I sat on the floor in the dark corner of the INEC Arena in Killarney, Ireland, and watched Rhiannon Giddens captivate the standing-room-only audience. She played banjo and fiddle and did some mouth singing to celebrate the folk music the Your Roots Are Showing conference was established to honor and preserve.
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Giddens was a near-constant presence at the Your Roots are Showing conference last week — and crowds hung on her every note. She opened the event at the Folk in Fusion concert on January 14, helped honor Peter Rowan with the Lifetime Achievement Award, delivered the keynote speech on January 18, and sang in an Irish church service on Sunday (January 19) morning. She popped over and performed in an Irish pub on Sunday afternoon. And she did it all without lipstick.
The North Carolina native helped found the Black string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops almost 20 years ago. She played the music industry game in the United States. She wore the clothes, applied the makeup, and did much of what’s aesthetically required in the United States to be taken seriously as an artist.
Rhiannon Giddens Jokingly Calls Self “Fun-Loving Party Gal”
When she moved to Ireland a few years ago, she reconsidered what elements of her career mattered most. Now a mother of two, Giddens often performs in head-to-toe black, her glasses perched on top of her head. There is an earnestness to her stories and songs that communicates joy with purpose. She’s a Pulitzer Prize winner who has written operas, ballets, and films
In a business where appearances often matter as much as talent, Giddens focuses on storytelling, music, and history.
Limerick, Ireland, is her home these days, but she’s made it her mission to lift people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased.
While at 47 years old, Giddens appears crystal clear in her artistic path and message, it took her a while to find her niche. Giddens said she hadn’t considered herself a songwriter for a long time because she wasn’t interested in talking about her own experiences. She asked herself, “What have I done at 26?”
During her keynote speech on Saturday, she said she started reading slave narratives, which helped her mold her songwriting.
Rhiannon Giddens Asks “What Have I Done?”
Giddens read a conversation between an enslaved person and her mistress. The women watched as the Union soldiers came over the hill, moving closer to liberate her. The plantation owners hid their valuables in slave cabins in hopes that the Union army wouldn’t disturb them.
Giddens said: “This conversation was, ‘Would you hide the plate?’ Which is where a lot of the plantation’s wealth was the big silver service. It was, ‘Would you hide the plate and, if they ask, say it’s yours.’ This enslaved woman said, ‘You sold three of my children to get this plate, so it is mine.’
The singer said the scenario “just went all over me.”
The crowd gasped.
“I think about resistance and the small acts of resistance that make up a culture,” Giddens said.
Giddens wrote a song about it and called the song “Julie.” But she hadn’t performed it. Peggy Seeger invited Giddens to sing it on her show, and Giddens didn’t feel she could say no.
Small Acts of Resistance Make Up a Culture
“I did this song, and it’s the first and last time that I couldn’t make it through I,” Giddens said. “I cried because the emotion of it was just so strong. But I knew I was in a safe place. I was on Peggy Seeger’s concert.”
Lyrics include: Mistress, oh mistress| I won’t lie| If they find that trunk of gold by your side| Mistress, oh mistress| That trunk of gold| Is what you got when my children you sold
“I think again, these kinds of moments are what show us the rest of our lives, if we’re lucky, if we’re lucky to be there, and if we’re open to it, that is the other part,” Giddens said.
She and Dirk Powell performed “Julie” – then they played together again the next morning at St. Mary’s church in downtown Killarney. Her voice rang through the cavernous, ornate space as she again brought the music of her roots to life.
Success is Luck and Being Ready
After the church service, Giddens returned to the hotel to rest and then walked the 30 minutes to the town of Killarney to join her friends playing and singing in a pub.
“Being lucky is not really the same as leaving things to chance,” Giddens said. “You got to be ready when the luck happens. I’m grateful, but I don’t believe my press because, as hardworking as I am, I also know I have been phenomenally lucky. It’s not about feeling guilty, somebody’s got to be there. It might as well be you. But the important thing to remember is that it so easily could have been someone else.”
The crowd spilled out of the pub door and onto the sidewalk. I watched through the front window as the Grammy-and-Pulitizer-Prize winning Giddens sang, stomped her feet, played her fiddle, and let the music carry her away.
For more information, visit www.ireland.com and https://www.showingroots.com/.
Photo by Colin Gidden
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