American Railroad Silkroad Ensemble & Rhiannon Giddens

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.