The New Yorker Radio Hour - Rhiannon Giddens, Americana’s Queen, Goes Global

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

By the standards of any musician, Rhiannon Giddens has taken 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 further afield from African American and 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.”  This segment was previously aired in 2019. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

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. Rianne and Giddens has had one of the more unusual career paths of any musician I know of. She studied opera training to be a soprano at one of the most prestigious music programs in the country. But almost by chance she fell hard and deep into the study of American folk music. She became the front woman of a string band called The Carolina Chocolate Drops, focusing on reviving forgotten musical traditions of the Black Diaspora. And they received a Grammy Award 10 years ago.

As a solo artist, though, she's moved increasingly far afield. I spoke with her after her album, There Is No Other, came out in 2019. She was exploring folk styles from the Middle East and Europe as well as early America in collaboration with the musician Francesco Terisi. She's nominated for a Grammy for another album with Teresi called They're Calling Me Home. Can I have you, see? And the banjo tunes to the accordion in the beginning of a joke, some sort.

When we spoke, they started off by playing Wayfaring Stranger, a traditional song dating to the 19th century. And Francesco, that was magnificent. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks for having us. Riannan, I'd 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. And it was a pretty good lineup. It was a pretty good lineup.

Joan Baez, so many people, and you got up and brought the house down and brought the house to its feet. Tell me about that night what you sang and what that was like killing like that. Well, it was a really interesting experience because when T-Bone asked me to do it, you know. T-Bone Brinette, yeah. He produced the album and all the music for the film. Yeah. You know, I hadn't done a lot of solo stuff at that point because I'd just really been doing. the chocolate drops and, you know, it was not with my band. It was, you know, it was all very

instinctual. I was just like, I just, I just wanted to not screw up. I don't know. I was kind of so shocked by the response to it, you know, the following days, the write-ups, I had no idea. It was such a big deal. It was literally like go sing the song and don't screw it up. Did it change your career? Did it change your life in any way that night? It did, yeah. Yeah. That's how the next two collaborations were with T-Bone and that they totally came out of that night my solo record tomorrow's my turn I had never I had no intention of going solo any time you know soon I was like really focused on the chocolate drops and was very excited about it and then it was kind of like well you know when T-bone Burnett says let's do a solo record you don't go can you come back in a couple years you just go yes

you know your records are often categorized as something called Americana which is a term that you hear a lot and it gets stuck on folk music all the various kinds of music Do you embrace it? Do you reject it? And what does it mean to you? I have a complicated relationship with Americana as a term. I have a complicated relationship with genres. I hate them, number one. You just wanted to be called music. I just wanted to be called music or even American music's fine. You know, acoustic music. Now, Americana understand what they're trying to do. You know, commercial country. kind of has gone down the certain road and they're trying to create a space for the singer-songwriter for the story song, you know, I get all that.

I still feel like, you know, you make a genre, you tend to narrow into it. Now, you're on your third solo album and you've got a new collaborator who's sitting here with us, Francesco Tracy. Tell me about your musical relationship and how this came to become an album. Well, yeah, I guess, It was just one of those kind of magical things.

Do you want to say how? Yeah, I got in touch first with Riannon about four years ago, because I knew about the Carolina chocolate drops, and I had heard some of the music. I was doing a lot of research at the time in the early history of jazz, and I thought it was very interesting take. Scholarly research. Well, I was lecturing history of jazz.

I mean, we're both kind of musicians who have a lot of interest in research, so I don't know if I would call myself a scholar, but we read a lot of books, put it that way. So I just thought it was a very interesting missing link that nobody talks about, the black string band in the history of early jazz. Well, tell us about that. What is the missing link and just describe what we're talking about? Well, I mean, I don't know if I'm the right person to talk about this,

but the way I saw it was just that, you know, because I was actually teaching history of jazz in a BA course in Dublin, which is where I live. We both live in Ireland. And just reading all the classic literature on the early history of jazz, everybody focuses very much on the brass bands and the importance of that kind of in New Orleans and the development of early jazz. And the string bands are never really mentioned in that transition between reg time and early jazz. And they were obviously a big part of it all. Maybe

you should say something about that because that's your corner. What are we ignoring? What are we missing? Well, you know, the string band and the black string band in particular, you know, it really is at the heart of so many, here we go with genres again, the genres of American music. And it was a widespread phenomenon, you know, that goes back to the time of slavery when black people were seen as natural musicians, they were encouraged to pick up instruments and then play for white people's dances and frolics and parties. And so you have the combination of, you know, native rhythms and modes from West Africa from all over where people were coming from and instruments that were coming over, like the banjo, which grew out of West African loot type instruments.

