Silkroad Ensemble & Rhiannon Giddens - American Railroad

Nonesuch will release Silkroad Ensemble and Rhiannon Giddens’s American Railroad album this autumn as part of Silkroad’s multi-year American Railroad initiative, which sets out to make the history and stories behind the project accessible to broader audiences. An American Railroad podcast series, in partnership with PRX and hosted by Rhiannon Giddens, will drop on November 14, with both the album and podcast series coinciding with Silkroad’s upcoming American Railroad U.S. tour.

The American Railroad album reflects the programme for Silkroad’s inaugural American Railroad tour in 2023. Its 13 tracks include commissioned pieces by Cécile McLorin Salvant, Suzanne Kite, and Silkroad artist Wu Man, as well as new arrangements of songs by Rhiannon Giddens and fellow Silkroad artists Haruka Fujii, Maeve Gilchrist, and Mazz Swift. Rounding out the album are original compositions and arrangements by Silkroad artists Pura Fé, Sandeep Das, Niwel Tsumbu, and Kaoru Watanabe. American Railroad was recorded live during tour stops at the Green Music Center in Sonoma, CA and Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, CA.

The first single ‘Swannanoa Tunnel’ is a song written by wrongfully imprisoned Black men and women, who unwillingly risked their lives building the Swannanoa Tunnel in Giddens’s home state of North Carolina. It serves as a tribute to them, ending with a version of the popular traditional tune  ‘Steel-Driving Man’ about the folk hero John Henry, who beat the steam drill with his hammer, only to die of a burst heart.

McLorin Salvant’s first-ever Silkroad commission, ‘Have You Seen My Man?’, tells the imagined story of a woman walking slowly along a train track, joined by generations of wanderers who cannot ride the train though it was built by their labours. For Kite’s work, titled ‘Wíhaŋblapi Mázačhaŋku’, she created a graphic score using the Lakota written language based on dreams from members of the Silkroad Ensemble. Wu Man’s ‘Rainy Day’ combines her instrument, the pipa, with the banjo and voice to reflect the emotions of Chinese wives and mothers who miss their husbands and sons working on the railroad across the Pacific Ocean. Fujii’s ‘Tamping Song’ celebrates the Japanese immigrant contribution to the railroad, particularly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; while Gilchrist’s ‘Far Down Far’ shines light on the tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities within Irish railroad workers. Swift’s take on the spiritual, ‘O Shout!’, reminds us of the way in which enslaved people in the U.S. were able to communicate complex messages of hope, devotion, freedom, and insurrection – through music.

Yo-Yo Ma conceived Silkroad in 1998, recognizing the historical Silk Road as a model for cultural collaboration—for the exchange of ideas, tradition, and innovation across borders. In a groundbreaking experiment, he brought together musicians from the lands of the Silk Road to co-create a musical language founded in difference, thus creating the foundation of Silkroad: both a touring ensemble comprised of world-class musicians from all over the globe and a Boston-based non-profit organization working to make a positive impact across borders through the arts.Today, under the leadership of Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens and Executive Director Ben Hartley, Silkroad leads social impact initiatives and educational programming alongside the creation of new music by the Grammy Award-winning Silkroad Ensemble.

Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A two-time Grammy Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winner, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, singer and instrumentalist, and composer of opera, ballet, and film, Giddens has centred her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, and advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art. As Pitchfork once said, “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration” – a journey that has led to NPR naming her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century and to American Songwriter calling her “one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet.”

Tracklisting
1.  Invocation (Pura Fé Crescioni)
2. Swannanoa Tunnel / Steel-Driving Man (Traditional, arr. Rhiannon Giddens)
3.  Rainy Day (Wu Man)
4. Far Down Far (Maeve Gilchrist)
5. Tamping Song (Haruka Fujii)
6. Rela (Sandeep Das)
7. Wíhaŋblapi Mázačhaŋku (Suzanne Kite
8. Have You Seen My Man? (Cécile McLorin Salvant)
9. Swannanoa Strings (Traditional, arr. Silkroad Ensemble)
10. Milimo (Niwel Tsumbu)
11. Fukagu Sanjurokkei (Kaoru Watanabe)
12. Mahk Jchi (Pura Fé Crescioni
13. O Shout! (Mazz Swift)

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