Through her Music, multi-award winning artist Rhiannon Giddens has always sought to resurrect the silenced stories of America.
His latest project? Make the story of the forgotten people who built the country's railway resonate.
Through revisited traditional tunes and compositions, the album “American Railroad” tells the story of the transcontinental railroad through those who built it, African-Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Irish and Natives, whose work , displacement and exploitation made possible the westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century.
“These people who were not considered worthy of interest in our society, they are the ones who built this incredibly important infrastructure on an economic and technological level, which changed our history”, claims the musician, already Pulitzer Prize 2023 for his opera about the story of Omar ibn Said, a Senegalese Muslim scholar sold into slavery in America.
Also winner of two Grammy Awards, Rhiannon Giddens has led this project since she became the artistic director of the musical ensemble Silkroad in 2020, created in 1998 by the famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma to bring musical traditions to life and intersect. from all over the world.
– “World music” –
Violinist, banjoist, vocalist and composer, she has already highlighted in her career the forgotten role of African-Americans in bluegrass, country and folk styles. And the banjo on Beyoncé's latest hit, “Texas Hold 'Em”, is her.
At 47, she sees herself as a “very American artist, but an American artist very rooted in history.” His arrival in Silkroad allowed him to explore the musical traditions of his country in the context of “world music”.
The Anglo-Saxon music industry uses this vague term to classify genres that do not follow modern Western traditions. But for its critics, its broad definition makes it lose its meaning.
“It literally drives me crazy that America considers itself 'apart' from world music,” she explains after a performance of “American Railroad” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
One of the titles of her musical story is an arrangement of an ancient folk song written by African Americans who were unjustly imprisoned and forced to build a railroad tunnel through Rhiannon Giddens' home state of North Carolina. .
“American Railroad” is an album that Silkroad performs on tour but also a podcast that explores the subject educationally.
His exit coincides with the election to the White House of Donald Trump, after a virulent campaign against migrants, whom he described as “terrorists” and “criminals” and whom he promised to deport by the millions.
– “Divide” –
For Rhiannon Giddens, we must keep in mind that this speech often comes from above. “It’s always in the interest of the people who use the workforce to continue to divide it along social class lines and use their backgrounds to do that,” she says.
“Nothing that happened in this election is new… if you think about the American nation-state, it is founded on violence, division, racism and greed” , she still assures.
For her, “American Railroad” brings together the destinies of these prisoners, migrants or indigenous populations crushed by the American conquest to the West. She wants to “take the language of music and use it to show how we can find these points of connection.”
One of the final tracks, “A Win For You”, is a tale of victory through cooperation, symbolized by the harmony of Silkroad's various instruments.
A message to which the public “is very receptive” and which “they need”. “The more we recognize ourselves in others, even if we have been told that we are very different, the more we can do something,” she summarizes.
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