How much is Devendra Banhart worth?
| Net Worth: | $16 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Singer |
| Date of Birth: | May 30, 1981 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 1.8 m |
About Devendra Banhart
Devendra Obi Banhart, an American singer-songwriter and visual artist, was born on May 30, 1981. Most people associate the bearded singer with the freak-folk revolt that captivated the public’s attention in 2004. It is linked to performers like the singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom, the band CocoRosie, and the modern folk trio Vetiver.
Golden Apples of the Sun, a collection Banhart put together for Arthur magazine in 2004, did much to foster the feeling of a “movement,” but the name bothered him. As his primary influences, Banhart has named Vashti Bunyan, Kurt Cobain, Simón Dáz, Mick Jagger, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Axl Rose, Arthur Russell, Ali Farka Touré, and Caetano Veloso.
Born in: May 30, 1981, Houston, Texas
Key Albums: Oh Me Oh My… the Way the Day Goes By the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit (2002), Rejoicing in the Hands (2004), What Will We Be (2009)
“‘Freak folk,'” Banhart sighed, in an interview with Perfect Sound Forever, “I don’t really know anything about it. I didn’t think of it, I didn’t say it, I don’t know anybody who calls themselves that, it’s something that will pass.”
Young Years
Banhart, who was born in Houston, was given the name Banhart by Prem Rawat, an Indian religious figure whose itinerant yogi father Banhart followed. Banhart was raised by his mother in Caracas, Venezuela, after his parents split up when he was two years old.
Banhart “in a third-world country where we really didn’t get any music,” at the age of nine because he was uninspired by the “EMF or Milli Vanilli or Garth Brooks” he heard on the radio as a child who grew up “started writing songs and singing songs before [he] started listening to music, just a cappella.”
Banhart was directly inspired when he first heard Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” when he was 11 years old. Banhart started playing the guitar when he was a teenager and moved to California. While attending the San Francisco Art Institute, he learned he was highly productive (“it simply means I write a lot of lousy tunes! he gags) and wrote intently. He left school when he was 19 and went to Paris before coming back to San Francisco with the intention of pursuing music. This decision was motivated by an album he had just heard, Vashti Bunyan’s Just Another Diamond Day, a 1970 folk revival record that had recently been unearthed.
“The first time I heard it, I do remember just crying,” Banhart confessed to me, in 2004. “Just completely just crying and crying and crying… It was a very magical time, but it was also time shattering. It was what any true, real art does: transcends time, and shatters time, and stops time; there’s no future and there’s no past.”
Banhart was so motivated that he gave Bunyan some of his original recordings that were inspired by the Tyrannosaurus Rex, along with a handwritten note and several pages of his drawings. In 2002, Banhart released his debut LP, Oh Me Oh My… The Way The Days Go By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit, which he describes as “a real document of the moment of creation.” At the time, Banhart was still unsure whether his strange ditties would ever amount to anything.
Beginnings
Young God Records, the company managed by longtime Swans frontman Michael Gira, issued Oh Me Oh My in 2002. The eccentric, self-recorded songs on the album began gaining Banhart a cult following, and in 2003, he signed with eminent English label XL for the rest of the world.
Rejoicing in the Hands, his second album, Rejoicing in the Hands (which included a guest appearance by Bunyan), Nio Rojo, and the compilation Golden Apples of the Sun were all published by Banhart in 2004. Banhart became the face of a trend that the press termed freak-folk. He went on a successful tour that summer with his friends Joanna Newsom and Vetiver, but he wasn’t optimistic about the future of his career at the moment.
At the time, Banhart told me, “You know it, and I know it, it’s totally fleeting, man,” “There are ups and downs, and I may return at any time. In fact, I fully anticipate returning at any time. The folks included in the “what’s going on now” section of a Rolling Stone from three or four months ago have already been forgotten.”
Breakout
But when Banhart put out Cripple Crow in 2005, it made it to strongholds like Rolling Stone, who were pulled to its Beatles parodies in a manner they had never been to his strange folksongs.
In 2006, Banhart moved into a house in Topanga Canyon (where, he gushed to Uncut, “there are coyotes in the night that sing through the valley, if you were here, you’d live here”). Banhart produced Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon there in 2007. “I’ve never recorded in a super controlled environment like a professional recording studio. I don’t think it’s respectful to exclude the rest of the world,” Banhart told Pitchfork.
With collaborations with members of The Strokes and The Black Crowes, it was a more frivolous LP than Banhart’s earlier work and even worried the Billboard chart’s lower reaches.
Devendra as a Star
Natalie Portman and Banhart began dating in April 2008. They had initially encountered one other in 2007 while Portman was compiling a chart collection for FINCA (that also included Beirut, The Shins, and Antony and the Johnsons). By participating in the music video for his song “Carmensita.” Portman returned Banhart’s favor of having her on the record. Later, Banhart would recollect the video in an interview with Pitchfork, saying, “I was too busy falling in love with Natalie while making it.”
Before breaking up, Banhart and Portman had a brief period of time as a gossip-rag pair, which is unusual territory for an artist as eccentric as Devendra.
Banhart collaborated with Greg Rogove of Priestbird, Fabrizio Moretti of The Strokes, and Little Joy to form the new band Megapuss before the end of 2008. On Neil Young’s Vapor Records, the band’s debut album, Surfing, was made available.
Banhart launched his major-label debut, What Will We Be, in 2009 after signing a deal with Warner Bros (“it was shocking that a major would want anything to do with me,” he quipped). Mala in 2013, Ape in Pink Marble in 2016, and Ma in 2019 came after this.
