Grammy Winner Rhiannon Giddens on Her New Album

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And next, Rhiannon Giddens is currently carving out her own impressive legacy. She’s the singer, songwriter, banjo player, fiddler, and actress who keeps adding strings to her bow. “You’re the One” is her latest release and her first full album of original songs. She won the Pulitzer Prize in music for her opera “Omar,” and she’s been on a global tour with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road ensemble. Now, she’s joining Walter Isaacson to

discuss her unstoppable career.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you. And, Rhiannon Giddens, welcome to the show.

RHIANNON GIDDENS, MUSICIAN, “YOU’RE THE ONE” AND GRAMMY AWARD-WINNING MUSICIAN: Thanks for having me.

ISAACSON: You just released “You’re the One” this past summer. It’s your first album of all original songs, and it is sort of called an Americana type music album. Why was it important for you to do this now?

GIDDENS: Well, I think that I had all these songs that I’d written and had been kind of waiting for the time, and I had been doing a lot of pretty heavy work over the last, you know, I’d say 10 years, very culturally, you know, relevant work, historically complicated work, and I just — I kind of needed a moment to just kind of let loose and have some fun and also still represent, you know, a different side of myself as an artist, because, you know, as soon as you start doing exactly the same stuff time and time again, you kind of start to lose. — I don’t know, you just — it’s important as artists, I think, to explore all the different sides of who we are because it strengthens then the other side that I had been doing, you know, at least that’s that was the thought.

ISAACSON: Well, you just talked about the historically complicated work you’ve been doing. And we talked about that a few years ago, your researches, everything into the banjo and into how music gets made. Explain to people what you’ve been doing recently on this historically complicated field.

GIDDENS: Well, recently my two sort of biggest projects in that, one was an opera or is an opera called “Omar.” That was — that’s about the story of a Senegalese Quranic scholar who was stolen at the age of 37 and sold into slavery and died an enslaved man at — you know, over 50 years in North Carolina, which is my home state. And the other big project that I’ve been working on, especially in the last couple years, is the American Railroad Project with Silk Road Ensemble, kind of trans cultural ensemble started by Yo-Yo Ma over, gosh, 20 something years ago now, and those were — you know, those have been a lot of time thinking about some pretty dark stuff, you know.

ISAACSON: I was surprised to read about this opera because, boy, it’s complicated. And I realized that you had studied opera so much and that it’s an important part of your background. People are kind of intimidated by opera. Tell me how you decided to go down that road and why that opera was so important.

GIDDENS: Well, it’s really interesting because like, yes, I started as an opera singer, but I came to classical music pretty late. I didn’t know how to read music. I went to conservatory because I was just like, oh, I’d heard the singing. It was like, it’s so cool. They sing all the time. And it’s all this drama. And it was pretty — you know, it was a steep learning curve, but I fell in love with the art form as an adult. And then, of course, I got a degree and I did a lot of opera and I loved opera, but I was kind of wondering, you know, what was my role in this world to do an opera? I wasn’t sure opera was it. So, that’s when I found the banjo and kind of — you know, that took me down roads that have now, you know, been a part of my life for a long time. I didn’t expect to come back to opera, but when Spoleto — the Spoleto Festival approached me about doing an opera about Omar, I kind of went, well, this is amazing because this is a story that’s so important and an art form that is stigmatized, you know, and sort of put into this, you know, kind of classic or class warfare thing, you know, like only, you know, these kind of people enjoy opera, only these kind of people do opera And that’s such a — you know, that’s such a false notion. You know, opera is really should be for everyone. It started out as something that was for everyone is just a music drama. And because our pop music is so different, it’s so far away from our classical music right now, it’s harder for people to kind of have a door into opera sometimes. So, we really need stories that are relevant to people.

ISAACSON: So, you did something that was very culturally relevant and brought it to opera. But tie that back to the album, “You’re the One,” that you released this year.

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ISAACSON: You were Grammy nominated in the Americana music category. So, explain what is the Americana music category and how are you trying to reshape it?

