SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Rhiannon Giddens has a new album out today.
(SOUNDBITE OF RHIANNON GIDDENS SONG, "WISH IN VAIN")
DETROW: She has won just about every honor you can win in music. She's collaborated with artists like Paul Simon, Yo-Yo Ma and Beyoncé. For her latest project, called "Hope Is The Thing With Feathers," Giddens went with big emotions.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: Well, I think it's time for big emotions, don't you?
DETROW: I think so.
GIDDENS: (Laughter).
DETROW: I think so.
GIDDENS: That's the thing about folk music, you know? It's always there for our big emotions. And I'm feeling that kind of more than ever these days.
DETROW: One of those feelings is empathy, like the song you're hearing now. It's called "Wish In Vain."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WISH IN VAIN")
GIDDENS: (Singing) I wish I were the evening star.
DETROW: When I caught up with Gidden, she told me the song is about refugees.
GIDDENS: They're at the mercy of these huge forces of, you know, capitalism and - that are destroying so many environments, and fighting between nation-states and all of this stuff. And at the heart of it are people who really don't have a lot of power in these situations. So...
DETROW: Yeah.
GIDDENS: ...That's where my sympathy always lies - with the folks that don't have the power.
DETROW: And on the other end of the spectrum, I really enjoyed "Carolina Rain."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAROLINA RAIN")
GIDDENS: (Singing) Listen to the whip-poor-wills and watch the fireflies. Wash ourselves in Carolina rain.
DETROW: And that's just kind of a more straightforward song about longing, you know, song about reminiscing and remembering and missing.
GIDDENS: Well, remembering but also, you know, realizing - I'm entering - you know, I'm going through menopause. I'm almost 50 years old, and I'm entering in that stage of life where you're like, what do you actually want?
DETROW: Yeah.
GIDDENS: You know, we're told what to want. A lot of times it's money and success and climbing up the ladder. And you get to a certain age, and you realize a lot of that stuff is hollow. If we don't have human connection, if we don't have love, you know, for people, like, what do we have?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAROLINA RAIN")
GIDDENS: (Singing) Let's go down to Mebane town, where the flatlands start to rise.
I think that's really the heart of that is - at the end of it. It's, like, I don't care about any of that stuff as long as I have you, you know, as long as I have human connection. And these days, human connection is almost in short supply. I mean, we're ever more increasingly isolated and lonely and, you know, the technology that is bringing us so many things is also, you know, dividing us more than ever, as well. So, you know, really thinking about what's at the heart of the human experience.
DETROW: Yeah, I think about that when how startled people are when you call them on the phone.
GIDDENS: (Laughter).
DETROW: You know, it's just like we are out of practice at doing things like that.
GIDDENS: Yeah, what is a voice? What - how does that go?
DETROW: Can you tell me about the song "Freight Train"?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREIGHT TRAIN")
GIDDENS: (Singing) Freight train, freight train run so fast. Freight train, freight train run so fast.
Elizabeth Cotten, guitar player and musician from North Carolina - she was discovered by the Seegers and, very luckily for us, you know, given a guitar and saying, like, go play. And "Freight Train" is the one that, you know, most people know of her work, Libba Cotten. And it is such a beautiful song. It's one I stayed away from for a long time because it's so well-known and it's so kind of done. And I wanted to make sure I was in a good place. You know, there's a lot of talk about - I'm going to say the elephant in the room right now - with the music industry, but I'm kind of really leaning into the other direction, which is, you know, the realness of the lineage that I come from, the musical lineage of North Carolina. You know, really leaning into that and going, you know, like I said, sometimes a voice and a guitar is all you need.
DETROW: There's a few elephants in the room.
(LAUGHTER)
GIDDENS: Yeah. Yeah, they're fun.
DETROW: Want to talk about that? I feel like you've hinted at it a few times. Do you want to - I mean, I assume you have...
GIDDENS: I mean, it's such a...
DETROW: ...A lot of thoughts about what's going on right now with AI.
GIDDENS: It's such a big - and it's generative AI, where we're making, you know, works of art with AI that's scraped, you know, living artists' work and dead artists' work. That definitely feels like an attack to me because art is there - it should be there to make - the process is the point. You know, whether you're making a CD or whether you're writing a book, the process is the point and the way that you engage with humanity when you make a piece of art, whether you're a professional artist or not. I think it's also been sucked out of our daily lives.
DETROW: Have you changed in any way how you write, how you play music, how you do anything in your daily life as you think about this concern?
GIDDENS: I have - it's really interesting. I have just leaned in the opposite direction. But I did that with the record I made two years ago...
DETROW: Yeah.
GIDDENS: ...With Justin Robinson. I mean, I was, like, headed upstream, you know? I was like, let's make this outside with the locusts. Like, you know, that's un-AI-able, I hope. You know what I mean? I'm writing with a fountain pen. I'm writing in my notebooks. I'm - not because I'm trying to hide stuff, but because I'm just, like, I want to remind myself of what it is to be connected with a tactile sense. And yeah, I don't know. I'm just trying to lean in the opposite direction, lean in the real. But I have a privilege to be able to do that.
DETROW: Yeah. I think also leaning in the other direction, one of the songs that caught our ear was an Appalachian folk song called "Cluck Old Hen."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CLUCK OLD HEN")
GIDDENS: (Singing) Cluck, old hen, cluck and squaw. Ain't laid an egg since late last fall. Cluck, old hen, cluck and sing. Ain't laid an egg since late last spring.
DETROW: This was fun because it starts traditionally, and then the tempo changes and then just becomes, like, a jam session. And it sounds just like everyone was having so much fun. When you're going back to an older song or classical song or somebody else's music, how do you think about, I'm going to do it the first way, then I'm going to put my own spin on it? Like, how is that balance change over time or song to song for you? And how did you think about it in particular with "Cluck Old Hen?
GIDDENS: Well, I mean, this is a great opportunity to talk about interpretations versus covers, right?
DETROW: Yeah.
GIDDENS: So in traditional music, it's all interpretation because the tune itself is just the bones, and it's been around forever. And it changes slowly with each generation of hands that touch that tune. It changes a little bit. You know, so you have different variations of one tune can change from region to region and era to era. And so a tune like "Cluck Old Hen" is the same way. And so you just - you know, you let it sit in your body, and then you just - it comes out like it wants to come out. And so this is - part of this music is you just sit down and you jam.
(SOUNDBITE OF RHIANNON GIDDENS SONG, "CLUCK OLD HEN")
GIDDENS: You sit down and you play with your friends. And these are people that I've been making music with for a long time, and so we have a shared vocabulary, which you can't - you know, you don't always have. But for us, like, we know how it goes, and so that we could loosen up. And we recorded it all at once. I don't know. I just loved being able to represent that tradition, the old time tradition, alongside, you know, everything else, you know, that's on there.
(SOUNDBITE OF RHIANNON GIDDENS SONG, "HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS")
DETROW: That is singer Rhiannon Giddens. Her new album, "Hope Is The Thing With Feathers," is out now. Thank you so much for talking to us.
GIDDENS: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS")
GIDDENS: (Singing) Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all and never stops at all. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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