I mean... How much of this do we have recorded? Not any. That's the problem. So how are you excavating the music in a way? With dots. You know, with the sheet music. That must give you a very wide berth on how to play it.

Well, the thing is, is like, there's a lot of scholarship that's been done on these early banjo tutors. They were very, very clear in how to play, you know, this instrument. And this... You keep saying this instrument, we have one on the floor. Yeah, sorry. Can you describe what this is because it's obviously not the kind of thing that you'd see Earl Scrugg's play or... Yeah, the banjo that I have is a replica of, well, it's kind of a composite of some banjos from the late 1850s. It's a wooden banjo. See, the early menstrual style banjos were all fretless. People were always surprised by this because it's fretless and they were gutstring. And that's because they were that one step removed from the homemade gourd instruments that black folk would have been making on plantations, or wherever, and that was the banjo first.

And so they were all playing these kind of instruments, which are wooden hoop, wouldn't, you know, wooden fretboard, fretless, you know, and it's just a deeper, more resonant, sort of round, warm sound. And, Francesca, you're playing a drum that is called a duff. It's a drum that comes from Iran. It's a large frame drum that has got a particularity

that has got little iron rings hanging. and by shaking the drum you hit the skin and they create a really washy type of sound. So these many dozens of rings that are on the inside lip of the drum and that's what makes that kind of hard. Yeah, so it's a drum that you find in Iran and in other countries in Central Asia used in folk music but it's also an instrument used by Sufi Brotherhoods

and they use it for trans dancing, you know? So this kind of washy sound very often you find in cultures related to trans, you know. And what you're going to play, I understand, is a kind of ghost story in a song called Little Margaret. Tell me about that. That was actually one of the earliest things that we connected on, this idea of the drum, the frame drum, in across the ocean, in Middle East, and in North Africa and the Mediterranean, being a drum that's supposed to be played with a singer, you know, because it's got a tone to it. and so we were looking for that connection and I just thought

well Appalachian ballads they also have that trance feel as well and so it just worked so beautifully Little Margaret is a I learned from Sheila K. Adams from Western North Carolina and it goes all the way back to you know some English ballad from centuries ago. We don't know who wrote it.

No no it's it goes it's just it's old it's really old like 14th century I mean it's like old old it goes back but this is an Appalachian version And it's basically the story of a young woman who was in love with a man, and he goes out, starts seeing somebody else. Later that night, she appears to him at his bedside, and he sees her and realizes that it's her that he wants.

And so he goes to visits her, and then he finds out that she's died. And in the song, the imagery is basically that her appearing in white means that she's a ghost, even though he doesn't realize that. and then when he goes to her father's and she's in her cold black coffin with her face turned toward the wall, that was, her face turned toward the wall meant that she was a suicide.

And then at the end, when he falls into her arms, that means he dies. So these are all kind of imagery that were used in lots of different ballads to sort of denote these things without actually coming out and saying them. Spooky stuff.

Spooky stuff, yeah. So I'd love to hear it. Well, let's do it. Little Margaret's sitting in her high hall chair. Combing back her long yellow hair Saw Sweet William and his new maid bride riding up the road so near She threw down her ivory comb

threw back her long yellow hair Said I'll go down and I bid him farewell And I'll never more go there It was late in the night They were fast asleep Little Margaret appeared all dressed in white, standing at their bed feet Saying how do you like your snow white pillow How do you like your sheep

Saying how do you like that pretty fair maid who lays in your arms asleep Very well do I like my snow white pillow Well do I like my she Much better do I like that pretty fair maid who stands at my bed feet. He called a servant man to go, saddle the dappled wrong, and he rode for her father's house that night, knocked on the door alone, staying is little Margaret in her room, or is she in the hall, Little Margaret's in her cold black coffin,

With a face turned toward the wall, Unfold, unfold those snow-white robes Be the ever so far For I want to kiss those cold cold lips For I know they'll never smile Three times he kissed her cold-cold hand Twice he kissed her cheese And once he kissed her cold-cold lips

and he fell in her arms asleep. Oh, amazing. Amazing. And how much of this song was given to you and how much of it is yours in terms of its invention or melody? I mean, that's, you know, it was originally an Appalachian ballad, like, unaccompanied, so I'm singing it just like that.