GIDDENS: Well, I think it’s — the problem with genres is that they stay the same while the music changes, right? And music is always changing and it’s always like turning from this into that. And American music particularly, because of all the different influences that have gone into it, it really especially does that where, you know, music is a moving target. You can’t ever — you can’t step in the same river twice, right? So, that — as the genres, you know, sort of ossify, we keep moving. So, we have to keep inventing more and more genres to sort of, you know, represent. And so, this — it’s an attempt to really celebrate the — all of the influences that go into American music and to say, you know, Americana is not one thing, it’s all four things, you know that make American music, you know, so unique. So, that’s the way I look at it, you know. So, it’s always an honor to be nominated and to be in the Americana category with so many other incredible artists. I’m just like — you know, I don’t feel like anybody loses because it’s such a wonderful representation of what’s going on in the music world. It’s not always in the bright light of the mainstream eye, if you know what I mean.

ISAACSON: Well, you helped define the Americana category by your performances and your music. But you’ve also informed it by your historical studies, especially on the role of the banjo and other acoustical instruments from way back. Tell me how your historical studies help inform the songs you did on this album, “You’re the One.”

GIDDENS: For me, it’s — this record, in particular, is not — and nothing’s ever detached from the historical — my historical record, it’s always kind of infused in the music. So, even just creating a tune, a song like “Louisiana Man,” that’s — that is, you know, the centerpiece of it is the banjo, the center of it is the banjo. I wrote it on the banjo. And my particular banjo is a replica of a banjo from 1858 and it’s, you know, a banjo that’s at the crossroads between Africa and Europe. You know, the banjo being invented by African the African diaspora, particularly in the Caribbean, and before it moved up into North America and became known as the symbol of black people for a long time. And then, in the 1840s and ’50s, it starts to make that transition to mainstream culture and European American culture. And the banjo that I have sits at the crossroads of that. So, even just a song that’s created around that is imbued with history, even though it’s a song about, you know, a bad man who wasn’t a very nice person and left this — you know, the singer behind and she has to kind of like, you know, strive on. So, this record is a little subtler. The only song on the record that’s really specifically tied to a historical event is “Another Wasted Life” and it’s a very recent event about Kalief Browder who was put into prison for a crime he didn’t commit and was put into solitary confinement. And when he was released, he committed suicide. And the whole — what that represents about the whole carceral system, you know, really struck me in a very forceful way, and I wrote “Another Wasted Life” based on that. So, that’s — that is a really more recent bit of history than what I usually do in my music, but it felt like a very important song to write. And this collection, it felt like it was important to make sure that it was living in other songs that could, you know, surround it.

ISAACSON: How did the song about Kalief get you more involved in the criminal justice movement?

GIDDENS: Well, I wanted to use that song to raise awareness. You know, because whenever I tell that story, people are always like, oh, my gosh, and I’m like, yes, and there’s like so many others like him who are sitting in prison for something they didn’t do because they got caught up, because they were fingered, you know, because the system is so, in a lot of ways, focused on closing cases, and it’s not to say that there’s not a lot of good work done, there’s also a lot of work that is not serving us, you know, and it’s not serving these people who are stuck behind bars. And I think that that is an important — it’s a really important thing to tell people about because I don’t think they realize how many numbers of people are waiting to, you know — for a lawyer to come represent them or for their case to wind its way through a year’s long, you know, appeal system or whatever. And so, there’s a really. wonderful group of organizations under the Innocence Project, and there are different ones in different states, and they’re dedicated to helping these people. And so, it was kind of a no- brainer to use “Another Waste of Life” to connect with those organizations, particularly the one that we connected with was the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, and I made a video with us about 22 guys who had been exonerated by — in the system and wanted to represent, you know, in order to raise funds, to raise awareness for the guys who are still behind bars.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

GIDDENS: That’s been a really amazing and meaningful collaboration for me. I — it kind of made the — a whole album alive for me because that’s really what I’m here to do, I feel like, is to use my art to try to raise awareness of, you know, things that we really need to fix in our society.

ISAACSON: You said your album has been inspired by some of the great female singers of our time. Obviously, Aretha also Nina Simone, I think Dolly Parton. What did you take from them?

GIDDENS: I took like bits and pieces from every — all of them lived their — in some cases live, like Dolly’s still around, but, you know, dedicated to living their lives the way that they wanted to live their lives, and, you know, for good and for bad, like, at times, and I just — that’s something that I draw a lot of inspiration from, you know. And also, just the sheer talent, you know, it’s the sheer talent of somebody like Aretha Franklin where she just opens her mouth and you’re just like, oh, my gosh. But she also just would not be herself, like she was herself — I mean, at least as far as I know, I didn’t know her personally. I only met her one time. But she just like, lived her life, you know, and like, put this incredible art out and just lived her life. And I don’t know, I just am inspired by all of those ladies and I can only hope to live, you know, a fraction of the truth that they lived, you know.

