American Railroad. Silkroad Ensemble; Rhiannon Giddens, artistic director. Nonesuch 075597897586. 43 minutes.
DIGITAL REVIEW — American Railroad, the first major project by Silkroad Ensemble artistic director Rhiannon Giddens since taking up her role in 2020, reimagines the idea of a concept album to offer audiences a multi-disciplinary, multi-channel telling of the hidden stories of the culturally diverse army of workers who built America’s coast-to-coast transcontinental railroad. The narratives of the Irish, African American, Chinese, Native American, and Japanese laborers are recalled in 13 distinctive musical portraits featuring members of the Silkroad Ensemble. Giddens’ vision goes well beyond concert-hall walls. During and beyond Silkroad’s 10-city national tour in the fall of 2023, a series of podcasts, museum installations, and educational outreach projects deepened the musical experience of personal stories that have remained in the shadows.
In this respect, American Railroad is ambitious, bold, and admirable. The album — recorded live from two performances — asks whether the quality of the concept is served by the musical vignettes. For a concept album to succeed on its own merits, without the crutch of program notes or visuals, it’s critical that each musical track contributes to the narrative and that listeners are carried by a sense of cohesion. In Giddens’ case, her chosen narrative is profound and often emotional. The Silkroad Ensemble, founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 2000, is the nigh-perfect group able to fulfill the challenging brief. They are master musicians representing not only the cultural traditions of the historical Eurasian Silk Road trade routes but also Indigenous American voices and beyond, who bring a honed ability to assemble the distinctive and ethnically specific tones and techniques of their instruments. The question is, is it enough for this project?
In most but not all of the tracks, the answer is a resounding yes. Take, for instance, Giddens’ medley of the traditional Appalachian folk song “Swannanoa Tunnel” and “Steel Driving Man” — with the latter in an instrumental-only arrangement. This is a peerless moment of the album. The song is a tribute to the degrading experiences suffered by wrongfully imprisoned Black men and women who risked their lives in building the 1,832-foot-long Swannanoa Tunnel in the mountains of North Carolina. Giddens’ ardent, clarion voice soars. She brings a deliberate, unique tremor and a halting, crying delivery accompanied by a bed of unison drums. A bridge progresses through a delicate marimba prelude (Haruka Fuji) to pave the way for hoe-down-styled duet, i.e., the tune of “Steel Driving Man” between fiddle (Giddens) and Tabla (Sandeep Das).
In a first Silkroad commission, Cécile McLorin Salvant’s “Have You Seen My Man?,” scored for voice and full ensemble, takes listeners on an imagined walk on the train track. Pura Fé, a Canadian Indigenous singer (Tuscaroran), introduces the theme with her purely intoned, delicate soprano. This strophic song, with its contrapuntal drum accompaniment, is a testimony to the power of simplicity, showing that simplicity honored well can elicit the most emotional response from the listener.
American Railroad reiterates Giddens’ recognized commitment to expressing the voices of the marginalized and offers Silkroad musicians a new context to share their compositional and improvisatory creativity. But what possibly makes this album connect is the presence of deep yet enigmatic personal stories behind the musical vignettes. “Rainy Day,” composed and performed by pipa player Wu Man, is an elegant lament that juxtaposes pipa in an equal-voiced duet between banjo and voice (Giddens). A radiance bursts in Haruka Fujii’s “Tamping Song” — a celebration of the Japanese immigrant contributions characterized through a true cornucopia of unexpected sound elisions: pentatonic harmony, light plucking textures, open-throated alto singing, and slapping grunge. It’s signature Silkroad at its best.
“Tamping Song,” like many of the instrumental tracks, evokes the humanity behind the building of the railroad. American Railroad may not offer us the full experiences of the lives of the laborers. It is a provocation for those who want to discover more. This will be the legacy of the album — and one that writes the next chapter of the Silkroad Ensemble under its new artistic director.