What I'm doing is when we first started playing it, I just sort of, instead of just going through the song, you know, with no pauses in between the lines. There were moments where the drum kind of, I would slow the action down a little bit, and then when it speeds up again. So that definitely came from me just kind of reacting to what he was playing, you know.

Riannon Giddens, I spoke with her in 2019, and our conversation continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm speaking today with the musician Rianan Giddens, who was just nominated for two Grammings, Best Folk album and Best American Root song.

Giddens and I talked in 2019 when her album, There Is No Other, was Just Out. In collaboration with Francesco Terisi, we'll continue now. Renan, you went to Oberlin, you studied at formal training there. Yeah. Doing a lot of opera. How did you become you?

How did you kind of create yourself and your sense of direction and where you would go on music coming out of a place like Oberlin where you had had this formal training. Did you think you were going to be singing somnambula or being an opera singer? We all do, coming out of conservatory. We're going to be the next big soprano, you know. What happened?

Well, I discovered folk music, and I discovered the banjo. And I also, you know, I'm very interested in doing something that is, A, of service, and B, that not everybody else is doing. So I was like, gosh, there's like a million sopranos in the world who can sing as good or much better than I can, who can do these things and want to devote their life to opera, where I'm seeing this other thing, and I'm like, this is something I think I can make a difference

in, you know, and it touches me, and it speaks to me. And so it just, for me, it goes to show that you have to find the thing that you were meant to do, you know, and you don't know what it is always, but if you follow the thing that's speaking to you, you just don't know where it's going to lead you. Well, I hate to pound on this notion of categories, but what you just saying is that classical music in a sense? No. I mean, but then what, I mean... That's what I mean...

You know, what is classical music, you know? I mean, we do on the album two arias, you know, but we do them in vernacular voice and with sort of improv to accompaniment. And it's like they live in a different realm and they touch people in a different way, but they're, you know, does it still mean that they're not an aria anymore? I mean, you know, I mean, that's kind of also the point of the record is, you know, who, you know, who cares what the, and this is not just smashing stuff together. Like, that's important to mention. It's not like, you know, we, I mentioned our similar approaches because I think that's why our layers kind of work, you know, because we're layering things on top of each other

and finding where the peaks, the peaks peak because there's all these similarities between all of these different things. And it leads us to, you know, what music is doing for us as humanity. You know, because somebody was saying, well, you know, our diversity is also our strength, you're saying that we're all the same. I'm like, well, in our differences we're the same. That's the point is that, you know, we express ourselves in different ways, but it's all coming, coming back to these universal truths as humans. And the more that we can reject that idea that you are over there and you sound different to me so that we're different people and embrace

that actually what I do in my culture and what you do in your culture is coming from the same heart and therefore they should be able to work together, you know, that's more of what we're trying to say. How does that relate to the next song that I think you're going to do, and you're going to have to help me with the pronunciation to get exactly right. Pizika di San Vito. That's pretty good. And means... Pizika is a type of dance from Puglia,

which is a... In southern Italy. So it's a type of Tarantella, which is a very lively, I'm sure you're all familiar with the idea of that. But the particular thing about this music that a lot of people don't know about is that it was music to cure the bite of a spider. And it was... No, this is very...

serious thing, actually. The idea with the Pizsica is that you got bitten. They believed in the bite of the spider, tarantula. That's why it's called tarantella. And you would fall into a state of depression. And the only way to get rid of this was trans dance, which could go on sometimes for weeks. You know, the musicians would come to your house.

