Rhiannon Giddens in Ottawa

Last week I finally got to see Gillian Welch, and this weekend I finally got to see Rhiannon Giddens. You wait years for the opportunity to see one of your favourite artists and then you get a week like this! 

Giddens brought one of her (many!) bands, The Old Time Revue, to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, mostly playing banjo and fiddle music from her latest album What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow. It was an unforgettable evening. Giddens is just an incredible musician, singer, composer, historian, and chronicler of injustice, who is equally at home in folk, blues, or opera. The Southam Hall at National Arts Centre was packed, and the audience completely rapt from her first notes. She covered most of the new album which really has to be heard live to fully appreciate it, infused with the energy of her playing and that of long-time musical collaborator Justin Robinson.

She did a few songs from her back catalogue too and I had tears in my eyes at her performance of her song "At the Purchaser's Option", her voice completely inhabiting the story of the enslaved girl who is raped and abused by her "purchaser":

You can take my body 

You can take my bones

You can take my blood

But not my soul

My francophone partner-in-life came with me to the concert and she in turn was brought to tears my Giddens' encore performance of Un Canadien Errant , sung in perfectly-pronounced French:

Un Canadien errant,

Banni de ses foyers,

Parcourait en pleurant

Des pays étrangers.

This is not a well-known song but it's hard to think of a more apt one, considering the themes it shares with many of the other songs she played (themes of forced migration, dispossession) and also considering the politics of this moment in time (an African-American  - albeit one who lives in Ireland these days - coming to Canada and singing a patriotic French-Canadian song). There were a couple of moments where the concert could have veered into capital-P Politics but Rhiannon Giddens is too good an artist for that - she shows you, she makes you feel, she makes you think, but then she lets you draw your own conclusions. 

There are so many sides to her music that I really hope to see her again soon with one of her other projects e.g. her collaboration with The Silk Road Ensemble, or with Franceso Turrisi, or with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, etc. etc. etc.