This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

The number one country song in America for more than five weeks is Texas Holden by

Beyonce. It's from a new album of country songs and accompanying her on banjo and

viola is Rianen-Gens, who's been thinking for a long time about

the black roots of country music. Giddens, who I just saw on stage at the Beacon Theater here in New York, became a star in the Americana world, working

first with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and then as a solo artist.

Ruby, honey are you mad at your man? But Giddens is not a fan of genre, the

but Giddens is not a fan of genre,

the categories we love to stuff music into. She's incredibly expansive. All in all, she's

received Grammy Awards, MacArthur Fellowship, and last year, Gideon shared a Pulitzer Prize for the opera called Omar.

We spoke a few years back when her album There Is No Other had just come out.

Her collaborator Francesco Taurisi joined us as well on percussion and accordion and they started off with

the folk song called Wayfaring Stranger.

Can I have your C? see.

Isn't and the banjo tunes to the accordion the beginning of a joke some sort. I am a poor way fair and stranger traveling through this world alone

there is no sickness, toil nor danger,

in that fair land to which I go. I go. I'm going home.

I'm going home to meet my my bell I'm going home no more to roam I'm just going over Jordan.

I'm just going over over.

I'm just going over. Reanne and the banjo is at the heart of your work and there's a whole tradition that you

help bring to our attention bring back to our attention and I think if you had asked

...