There’s positive in everything... even Trump
She’s seen success and separation, but Rhiannon Giddens is never unbowed
AS a member of Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon Giddens caught the attention in that rarest of beasts, an African-American bluegrass band. She is still a member of the Grammy-award winning group but two solo albums in the last three years have highlighted the singular talents of the banjo and fiddle-playing singer from Greensboro, North Carolina.
Her profile rose further after she played the part of Hallie Jordan in the last two series of US show Nashville. And she has a strong Irish connection – she has been dividing her time between North Carolina and Limerick since she married Limerick musician Michael Laffan in 2007, although they are no longer together, more of which later.
Fans in her second home will be able to see her perform next week at the Sligo Live festival and she has just completed work on her third solo album, which she recorded in Dublin.
‘I’m particularly excited about the album I’ve just finished in Windmill Lane,’ she says. ‘I think it will also appeal to people who like what I say with my music rather than just the music itself.’
That will please fans who discovered her with the release of Freedom Highway. That 2017 album detailed the experiences of African-American people through the centuries on self-penned tracks and astutely chosen covers by the likes of Mississippi John Hurt and Roebuck Staples. Last year, she was also the recipient of a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship, a bursary that, she says, now allows her sufficient financial freedom to explore new musical possibilities. ‘You have to make a living as a musician, and God knows that can be tough these days,’ she says. ‘The fellowship allowed me to slow down and not just have to fret about going on the road all the time. It gave me the freedom to write a ballet because I chose to.’
She did so with Dublin-based Italian musician, Francesco Turrisi, who will also be heard on her third album which she expects to release next year.
‘I worked on a piece called Lucy Negro, Redux, for the Nashville Ballet. It’s based around the idea that Shakespeare was writing about a black woman in some of his sonnets (known as the Dark Lady sonnets),’ she says.
‘I’m not a trained composer in anyway. It was the first thing on which myself and Francesco collaborated.
‘He is a trained conservatory musician and I had the benefit of his knowledge in seeking out what I needed to hear and know to embark on the project . ... To see ballet dancers dancing to music I wrote was pretty amazing.’
When I last spoke to Rhiannon, it was shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump. She was fearful of what his election could mean for America. If she is not now sanguine about it, she does see opportunity. ‘There is a positive thing in everything,’ she says almost breezily.
‘The nice thing about it is, that people who may have disagreed about how things were going down weren’t sufficiently motivated to stand up and make their voices heard. The reality of Trump is that people are now going, “we really need to get out, get involved with movements that can bring about change.”’
Giddens is upbeat and by no means Pollyanna-ish, but she has even derived positives from her separation from her Irish husband, who is still one of her ‘best friends’. ‘I’m quite happy to be 40, 41 now. I’m hitting my stride in terms of my personal relationships I feel,’ she says.
‘I’ve been through a lot of changes. I separated from my kids’ father; he is still amazing and one of my best friends.
‘I’m not saying it was an easy thing; it was very difficult for all the family. We posted a picture of the two of us and the kids together on Facebook and basically said, that we see this not as a contraction but an expansion. We look at it as growth. We received an amazing amount of support through the Facebook post. The vast majority of people want you to be happy. It’s important for people to see that you don’t have to go down that road of destruction after a separation. Why do that when you still love each other? It took some doing but we’re happy.’
Rhiannon Giddens plays Sligo Live on October 28. The festival runs from October 24 to October 29. See sligolive.ie for details.
‘She’s been dividing her time between North Carolina and Limerick’