IF YOU CAN EXPERIENCE THIS, DO! (Cheri)

Yo-Yo Ma created the Silkroad ensemble in 1998 to promote collaboration among multi-cultural musicians.

(Image Credit:  https://www.silkroad.org/american-railroad)

Mark and I had the opportunity to attend Silkroad’s astounding American Railroad:  A Musical Journey of Reparation last night, in Greenville, South Carolina. 
 
We learned about Rhiannon Giddens, the ensemble’s Artistic Director, when we took a six-session adult-learning course on North Carolina music history. 
 
She is a two-time Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning singer and instrumentalist, a MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, and composer of opera, ballet, and film.  NPR named her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century and American Songwriter called her “one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet.”
 
(The above is very lightly-paraphrased from the About page of her web site.) 

While she currently lives in Limerick, Ireland, she grew up about an hour from where we live and lived there until about five years ago.  (This last link is to a typically long - meaning very long - article about Giddens from New Yorker magazine.)

(Image Credit:  https://rhiannongiddens.com/rhiannon-giddens)

This Silkroad tour consists of 13 musicians, and pieces were performed by anything from three to all members.  A majority of the members played multiple instruments, and many of them sang as well.  The rockin’ bass drummer also played piccolo!

(Image Credit:  https://growannenberg.org)

Much of the sound was more atmospheric than melodic, in the sense that it represented the acoustics you would have heard while on the site during construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.  (Or elsewhere, but more about that in a moment . . .)
 
The first sounds that we heard – imitating the whistle of a steam engine – were played on a gourd.  (Probably.  We were, after all, halfway up the balcony of the 2,000-seat Peace Center Concert Hall.)

(Image Credit:  https://www.peacecenter.org/about-us)

Next came vocal calls that sounded, to my untrained ear, like both Native American and African-American slave wails.  The point of the experience is to raise awareness of the Railroad construction’s impact on  “Indigenous and African Americans as well Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and other immigrant laborers whose contributions have been largely erased from history.” 

The program ended with a quote to the effect of:

Solutions must work not only for the powerful,
but also for those who are most affected.

The program worked extraordinarily well as a multi-ethnic musical experience.

While there were some very well shot and screened photographs of the peoples who participated in the project, with accompanying historical facts, last night it worked less well as a cultural history of the Transcontinental Railroad itself.
 
If I had to guess, I think that the program is being adapted for touring to India and/or England.  There was a notice at the beginning that the presentation was going to differ from what was in the printed program, and at one point there was a detour into the somewhat simultaneous development of the railroad system in India.
 
This is, after all, an ensemble that has a worldwide outlook.  There was a lot of Indian drumming, and a section performed entirely by a banjo, accordian, and Chinese flute trio!

In any case, the music was not-to-be-missed, and there are many ways to find out more about the intended American cultural messages.

• The program will continue to tour, through March 30, throughout the United States and Canada.
  
  
• Its album was issued today, and is available through multiple platforms, including Amazon.
  
  
• A five-episode podcast, also available on multiple platforms, began airing yesterday.  (I think this is what I will follow up on.)
  
  
• You might even still be able to find the PBS docuseries on the program.  Here is another link that might take you directly there.