AMERICANA
BY SYLVIE SIMMONS
Silkroad Ensemble With Rhiannon Giddens
★★★★
American Railroad
NONESUCH. CD/DL/LP
Musical companion to a podcast on the labourers that built America’s railroads.
Rhiannon Giddens has a habit of turning up in all manner of interesting, edifying, collaborative musical projects. Here she’s the Artistic Director of a group of 13 musicians from different ethnic backgrounds telling the story, via music, of how America’s Transcontinental Railroad was built by immigrants and former slaves. Instruments range from Giddens’ banjo and fiddle to tabla and taiko, cello and violin, and the lonesome sound of a train with which the album begins. The first song, Giddens’ arrangement of Swannanoa Tunnel, has her striking voice coupled with the dark sound of a hammer hitting steel. It’s very dramatic, but the more moving songs are the beautiful blues Have You Seen My Man, and the shape-shifting gospel closer Oh Shout!. Still, this isn’t a collection of songs, it’s as much a classical album, and the rich and strange tapestry of different musical sounds telling the one story is captivating.