The breathtakingly prolific artist, Rhiannon Giddens, inhabits a rich territory that breaks the constraints of time and space – the nourishment that comes from tradition on the one hand, and collaborations at the cutting edge of musical cross-fertilisation on the other, and music rooted in her native North Carolina, as an anchor which allows her to work with musicians from all over the planet.
She’s the artistic director of the Silk Road Project, initiated by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, but she also regularly returns to the Old Time music of the South, as if connecting with the earth from which she was born were a spiritual necessity. She has adventurously mined that rich seam of culture since her early days as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a venture that explored the musical ferment that arose out of the contact in the 19th century between the descendants of African slaves with the poverty-stricken Scots and Irish who had settled in the Appalachian Mountains. As with so much of the music from the American South, there was a continuous and fruitful conversation between black and white, a dialogue that thrived in spite of the dark history of racism and oppression.
Hot on the heels of What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, (2025) an enchanting banjo and fiddle duet album of Old Time classics with violinist Justin Robinson, Giddens has made Hope is the Thing with Feathers, a wonderful album of songs that resonate with those well-known tunes and songs. Once again, Dirk Powell, whose Louisiana studio was used for the recordings, is at the heart of the project. He has co-written many of the tracks with Giddens: the small masterpiece “Step Away Blues”, in which fretless banjo and fiddle urge each other on in a slow dance of bent notes, the tones sliding to and fro, as if the instruments were channelling the deep emotions the song summons so well. This is the music which echoes the sound and feel of the West African ngoni – an ancestor of the banjo – and the raw sound of the bowed soku, and brought swing and syncopation to the jigs and reels that the white settlers had brought from Celtic Europe
Giddens’s voice has grown and become more versatile. She can sing with the folk-inflected finesse of Joan Baez on “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”, a musical setting of a poem by Emily Dickinson; display the vocal subtlety of black women who have preceded her, from Bessie Smith to Aretha; or growl like a gospel shouter on “Carolina Rain”, a song which expresses most touchingly Giddens’s attachment to her native land. She is, most of all, very much her own woman. Her spirit encourages the musicians she has drawn together for this heart-warming and varied collection: from the delicate acoustic guitar of Congo-born Niwel Tsumbu to her sister Lalenja’s voice, which provides that uncanny effect when siblings match their similar-but-different sounds, the warm pulse of Jason Sypher’s bass, subtle fills from Francesco Turrisi on the accordeon, or Native American Charly Lowry singing with her on “Going Home” written by Pura Fé, who has more than anyone, connected the American South’s cultural mix of black , red and white.
Apart from the songs Giddens has written with Dirk Powell, there are homages - the classic "Freight Train" made famous by its co-writer, the influenttial Piedmont-style guitarist and singer Elizabeth Cotten, and "High Up on the Mountain" from Old Time Music legend Ola Belle Reed, who sang with that 'high mountain sound', as folklorist Alan Lomax described its nasal tone.
This is indeed an album about ‘going home’. Rhiannon Giddens, draws constant nourishment from her roots, even though her artistic CV spans a dizzying range of creative adventures. The magic at the heart of her work, featured so delightfully in this album, is fuelled by a natural-born soulfulness, the gift of being wholly herself, without ever reaching for popularity or stardom, and yet making her one of the handful of most extraordinary American musicians working today.
