Rhiannon Giddens On Writing Slave Narratives From "The Woman's Point Of View"

It was venerated artist/producer T Bone Burnett who first coaxed North Carolinian singer and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens into the solo realms after over a decade fronting old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, having already utilised her remarkable talents for a couple of musical projects he was curating.

Giddens' first album Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015) — produced by Burnett — found her predominantly reinterpreting classic songs of yesteryear made famous by esteemed artists such as Patsy Cline, Nina Simone, Dolly Parton and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. It earned immediate and raucous acclaim — including being nominated for Best Folk Album at the Grammy Awards — and signified to many a new star's seemingly unstoppable ascent.

When time came to work on a follow-up album it would have been easy for Giddens to take the path that had served her so well first time around. Instead she chose a completely different tack, her powerful new album Freedom Highway containing nine original tracks as well as a traditional song and two civil rights-era songs in Birmingham Sunday and The Staple Singers' titular Freedom Highway.

"I just kinda follow the flow — you want to do what's been given to you to do and this was obviously the way to go."

"It's just the next step," Giddens ponders of her solo evolution. "I was happy to continue doing Carolina Chocolate Drops for as long as we could do it, but when T Bone kinda stepped in and offered me a different direction I just went, 'Well, these things just come along one time.' I just kinda follow the flow — you want to do what's been given to you to do and this was obviously the way to go.

"I've been able to carry some of the tenets from the Chocolate Drops with me, and I still work with a lot of those guys too, so I obviously still believe in that mission, but I can also do other things that I can't do with the Chocolate Drops but that I can do on my own, so that's important to explore."

The tenets Giddens mentions refer to the non-musical impetus of Carolina Chocolate Drops, whose mission statement has always been to educate as much as entertain. "Yeah, and to enlighten and to excavate, and to just show these things that don't get talked about very much," the singer explains. "Freedom Highway is absolutely in line with that, with songs from slave narratives and civil rights songs and the whole idea of just talking about things in a way that they maybe don't always get talked about.

"In terms of the slave narrative stories most of the time it's always told from the man's point of view, and all of the songs I've written based on slave narratives are always from the women's point of view. And just these song structures — that's not a very common thing either — so we're just trying to do what's been given.

"It's self-produced — or co-produced with myself and an extraordinary musician called Dirk Powell — and everybody in my band is on the record, so it's kind of a much more personal record than the last one. The last one was incredible — it was such a great honour to work with T Bone — but you've got to keep moving and keep doing something different, so we went in a totally different direction with this one."

"The songs that I write on my own are usually just kinda given to me — they're the muse's songs and I just opened up the gates..."

Despite having spent the last couple of years immersed in other people's songs, Giddens doesn't believe that the experience has seeped into her own writing. "I've got to say not really," she reflects. "My songwriting has been influenced really heavily by the banjo: a lot of the songs that I've written on the minstrel banjo — a replica minstrel banjo from the 1850s — really couldn't be written on any other instrument. The banjo itself is a unique instrument and the tunes that are in it and which come forth when I'm composing really just are very banjo-istic: they're very wristy, and there's no way to write this stuff on a guitar, that's too regular.

"So that's really been more of an influence, the banjo and the words that I've been reading for years — I've been reading slave histories and American history for a long time, so a lot of that stuff has kinda sunk into me and then just come out in these songs. There's a lot of that, and then I've done a lot of collaborating - co-writing specifically — which I really believe in. There's a few songs that I write by myself, or almost by myself, but my favourites are the ones that I write with other people."

And despite Freedom Highway consisting of mainly her own tunes, Giddens doesn't find creating songs any more fulfilling than interpreting them. "They're just different, and it's very dangerous to exalt one over the other because I think that's how you get a lot of mediocre songs to be honest with you," she tells. "Not everybody's a songwriter — and I say that about myself, not all of my songs are great or even good — and I may never do another record of original music, this is just what came out of me.

"But I've always been an interpreter, and I think that it's an art that doesn't get the due that it used to get. There used to be people who didn't write any songs — they just sang excellent songs that were either written for them or already in existence — and made them their own. Like Nina Simone only wrote a few songs — not that I'm comparing myself to her, mind you — but while she didn't write many songs, she put her stamp on every song that she interpreted: you think of it as a Nina Simone song, and that to me is the ultimate in interpretation. I don't think I'm that good in terms of my interpretations, I think I'm a good interpreter but I have a ways to go with that — but I think it's a goal worth having, and it's something that I don't think people are really chasing.

"As an artist you should pursue the thing that makes most sense to you at that time. For me my first solo record was mostly covers and interpretations, and my second record is mostly originals — my third record could be something totally different yet again. It's really just about following what feels right to you as an artist."

Indeed the entire folk music tradition is about interpreting and putting your own spin on songs as they get passed down the generations. "Yes, absolutely," Giddens smiles. "But for me coming from folk and opera — and most opera singers don't write their own material - that's kinda been my default. Now I've enjoyed the songwriting — especially with the collaborative process, I really like writing with people that's probably my favourite thing. The songs that I write on my own are usually just kinda given to me — they're the muse's songs and I just opened up the gates and they just came through and I tried not to screw 'em up - but the act of creating with another person really is where I get my joy."