About Devendra Banhart
Devendra Obi Banhart is a Venezuelan singer-songwriter and visual artist. Banhart was born in Texas, and raised in Venezuela and California. In 2000, he dropped out of the San Francisco Art Institute to pursue a musical career. In 2002, Banhart released his debut album and is best known for his albums in the late 2000s such as Cripple Crow and Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. He has since expanded his career to incorporate his interest and training in the visual arts.
Banhart was born in Houston, Texas, to a Venezuelan mother, María Eugenia Rísquez, and an American father, Robert Gary Banhart. His given name is a synonym for Indra, suggested by Indian religious leader Prem Rawat , and his middle name Obi takes after Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Star Wars character.
His parents divorced in 1983, after which Rísquez and he moved to Caracas, Venezuela. Rísquez later remarried and when Banhart was age 14, his stepfather moved the family to Los Angeles, California.
In 1998, Banhart began studying at the San Francisco Art Institute on a scholarship while living in The Castro, San Francisco's "gay" district, though he would often busk instead of attending class. He played his first musical show in a church at a gay wedding, performing Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender" and the hymn "How Great Thou Art".
Banhart dropped out of college in 2000 and left San Francisco after the dot-com bubble bust worsened the city's economy. That summer, he moved to Paris and began opening shows for indie rock bands such as Sonic Youth. Banhart returned to the United States that fall and played music in San Francisco and Los Angeles, until he was discovered by Michael Gira, owner of Young God Records, after Siobhan Duffy, Gira's wife, bought a copy of Banhart's demo CD The Charles C. Leary and gave it to Gira.
Banhart and Gira compiled an album from Banhart's recordings, and in 2002, Oh Me Oh My, which was made up of short fragments, was published by Young God Records and received favorable reviews. He recorded two other albums and an EP for the label: Rejoicing in the Hands, Niño Rojo, and The Black Babies; the releases had a simple acoustic sound. Banhart changed to XL Recordings in 2005 and released Cripple Crow, which was recorded in Bearsville Studios, New York, and had a more elaborate sound.
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