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| Musician, vocalist and actor Rhiannon Giddens (photo: David McClister) |
I don't recall how and when I first learned that musician and vocalist Rhiannon Giddens would be hosted by Symphony Space for a full-on residency (November 8-17), but that day was a blessed one. Despite a busy schedule and frequent exhaustion, I set my mind to the task and made my way to Symphony Space last night for the final performance by Giddens and her collaborators. My guest and I will long remember this evening for its generosity and phenomenal powers of healing.
Fans of Giddens have admired her since she first stepped out as co-founder, with Dom Flemons, of beloved, Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops at the nexus of folk, blues, Celtic, bluegrass, gospel and other traditional genres. Her versatile voice and keen, beguiling musicianship on banjo and fiddle brought buoyancy and illumination to the band's signature Americana blend. Since then, pursuing a solo career appears to have sharply defined and deepened this artist, recipient of a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship.
The musical alliances she makes now--with long-revered Toshi Reagon and (new to me) Chicago's Allison Russell and Tennessee's Amythyst Kiah--signal a growing desire to join forces with Black women dedicated to both ancestral nourishment and the struggle for social justice. The Giddens who was present onstage with these sisters--as well as her blood sister and beautiful poet Lalenja Harrington, pianist/accordionist Francesco Turrisi, drummer Attis Clopton and bassist Jason Sypher--seems radically pared down to the essentials of being a direct conduit of spiritual energy and effort. By evidence of last night's show, Giddens has mastered the intuitive art of, as I often call it, "getting the right people in the room." But she also knows how to foster unparalleled focus and harmony among those talented allies.
In Giddens now, clearly there is an inward turning, a seeking out of, as she announced in her first lyric, the "ten-thousand stories, ten thousand songs" to chronicle, as well, the "ten-thousand wrongs." At her right hand was Russell, a sensitive, joyous woman with her mind on Black folks surviving and thriving, a Caribbean lilt in her own first song. (She has Grenadian roots.) Even "with feet in shackles," she trilled out, "we'll be dancing."
To Russell's right, Kiah stood, gruff and driving voice transforming the well-rehearsed tale of John Henry into a peppy tune spotlighting, instead, his gutsy wife Polly Ann. Polly can you lift that hammer? Yes, I can. Yes, I can.
Reagon, as she is often wont to do--whether onstage or on Facebook--reminded us what time it is, that we're the ones we've been waiting for, that "there is nobody else but you." I have never heard Reagon as seductively full of revolutionary fire as she was during this show, seated with her guitar on the far left end of Giddens's musical crew. She came with legacy and nothing to prove, and yet she proved so much in every moment, whether supporting her sisters or rocking out on her own.
I was sorry that I missed Thursday's residency show, the one devoted to Turrisi's artistry. His accordion-playing on Friday was a delectable surprise--every bit as fluid, as supple, as his piano work.
This coming February, look for Songs of Our Native Daughters, a Smithsonian Folkways album recorded by Giddens, Russell and Kiah, confronting slavery, racism, and misogyny in our nation's history and offering stories of Black struggle, resistance, and hope.
And here, from 2016, is Giddens's and Russell's a capella performance of Russell's "The Wind That Shakes The Barley."
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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.
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