So it's pre-antiobiotics. Definitely pre-antibiotic. Mind you, this was the last time observed in its full power in the 1960s. 1960s was still happening in Puglia. Incredible. How is that tuned? How is it tuned? See, well right now it's in modal, but I have like three different tunings.

I used to. No. No. Churred da Vinnie, no jared daveni, no jared daveni, and I'm in a spiritu, solis spiritu, so l'lis spiritum, man no kimak, kimata, ah well, l'i, man, sin, sin, ah, n'i v'n'i v'i. Oh, I'm going to do you la, amazing.

Oh, Rian, who do you think of your audience for me, is it not worth thinking about. Oh, wow, you just can't. Oh, wow. Amazing. Rian, who do you think of as your audience for music like this? Or do you not think of it? Is it not worth thinking about? I mean, you just can't.

You can't think about audiences. You know, you just, I mean, that's... Who do you see in the seats? well I mean it depends on where we are I mean we haven't actually really started touring this yet but you know it's it depends on who knows about it I mean this is the this is the sort of push me pull you of being a professional musician

is that if they don't hear about it they're not going to come you know like I mean part of my mission has been trying to get the music that I play to more of the black community for example which is what people always ask me so why are there only white people at your shows number one there aren't only white people at my shows there are always people of color who come. It's just a very small percentage of the overall whole. And the other thing is that the gatekeepers of black culture are not interested in what I'm doing.

And this is a complaint I've heard from many, many people of color who do music that's not considered black. That's not, you know, whether. And what does that mean? What is considered black now and who are the gatekeepers that we're talking about? Like, you know, like hip hop, R&B, blues, I mean, people know it's black, but like, Like, you know, and there's black people who play it, but it's, it's a largely white audience. You know, white audience and white players, you know, as well. And jazz is one of those kind of like, you know, in that kind of halfway house world.

You know, and then opera, you know, there's like been, you know, there's been black people singing opera and doing classic, writing classic music forever, you know. And it's like, we're seen as sort of interlopers. And so it's very hard. I've talked to other people who have the same thing. I mean, I was talking to Tavis Smiley. It was on his show because Freedom Highway I started that tour at Sing Sing Prison And it was the largest black audience I've ever had

And that just like broke me in several pieces What was that like? Tell me about that concert I mean it was very intense, you know To get like a cultural response that I'm not used to Because it's at Sing Sing Prison in Austin, New York Just north of the city With the Carnegie, you know The Carnegie Hall does this amazing program going in

And we worked with one of the prisoners On one of his songs about domestic violence I mean it was really intense They were beautiful and you just kind of... So it wasn't just a performance. You were there for a while. We did work...

Yeah, we were there the whole day, you know. And you just look out that sea of brown faces and you think about what does that mean for, you know, when you talk about the incarceration of black men and men of color and, you know, how the broken the system is. But then from a purely performance point of view, I was just like... The way that they responded to the music was different

than when I have, you know, majority white... I mean, it's kind of hard to explain. like just the energy that was given back and I didn't know the personal stories of any of them didn't want to know because it's just like that's not that wasn't the purpose of the visit you know what did you play for them? We played at full concert. I brought him a full band and we played a lot of stuff from Freedom Highway and and so it's just like the I'm I feel very strongly like I'm I'm starting to work with my nephew who's a 21 year old rapper who plays band Joe right I taught how it's an unusual combination and he you know he's a heavy rapper like this is He knows hip hop. He knows that world. And this is the way he chooses to express himself. You're going to record with him?

Yeah. Yeah, we're going to record. What's his name? His name's Justin Harrington. Demeanor is his handle. But it's just like when you start crossing over into that generation and he sees, he's like, man, when I'm playing the stuff for my friends, they're like, what is that? That's amazing. I'm like, exactly.

It's like when people are exposed to this stuff, they're like, that's so cool. But getting there is the hurdle. Rianne and Francesco, thank you so much for coming. Thanks for having us. Riannon Giddens and her collaborator, Francesco Teresi. I spoke with them in 2019, and they're nominated for two Grammys for the album, They're Calling Me Home. I'm David Remnick, and that's it for The New Yorker Radio Hour this week.

Hope you enjoyed the show, and I hope you'll join us next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrador. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Calaliyah, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. And we had additional help from Harrison Keithline. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.