Introducing: American Railroad - Ep 1 North Carolina

Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

PRX

Arts

4.6 • 675 Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Embark on American Railroad, a five-episode podcast that seeks to right historical wrongs by highlighting the untold stories and unheard voices from the diverse communities that built America’s railway systems. Hosted by Grammy Award-winner Rhiannon Giddens, American Railroad is produced in partnership with PRX.

The first stop on the American Railroad podcast is Swannanoa, North Carolina. Silkroad Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens reveals the origins of the popular Appalachian folk song “Swannanoa Tunnel” and how professors Jeffrey A. Keith and Kevin Kehrberg’s research sparked important conversations about erasure and ownership in Appalachian music. We’ll also hear from banjo player Tray Wellington about his experience as a Black band leader making a way in a genre not well known for performers who look like him.

Founded by Yo-Yo Ma, Silkroad is both a touring ensemble comprised of world-class musicians from all over the globe, and a social impact organization working to make a positive impact across borders through the arts. To find out more about Silkroad's American Railroad - the album, the tour, the TV series and the podcast, go to silkroad.org/american-railroad.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From PRX.
0:03.4	On March 11, 1879, James Wilson, the president of the Western North Carolina Railroad Corporation sent a telegraph to North
0:21.6	Carolina Governor Zebulan Vance. It read, Daylight entered Buncombe County this morning through
0:28.1	the Swananoa Tunnel. The Swananoa Tunnel was the last of seven tunnels, spanning over nine miles,
0:35.4	ascending 1,100 feet up through the Blue Ridge Mountains.
0:39.6	The crews that hand-dugged these tunnels were made up primarily of black men,
0:43.9	convicted of petty crimes with protracted sentences by the state of North Carolina.
0:49.7	The Swananoa Tunnel was the longest, at 1,832 feet, about the length of six football fields.
0:58.4	The cheers of Western North Carolina Rail's leadership celebrating their engineering feat were soon drawn out by a deep rumble.
1:19.6	The Swananoa Tunnel collapsed, killing 19 of the black men forced at gunpoint to work on it. Ashton jump, swanamo a tunnel, walking in the bay. That's James William Love.
1:39.0	He's singing Ashville Junction, also known as Swananoa Tunnel or Swananoa Town. Love was a letter carrier at Duke University.
1:49.0	Folklorist Frank Clyde Brown recorded him as part of a larger collection of North Carolina and Appalachian folk music.
1:57.7	Will Love served as a deacon at his church and loved to sing.
2:01.8	He worked at Duke as far back as when it was still Trinity College and retired after 44 years of service.
2:08.7	This 1939 recording of Asheville Junction is the earliest known rendition of the song sung by a black person.
2:20.4	Asheville Junction is a work song that laborers on railroads used to keep time while laying
2:25.9	track and drilling through rock. Work songs often detail the nature of the job and events
2:31.5	that happened on the line, like the Swananoa Tunnel cave in.
2:37.6	If it wasn't for recordings like Will Love's Asheville Junction and the academics who
2:42.2	discovered and valued them, we might never have known this story, one of so many about the
2:47.5	people who built America's railroads. That's what drew Silk Road to create the American Railroad Project.
2:54.5	I'm Rianne Giddens, artistic director of Silk Road.
	...

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