Rhiannon Giddens | ||
| Allmusic Biography : Singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens is best known as the frontwoman of African-American string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, whose 2010 album Genuine Negro Jig earned them a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album. Raised in Piedmont, North Carolina, Giddens studied opera at the Oberlin Conservatory before relocating back home, where she became immersed in the rural musical traditions of that region. A chance meeting with future bandmates Justin Robinson and Dom Flemons at the 2005 Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina resulted in the formation of their first folk project, Sankofa Strings. Originally an outlet to perform various early African-American musical styles like blues, country, hot string jazz, and Caribbean, the bandmembers ended up learning much of their early repertoire from legendary old-time fiddler Joe Thompson. Adopting the name the Carolina Chocolate Drops, they released four eclectic and well-respected albums before signing with Nonesuch Records to release their wildly successful 2010 breakthrough album. Following the success of Genuine Negro Jig, the band continued to tour and record with an ever-evolving lineup that remained centered around Giddens powerful vocals and fiddle/banjo playing. Drafted by producer T-Bone Burnett to perform solo at the 2013 Another Day, Another Time concert (celebrating the musical era of the film Inside Llewyn Davis) in New York, she gave a showstopping performance of the Odetta classic "Waterboy," which was widely considered the highlight of the evening. Just a few months later in early 2014, she again worked with Burnett on the collaborative New Basement Tapes recording project, which featured Elvis Costello, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Marcus Mumford (Mumford & Sons), and Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes) writing new music to recently discovered Bob Dylan lyrics. Her own Burnett-produced solo debut, Tomorrow Is My Turn, was released a year later in February 2015. At the end of the year, she released an EP called Factory Girl, which was culled from the same sessions as Tomorrow Is My Turn; its title track received a Grammy nomination for Best American Roots Performance in 2017, while the EP itself was nominated for Best Folk Album. Giddens released her second solo album, Freedom Highway, which she co-produced with Dirk Powell, in February 2017. Giddens teamed with Italian jazz musician Francesco Turrisi for 2019s There Is No Other, an album designed to emphasize connections between cultures. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 6 Title: All the Pretty Horses Released: 2009 Tracks: 13 Duration: 1:00:10 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Henry Martin (04:18) 2 Cliffs Dog (04:42) 3 All the Pretty Horses (04:35) 4 Candles in the Dark (04:34) 5 Griogal Cridhe (04:07) 6 Little Margaret (03:23) 7 In a Garden So Green (05:42) 8 First of May (05:22) 9 A la Claire Fontaine (05:51) 10 A la Una Yo Naci (05:55) 11 Lowlands Low (04:24) 12 Used to Be Bells (02:38) 13 Ae Fond Kiss (04:39) |
 | Album: 2 of 6 Title: Tomorrow Is My Turn Released: 2015-02-10 Tracks: 11 Duration: 43:47 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Last Kind Words (04:14) 2 Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind (03:39) 3 Waterboy (03:45) 4 She’s Got You (04:17) 5 Up Above My Head (03:10) 6 Tomorrow Is My Turn (04:37) 7 Black Is the Color (03:45) 8 Round About the Mountain (03:30) 9 Shake Sugaree (04:24) 10 O Love Is Teasin’ (04:33) 11 Angel City (03:53) |
| Tomorrow Is My Turn : Allmusic album Review : Stepping away from the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon Giddens teams up with producer T-Bone Burnett for her 2015 solo debut, Tomorrow Is My Turn. Giddens previously worked with Burnett on Lost on the River, an album where musicians added new music to lyrics Bob Dylan left behind during The Basement Tapes, and she also appeared in a concert he shepherded for the Coen brothers folk revival opus Inside Llewyn Davis -- two projects steeped in history, as is Tomorrow Is My Turn. Here, Giddens expands upon the neo-string band of the Carolina Chocolate Drops by crafting an abbreviated and fluid history of 20th century roots music -- along with the older forms that informed it -- concentrating on songs either written or popularized by female musicians. As a torchbearer, not a revivalist, Giddins isnt concerned with replicating either the sound or feel of the past, so she comfortably slips a subdued hip-hop drum loop into "Black Is the Color," a standard here credited to Nina Simone, and blurs country and soul boundaries on Patsy Clines "Shes Got You." These two are the most overt tamperings with tradition but Giddens is sly throughout Tomorrow Is My Turn, giving Elizabeth Cottens "Shake Sugaree" a deceptively lively little lilt and casting Dolly Partons "Dont Let It Trouble Your Mind" as a rolling progressive folk tune that creates an invisible bridge between past and present. Much of Giddens work on Tomorrow Is My Turn demonstrates the benefits of such careful, deliberate sculpting, making it a nice fit for Burnetts handsome acoustica. Thankfully, the austereness that sometimes creeps into T-Bones new millennial work is nowhere to be found; theres a warmth that radiates from Giddens, which is crucial to the success of the record. Her easy, welcoming touch is a balm every time Tomorrow Is My Turn is played, but its upon successive spins that the intricacies of Giddens construction -- not to mention her subtle political messages -- begin to take hold. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 6 Title: Factory Girl Released: 2015-11-27 Tracks: 5 Duration: 20:45 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 That Lonesome Road (03:05) 2 Mouth Music (02:52) 3 Moonshiner’s Daughter (03:58) 4 Underneath the Harlem Moon (03:49) 5 Factory Girl (06:58) |
