Rhiannon Giddens, Americana’s Queen, Goes Global

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

By the standards of any musician, Rhiannon Giddens has a twisting and complex path. Trained as an operatic soprano at the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory, Giddens fell almost by chance into the study of American folk music. Alongside two like-minded musicians, she formed the Carolina Chocolate Drops, in which she plays banjo and sings. The group is focussed on reviving the nearly forgotten repertoire of black Southern string bands, but the audience for acoustic music remains largely white. Giddens tells David Remnick she was heartbroken that her largest black audience was at a prison concert. “The gatekeepers of black culture are not interested in what I’m doing,” she says. “This is a complaint I’ve heard from many, many people of color who do music that’s not considered black—hip-hop, R&B.” Her view of black music is more expansive: “There’s been black people singing opera and writing classical music forever.” As a solo artist, Giddens is moving increasingly far afield from African-American or American music; her new album, “There Is No Other,” recorded in Dublin in collaboration with the musician Francesco Turrisi, explores folk styles from the Middle East, Europe, and Brazil, as well as early America. She and Turrisi perform “Wayfaring Stranger,” the ancient ballad “Little Margaret,” and the tarantella “Pizzica di San Vito.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:10.7	Can I have your C?
0:15.2	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:18.6	Isn't it in the banjo tunes accordion in the beginning of a joke?
0:25.5	Riannon Giddens has
0:26.7	had one of the more unusual
0:28.8	career paths of any musician,
0:30.8	I know. She studied opera
0:32.7	at the Oberlin Conservatory,
0:34.8	one of the more prestigious music programs
0:36.8	in the country, and she trained
0:38.6	there to be a soprano.
0:43.7	But almost by chance, she fell hard and deep into the study of American folk music.
0:53.0	She became the front woman of a string band called the Carolina Chocolate Trops and focused
0:58.5	on reviving forgotten musical traditions of the Black Diaspora.
1:03.6	Now as a solo artist, she's moved increasingly far afield.
1:08.0	Her new album explores folk styles from the Middle Eastern and European, as well as
1:12.7	the early American traditions. She's made the record in collaboration with the musician Francesco
1:18.3	Teresi, and it's called There Is No Other. Reanne, I have to tell you that I think it was six years ago already, six years ago, that there was this amazing night at town hall in New York that was put on as a kind of promotion and concert for Inside Dwelland Davis, which was about the folk scene of the late 50s and 60s.
1:47.0	And it was a pretty good lineup.
1:49.6	It was a pretty good lineup.
1:52.1	Joan Baez, so many people.
	...

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