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Through the Lens
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Rhiannon Giddens: Artist of the Year in Photographs

While Jason Isbell’s Something More Than Free may have taken the top spot in both the ND readers and critics polls, Rhiannon Giddens dominated the past year just as thoroughly as Isbell did in 2013.
She was everywhere -- touring North America as well as Europe, performing at the White House, yet also doing workshops off the beaten path, such as the Augusta Heritage Festival in Elkins, West Virginia. Her excellent album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, was selected as the runner-up by ND critics and tied for sixth by the readers. Giddens already won a Grammy with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and this abum also been nominated for a Grammy. So I know I am not alone in my unabashed appreciation.
Few other artists would, or could, record Dolly Parton, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Jean Ritchie, Nina Simone, Odetta, and Patsy Cline on the same album and make it a cohesive whole, as if they belonged together all along, as if it were inevitable.
Nothing happens overnight, though. Giddens began in opera, graduating from Oberlin Conservatory with a degree in vocal performance. She then turned to traditional folk and roots music, which led to rebirthing the African-American stringband, a Grammy Award, working on T Bone Burnett’s Another Day, Another Time and The New Basement Tapes. Then came her follow-up EP Factory Girl, as if to drive home the point.
While her two excellent records from 2015 draw from many sources, when you experience Giddens live, she becomes a musical force like few others.
Save for the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Berg’s Lulu, my musical highlight of the year was Giddens' multi-song set with the Kronos Quartet at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville in March. The centerpiece of that set was the album’s title song, written by Marcell Stellman and Charles Aznavour, both Europeans. Nina Simone’s original recording of the tune could have been a James Bond theme song, but she later made it a racial declaration. During that set with Kronos, Giddens took the song yet another step further, one for all humanity while retaining Simone's essence.
Like a good number of others, I first saw Giddens at MerleFest in 2007 as part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Formed just two years prior, they were easily the most talked-about artists that year. Wherever I went, people were asking one another whether they had seen them. I caught their every set that weekend.
During the past year, I was fortunate to see Giddens on six occassions, and each successive time I saw something just a bit different, or was I experiencing something new in myself? More likely, I was continually catching up with her.
The real turning point I witnessed may have come on September 29, 2013, at New York’s Town Hall during the Another Day, Another Time concert celebrating the music of Inside Llewyn Davis. It was apparent that a significant number of audience members were unfamiliar with her, but she brought down the house with a stunning two-song set. She shared the stage with Joan Baez, Jack White, Gillian Welch, Patti Smith, Marcus Mumford, and the Avett Brothers, but she stole the show, much like Gillian Welch stole the Down From the Mountain concert, which celebrated the first Coen Brothers and T Bone collaboration, at the Ryman years before.
As our editor, Kim Ruehl, surmised in her year-end assessment, 2015 was the year Rhiannon Giddens came into her own. Those of us who were fortunate enough to have seen her are witnesses to that. Nor are we alone. The national press is finally catching up. Nate Chinen of The New York Times selected her Nov. 13 performance in New York as one of the best shows of the year -- the only Americana artist to be included by that publication's four music critics. And just two days ago she was profiled on CBS Sunday Morning.
Here, then, is an appreciation of Rhiannon Giddens' musical and personal talents as expressed in photographs.
Jack 11.0
January 12, 2016 - 6:31 am
Tomorrow Is My Turn is a sublime record. Saw her live early last fall, one of my favorite shows in recent years. She is a stunning, compelling singer. Not sure who named her Artist of the Year, but hell yes!
Dave Crotts
January 12, 2016 - 5:05 pm
I was fortunate to see Rhiannon with the Chocolate Drops at a roots concert in 2012 and then with another acclaimed singer and her good friend Laurelyn Dossett (Polecast Creek). One of the most impressive all around musicians I have seen in over 4 decades of listening to roots music. We have been fortunate in my home state of North Carolina of having a lot of noted homegrown talent ranging from Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs to Thelonius Monk. Rhiannon ranks right up there. I'm elated at her success and recognition.
Ron Myhr
January 15, 2016 - 4:44 pm
I'd seen Giddens with CCD, when she was pregnant with her second child and complained about wind problems. It was a wonderful concert, with a great deal of conversation about the history of the music and of her experience -- anecdotes about her time as a competitor in gaelic song competitions, about the black gaelic community that actually existed in the Carolinas, about the interplay of African and Irish/Scottish music. And so on.
So, I was listening to the new CD Factory Girl and had the thought "She should be on a Transatlantic Sessions show". That's the BBC series featuring Scot Aly Bain and American Jerry Douglas, and a host of performers from the folk traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. Which led me to google Transatlantic Sessions to see what was up with them.
And what should I see but Rhiannon Giddens getting rave reviews for live performances as part of the Transatlantic Sessions crew throughout the UK. With luck, this might mean a new series is being recorded that might become available to the rest of us.
I have all six series, many many hours of fine music, on DVD and would kill for a seventh with Giddens.
Dave Crotts
January 16, 2016 - 4:47 am
Wow, Ron. Thanks for digging those connections out. Rhiannon is so well versed in so many genres already. Now we can add gaelic. I was totally intrigued reading in other places the rediscovery of african american connections to string band music through CCD, their mentor Joe Thompson, and the acclaimed blues artist Otis Taylor (Rediscovering The Banjo CD). Sort of related is the experience I had a few years ago at Merlefest with the Afro-Celt Sound System, described as "a musical group which fuses modern electronic dance rhythms with traditional Irish and West African music". It just goes to show the universal nature of good music and the results of creative artists who are willing to follow their muse.
Ron Myhr
January 16, 2016 - 8:18 am
The Gaelic repertoire may actually have come first, or at least first after opera. I think it was the Gaelic language song she did at the Llewyn Davis Concert (Another Day Another Time) that really brought her into focus. She did two songs, Waterboy first, then that one, mostly acapella, brought the house to its feet, a triumph. Only standing ovation at the concert, and considering the performers (Gillian Welch/Dave Rawlings, Jack White, Marcus Mumford, the Avetts, the Punch Brothers, Joan Baez, etc), that's saying something. The concert was produced by T Bone Burnett, who subsequently took her into the studio to record her big album.
Steve Ford
April 4, 2016 - 7:47 pm
I just had the opportunity to see Rhiannon Giddens perform four times in eight days at two festivals. As much as I like Tomorrow is My Turn, it doesn't prepare you for how damn good she is live. Just awesome.
Jim Hunter
April 5, 2016 - 7:11 am
Can't add much to the commentary here...she sort of leaves genre identifying and pigeon-holing in the dust...it is just great music, and more or less defies categorization.. amazing singer, musician, musicologist, historian...