16 - “We Have a Lot of Work To Do”

Summary

In 2017, Rhiannon Giddens reflected on a recent performance as part of the first African American string band to play the Grand Ole Opry. As she recalled, “people started calling it a Healing Moment. But I have to ask: a healing moment for whom? One or two Black groups, or one or two Black country stars is not a substitution for recognizing the true multi-cultural history of this music. We have a lot of work to do.” These words are a touchstone for assessing Giddens’s first two solo albums, as works that reclaim and re-member the racially mixed roots of country music alongside other distinctively American genres. The analysis pushes against paradigms in which musical sounds align neatly with racial categories, specifically the presumed whiteness of country music. Giddens’s work makes clear that, though convenient, racialized conceptions obscure more than they reveal about US music and the people making it.