 | Album: 4 of 6 Title: Freedom Highway Released: 2017-02-24 Tracks: 12 Duration: 50:01 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 At the Purchaser’s Option (04:16) 2 The Angels Laid Him Away (02:33) 3 Julie (04:29) 4 Birmingham Sunday (06:15) 5 Better Get It Right the First Time (03:25) 6 We Could Fly (04:53) 7 Hey Bébé (03:19) 8 Come Love Come (05:20) 9 The Love We Almost Had (04:19) 10 Baby Boy (04:29) 11 Following the North Star (01:56) 12 Freedom Highway (04:47) |
| Freedom Highway : Allmusic album Review : Rhiannon Giddens has always been keenly aware of the arc of American history -- the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the 2000s band she once led, was designed as a critique of the darker moments of Americana -- but Freedom Highway, her second solo album, puts her intent into perspective. Where her 2015 solo debut, Tomorrow Is My Turn, was essentially a covers album, gaining its importance through context, Freedom Highway relies on originals, but the past is never far behind. This should be expected from Giddens, who is at her core a folk artist building upon -- and expanding -- tradition, but its still startling to realize how she establishes a vernacular at the outset of Freedom Highway, then explores all of the possibilities of African-American folk music on the album. "At the Purchasers Option," the song that inaugurates Freedom Highway, explicitly evokes slavery, and its spare and haunting, standing in contrast to the title-track closer, a funky number that illustrates how far African-Americans have traveled during the course of the history of the United States. Throughout Freedom Highway, Giddens plays with this idea -- how oppression gave way to freedom -- and its not just through her lyrics, but how the music expands as the album reaches its conclusion: at the outset, it seems austere, but by its conclusion its a robust celebration of all the weird, wonderful parts of America. This isnt an accident. Freedom Highway draws upon deep American traditions, and while its form may be a throwback, it speaks to a time when the phrase "Black Lives Matter" can be seen as controversial and, in doing so, it illustrates how these issues are deeply ingrained in American life and cannot be forgotten. | ||
 | Album: 5 of 6 Title: Folk Songs Released: 2017-06-09 Tracks: 9 Duration: 39:34 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Oh Where (03:19) 2 Ramblin’ Boy (05:49) 3 The Butcher’s Boy (03:53) 4 Factory Girl (07:09) 5 Last Kind Words (03:17) 6 I See the Sign (06:02) 7 Montague, que tu es haute (02:31) 8 Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier (03:55) 9 Lullaby (03:35) |
| Folk Songs : Allmusic album Review : The Kronos Quartet have famously refused to allow themselves to be hemmed in by the narrower parameters of the traditional classical repertoire, devoting themselves to contemporary classical works, experimental pieces, and other compositions outside the usual confines of art music. Folk Songs clearly falls into the third category, and lives up to the title; it features nine selections drawn from the American, British, and French traditional songbooks, and finds the ensemble performing with vocalists Sam Amidon, Olivia Chaney, Rhiannon Giddens, and Natalie Merchant. With the exception of Giddens sprightly take on "Lullaby," the tone of the vocal performances is somber, with these songs depicting tragic and unfortunate circumstances. Though Kronos accompaniment is superb throughout, their arrangements are generally subtle and never upstage the singers. In fact, the quartets attack imaginatively meshes with the tone and spirit of the vocalists, especially as violinists David Harrington and John Sherba mimic Olivia Chaneys harmonium on "Ramblin Boy." While the strings dont aim for strictly Appalachian effects on these songs, most of these performances strike a satisfying balance between honoring the melodies of these numbers (the austere backing to Merchants turn on "The Butchers Boy") and bending them into new and intriguing shapes ("I See the Sign," where Amidons guitar picks out the framework of the tune and the quartet spins around it, by turns sweet and chaotic). And the instrumental version of "Last Kind Words" is a memorable blend of percussive pizzicato lines and bluesy sway that suggests this album could have been nearly as strong without the work of the vocalists, fine as they are (especially Giddens and Merchant, both of whom rise to this challenge with flying colors). Folk Songs is a smart and emotionally effective exploration of the folk tradition that respects musical history without being chained to it, and its an experiment the Kronos Quartet would do well to repeat in the future. | ||
 | Album: 6 of 6 Title: there is no Other Released: 2019-05-03 Tracks: 12 Duration: 45:00 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Ten Thousand Voices (02:57) 2 Letter (04:03) 3 Wayfaring Stranger (04:47) 4 There Is No Other (02:25) 5 Trees on the Mountains (05:15) 6 Pizzica di San Vito (02:07) 7 Brown Baby (05:07) 8 Briggs’ Forró (04:03) 9 Little Margaret (03:03) 10 Black Swan (04:17) 11 I’m on My Way (02:57) 12 He Will See You Through (03:59) |