Devendra Obi Banhart is a singer-songwriter born in Houston, TX. His given name is a synonym for Indra, the Hindu god of rain and thunder, which was suggested by Prem Rawat, an Indian religious leader whom Banhart's parents followed. Banhart's middle name Obi was modeled after the Star Wars character. Banhart's parents divorced two years after his birth and he moved with his mother to Caracas, Venezuela. His mother later remarried and Banhart's stepfather moved the family to Los Angeles, CA when he was 14 years old. He began to study at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1998, but dropped out to perform music in Europe, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Not only a musician, Banhart is a collector of musical artifacts as well as a visual artist.
Banhart's music is often associated with the New Weird America genre. The New York Times has called his songs "free associative work" and SPIN magazine has written that "Banhart's albums offer ashram-appropriate guitar strums with trippy-hippie tone poetry." Various publications have described his style as psych folk, avant-folk, and even freak folk. Many notable reviewers, including AllMusic, The Times, and Mojo, have pointed out similarities between Banhart's songs and production with that of the early 1970s band Tyrannosaurus Rex (an early version of Mark Bolan's T. Rex). In a May 2004 interview, Banhart claimed that he was unaware of the music of Tyrannosaurus Rex until after he began writing and recording songs. Devendra Banhart has downplayed Bolan's influence on his music, and instead prefers to credit Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton and Caetano Veloso as among his main influences. This is "Little Yellow Spider" off of his 2005 release Cripple Crow.
www.devendrabanhart.com
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