Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.For her first major project as artistic director of Silkroad and its titular Ensemble, which brings together classical and folk musicians from different cultures to collaborate on music, Rhiannon Giddens focused on the railroad. The institution is so polysemic that it feels like a whole American history: the inexorable logic of capital, the manifest destiny of westwards expansion, the armies of workers gladly or unwillingly pressed into service; the communities displaced; the new communities made possible. Guided by historians, the Ensemble wrote or adapted music that premiered in concerts last November.American Railroad is taken from that tour, recorded in Sonoma and Berkeley. It is largely instrumental, featuring musical elements from the nationalities who built the railroads, from Irish to Chinese and Japanese.The album opens with a conch invocation from Pura Fé, an Indigenous singer from Saskatoon, that sounds like a train whistle in the night; then straight into “Swannanoa Tunnel”, a traditional ballad about a tunnelling disaster sung by Giddens. Its background of thumping frame drum and ojime-daiko from Francesco Turrisi and Kaoru Watanabe is followed by Giddens’ frenetic fiddling and Sandeep Das’s tabla backing on “Steel-Driving Man”.Maeve Gilchrist’s deconstruction of the Irish song “Far Down Farmer” into “Far Down Far” begins as a homesick lament, but is taken over by rhythmic elements. The full Ensemble piles in on Haruka Fujii’s “Tamping Song”, a percussive chanted work song. “Wíhaŋblapi Mázačhaŋku”, composed by Suzanne Kite, breaks stormy and chaotic, while Niwel Tsumbu’s “Milimo” nods to John Fahey’s country blues. Vocal highlights include Cécile McLorin Salvant on “Have You Seen My Man?”, her gospel vibrato set off by a backing chorus and a swelling ripple of tabla, drums and Wu Man’s pipa. At the end, Giddens and Fé join on Mazz Swift’s “O Shout!”, again gospel but this time spectral and uneasy. “Old foreman, just like Satan, say ‘Get back to work, Ain’t came to play’,” sings Swift. And then, all three: “But glory, glory, glory’s in my soul!”★★★★☆‘American Railroad’ is released by Nonesuch