ISAACSON: You address some of that with the song “Hen in the Foxhouse,” you know, what it’s like to be a woman in this world of music.

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ISAACSON: Tie it into that, if you would.

GIDDENS: Yes. I mean, “Hen in the Foxhouse” obviously it’s playing on words, which I love to do. And, you know, that’s the earliest song on the record, because they’re written over a selection of years. So, that’s earlier. I mean, of course, things have gotten a lot better. It’s still — you know, it’s still pretty man heavy in the music world, but it has gotten a lot better, which is really great. But at that point I was — you know, I was feeling some things and I was just thinking about like how I was often the only woman in the room kind of over and over and over again. And just kind of wrote that piece as a way to say like, look, you know, we have to do this thing. I was talking to other women who, like, were band leaders and, you know, the — just the frustrations that could come along with that. And, you know, it’s like, I’m not the only hen in the foxhouse, like, there’s many of us. And so, you know, the idea is that we kind of pull — we pull strengths from each other when we’re in those situations, even if we’re not there in the room with each other, we know that they’re — you know, we know each other is there in the world. And so, we have this community and that keeps us strong.

ISAACSON: I think the only song on the album that’s a collaboration is with Jason Isbell, right? And it’s “Yet to Be,” and it involves a relationship between a black and an Irish person.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

ISAACSON: That’s sort of drawn from your experience. Tell me about that.

GIDDENS: Well, it’s funny. It’s like you could say that, but it’s also I’m just thinking really more historically, you know, since, of course, I met – – married an Irish man and that’s what — it is a part of my history, but I’ve been drawn to knowing more about that history in America, you know, and the interaction between black folks and Irish folks. And whereas, there’s a lot of points of contention and violence, you know, with those groups of people. There are also countless, you know, acts and stories of black people and Irish people making music together and dancing together and making babies together, because that’s kind of what we do, right? We come together and we create new things, whether that’s music or children. And there was so many, you know, moments of that in American history that we don’t talk about, that we don’t really — you know, we’ll talk about the draft riots, but we don’t talk about the countless, you know, families living in Five Point that were mixed, you know, or whatever, and I’m a mixed person. So, it’s really a song about that  It was a moment of kind of unusual optimism for me of just thinking about what can we celebrate that — you know, like thinking about my parents when they got married, it was like three years after it was like federally recognized as a legal thing. You know, that’s insane. You know, I’m like 45 years old and I can, you know — like my parents’ generation, you know, in a lot of places it was illegal, you know. So, thinking about how far we have come and thinking about how we can’t take that for granted. And so, that’s a song that really celebrates the beauty of that and how we cannot lose, you know, what it means to come together and to see each other as human beings and not as a color or a creed or a religion.

ISAACSON: Yes. So, you sing about people coming together, not as a color or a creed, people coming together from different backgrounds as part of that song. To what extent is that true of American music, if that’s how it is formed?

GIDDENS: That is literally American music. It is — I mean, and we can’t forget class here, because for me, that’s the thing that we don’t talk about enough. That American music was formed and created by people from all different cultures. And some have more outsized effect than others, like African Americans have a huge, you know, effect on American music, but they’re not the only ones. And so, there is this combination of people living cheek by jowl, you know, trading licks, like, learning from each other, and these genres that come out of this cultural exchange, but it’s also all poor people, you know, it’s people of the working class, people who are trying to make a living and trying to do the best they can, and they’re bringing their music into the mix. And like there’s a certain energy that goes into that and all the who are kind of like scrabbling together, you know. And it’s — I’m not romanticizing it, because they fought a lot too. But ultimately, the music kind of wins out. And when you look at the history of any kind of music in America, there — that is at the heart of it, you know. And that is for me, the center of what I like to tell about this story is that American music is a story of triumph, really, it’s a story of, you know, this country that it — that was born out of bloodshed and so many terrible things, you know, as a nation state, but underneath that, there’s all this cultural mixing that’s going from also tragedy from — you know, people coming over because they’ve been run off or they have no other options or whatever. And out of all this negativity and ugliness, there is this beauty that’s born of all of that. And I’m like, we can’t lose hope. Like, you know, we have to kind of like look at that and go, isn’t that beautiful? We can do it in here — we can do it with music, why can’t we do it elsewhere?

ISAACSON: Rhiannon Giddens, thanks for joining us.

GIDDENS: It’s been a pleasure.