After a long and noted career as an internationally esteemed jazz drummer interpreting drum parts for composers such as Henry Threadgill, Diedre Murray, Leroy Jenkins, McCoy Tyner, Billy Harper, Sam Rivers, and Matthew Shipp, and leading his own composition project “Singin’ Drums,” Newman Taylor Baker encountered the washboard in 2010 and it changed his life. The connection between his paternal grandfather, Rev. Dr. T. Nelson Baker, the only former enslaved student to achieve a Bachelor of Divinity (1893) and PhD in Philosophy (1903) from Yale University and the washboard, popular during the lifetime of Rev. Dr. Baker, has fueled Newman’s current creative path. Now Newman is a passion-driven washboarder directing WashboardXT, his concept of 21st-century music for the acoustic and electronic washboard.