It’s amazing what can happen when you bond supremely talented like minds, hearts and souls.
When the Grammy-winning, intensely thoughtful folk roots wunderkind Rhiannon Giddens was asked by Smithsonian Folkways to create something from her deep minstrel banjo research, she had an idea. Why not ask three of her infinitely talented musical soul sisters (well, she asked four but one couldn’t make it) — Leyla McCalla, Amythyst Kiah and Birds of Chicago’s Allison Russell — to collaborate with her on an album focusing on the banjo, minstrel music, the painful era of slavery and the intense corresponding black experience?
Well that she did, and from the beginning, everyone knew it would be something special, having this stellar quartet dive into this complex world of music, one that excavates beauty from pain, one that Giddens is infinitely familiar with.
But as the superstar alliance began to gel, the four women were blown away by not only the synchronicity of the experience, but also by what they would create, foster and learn.
“I think what you always hope for,” said Russell, “and what you dream of when you’re collaborating with other musicians, is that the whole magically becomes greater than the sum of the parts. And I think that that really happened for us over those 12 days together. We all just were really galvanized by each other, we went places we wouldn’t have gone just on our own I think. That makes it extra special for me.”
“What became evident was that here we are, four black women in this specific moment in America,” said McCalla, who played with Giddens in the Carolina Chocolate Drops, “and we have a lot to say about it, and we have a lot to reflect on, especially as we are playing this instrument which is also deeply reflective of America’s complicated history.”
It was the somewhat related yet different experiences that the ensemble came into the collaboration with, along with Giddens’ vast education on the topic, that elevated the themes of what would become the critically acclaimed album Songs Of Our Native Daughters, and would spark a short tour that stops at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC on July 24th.
“Even within our group, we each have an individual story and a different background and different ideas that we brought to the table,” said Kiah. “Obviously, Rhiannon’s wealth of knowledge of minstrelsy and the banjo and all of those things played such a huge role in helping get the ball rolling. She had already written the song, ‘Mama’s Crying Long.’ The day it was recorded, no one left the studio that day without crying, it was just such a powerful thing. But her role there was bringing in the historical context and all of us definitely learning a lot. It inspired me to do some more research, and I found out that at least a third or so of the slaves that were brought over were children that were kidnapped. So between all of our experiences, and what we all learned, it ended up being this very eclectic album.”
And although Giddens’ original focus remained, the four used their myriad of talents to expand the narrative to include other related sentiments and feelings that have always resonated deeply within them.
“I think that there so many things happening with this record,” Kiah said. “It’s touching on so many levels, breaking through so many different kinds of stereotypes on its own, alongside telling a compelling story that was much needed to hear.”
“We’re all writers,” added Russell. “That’s how we process things, and that’s how we filter the world, and the past, and trauma, and beauty. It all gets filtered through our writing, and I think that’s what came to the fore.”
And it’s the banjo that is at the musical core of this exceptional journey. Not only have all four ladies played the banjo often over the course of their stellar careers, it is the complex and, for many, unknown history of the banjo that lends itself perfectly to the narrative and vibe of this brilliant project.
“Black people were playing some variation of the banjo about 100 years before white people started playing it,” Kiah said. “Fast forward to the 1920s to the commercial music industry, and they started creating genres and then segregated the genres, and many black people that were in string bands, they weren’t being recorded because they didn’t fit the hillbilly description, even though they were playing what was considered hillbilly music. Then onward with minstrelsy. So why would anybody that’s trying to access freedom, why would they want to pick up a banjo, if that’s what they’re going to be associated with? So anyway, it is this really interesting concept to take the banjo and reframe it with this particular work, because it is going to make people realize, oh, okay, the banjo is not an instrument for white bluegrass! It has got a brother.”
“The banjo is such a uniquely American instrument,” continued Russell, “and that comes out of all of the pain of colonialism, plus slavery, plus people that had been stolen from their lands and brought here bringing the banza, which was the early banjo prototype. Then later it gets adopted by the poor white folks in the region who were working basically cheek by jowl with their enslaved black brothers and sisters, and they adopt it. And then it becomes sort of whitewashed over time to the point where people think of it as some sort of Appalachian-only instrument or something. But it’s really the story of integration, willing or not, of all of these incredible influences, African and European. And it makes the banjo have a resonance and a power to it.”
“So, we’re expanding the identity of the banjo,” Kiah added, “at the same time as we’re expanding the identity of black people too.”
It was Giddens who rallied this once in a lifetime foursome together, but it was all four who made Songs Of Our Native Daughters one of the most thought provoking records in recent memory.
“I think a lot of us don’t really know our history, because there’s a lot of shame and hiding of what has really happened here to create this country,” McCalla said. “And so this album really kind of addresses that directly through the stories of black women, both today and in the past. And I think that the conversations that this album has started deeply relate to work that I’ve been doing and work that I will continue to do in my career, the same with the others. And so it’s just a really important and special moment. ”
Songs Of Our Native Daughters July 24th performance at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC is sold out.