, or wood, or hide from animals, and animal guts that are made into strings. I’m not a musicologist, my understanding is that all vibrating strings, regardless of material, have certain properties from which pentatonic scales arise, although the intonation of scales derived from the harmonics of strings differs somewhat from those of Western temperament.

In any case, once I started traveling to China to perform, I fairly quickly realized that the simple, old folk songs of both cultures were very compatible.

How did you start performing in China?

A friend used to produce open-mic nights at different places, and booked me some shows, so I asked a couple musicians I knew in Nashville to come. We slept on friends’ couches all over China, and ended up doing a three-week tour of China, completely independent.

When we got there, I thought, “Oh, it’d be so fun to play with Chinese musicians,” so I just would seek them out. I’ve done 14 tours of China now, and some of them are really long — six weeks, eight weeks — and sometimes I’d teach workshops at different universities. I’d just take everybody up on the opportunities they’d throw my way.

I finally hit the jackpot when the embassy in Beijing. The consulates around China found out about me, and I did a massive Silk Road tour for almost five weeks. We toured all the way from Beijing across to Kyrgyzstan, with the whole band, and it was phenomenal. I didn’t have to worry about money for once, which was so great.

When you sing, the sound of the language just works within the music. Is it easy to write your songs in Chinese? Or does it take some fudging?

I really do believe that the sound of the banjo really fits nicely with Chinese language. For example — if you thing about Chinese, they’re just one syllable, and they start with a consonant and most of them have a vowel at the end, most words. So they’re open. And the sound of the banjo is like a syllable — just like a Chinese word.

And then there’s just so many different aspects. There’s so much you can do with Chinese and music, and English and music. It can just go so many different directions. I have to translate a number of songs of the Appalachian repertoire into Chinese, and I share those with Chinese audiences, get them to sing along. I’ve learned Chinese songs themselves, Chinese poems, for performing for Chinese people. I’ve taken melodies inspired by China and added English words. I’ve taken sort of poppy, indie folk-sounding things and added Chinese words to that. I don’t know, it just depends what kind of art you make, and you can throw whatever language on it, really.

Has being married to Béla Fleck changed how you write and perform, or are you each on your own individual paths?

For many years, up until we had a child, we were very much on our own individual paths, writing and touring separately, but would often run our stuff by each other. We didn’t want to go changing each other, though we participated in each other’s creative process. Once we had a baby, though, we decided we probably needed to hit the road together, so that we wouldn’t have to be apart.

When we were first asked to play at the same show, we had never played as a duo before. We only had one night to decide what to play. We thought, if worse came to worst, he’d play alone for half an hour, and I’d play alone for half an hour. But actually, when we sat down, we came up with so much stuff that we played onstage together for almost two hours, and had so much fun. After that show we looked at each other and said, “I guess we’re going to have to do this some day.”

Because, “Why not?”

“Why not” is a good point. But before we had our baby, I was concerned that if I went on the road with Béla, I’d be the unknown one. I wanted to go out into the world and prove myself more. I wanted to know I had the ability to do this on my own. Once I had a good career going, we started together, and it’s been the most exciting thing. The music is a joy for us to create together, and it’s been amazing how two banjos and a vocal actually works out great. But people also want to hear us together.

One complication was adding an infant to the whole scenario — not for the faint of heart! There was just so much re-imagining, re-organizing, re-thinking about our daily lives that we had to do. But simultaneously, we were making a record together, we were touring together all the time. We were forced to be intimate and discuss all of the things that were difficult for us. So I’m grateful for that. But I would definitely encourage people, if they’re thinking about starting a new project, do it before the baby comes out, and not after. [Laughter]

Is old-time Appalachian music still passed down as an oral tradition?

Most of the community learns by sitting and listening, so in that sense, yes, it’s still very much an oral tradition. In the folk tradition, people are thrilled to be able to pass along what’s important to them. I can barely read music. I got my foundation in Appalachian and old-time music by jumping on tour with an all-female string band for six years. I also learned from fiddler Rayna Gellert, and singer Ginny Hawke taught me about the primitive Baptist singing tradition.

What do you see for the future, and the future of this kind of music?

One of the things I’ve thought for a long time is that culture’s missing from the diplomatic conversation. When Chinese diplomats come to the US and there are important conversations going on, a huge piece of it should be sharing beautiful art that spans China and America. I’ve always thought, oh gosh, if only I could perform with a Chinese band for some high-level officials when they come through Washington, DC. There should be something truly beautiful that happens before an important talk? It just softens everybody’s hearts; it opens people.

But I don’t see this music waning away, I actually see whole new generations just so fond of this music and holding to it, and 20-year-olds that have a puritanical stance on what old-time music should sound like. People are passionate about it.

But I’m now becoming an older person in the tradition, and I’m very much enjoying seeing all the new, young fresh blood coming through, and going, “This is powerful, it’s beautiful, it’s social, it’s cultural, it drives me to want to share this with the rest of the world.”

The TED Fellows program hand-picks young innovators from around the world to raise international awareness of their work and maximize their impact.