Silkroad and its Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens will release the album American Railroad on November 15 via Nonesuch Records. They will also release the American Railroad podcast series, in partnership with PRX, the first episode of which will drop on November 14. Both releases are part of Silkroad's multi-year American Railroad initiative and coincide with Giddens and their November American Railroad tour. The first track from the album, Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of the traditional songs “Swannanoa Tunnel / Steel-Driving Man,” is available today; the accompanying performance video can be seen here.
Copy
Silkroad and its Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens will release the album American Railroad on November 15 via Nonesuch Records. They will also release the American Railroadpodcast series, in partnership with PRX, the first episode of which will drop on November 14. Both releases are part of Silkroad's multi-year American Railroad initiative and coincide with Giddens and their upcoming American Railroad tour. The first track from the album, Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of the traditional songs “Swannanoa Tunnel / Steel-Driving Man,” is available today and can be heard here. The accompanying performance video can be seen here:
The American Railroad album reflects the program for Silkroad’s inaugural American Railroad tour in Fall 2023. Its thirteen tracks include commissioned pieces by Cécile McLorin Salvant, Suzanne Kite, and Silkroad artist Wu Man, as well as new arrangements of songs by Rhiannon Giddens and fellow Silkroad artists Haruka Fujii, Maeve Gilchrist, and Mazz Swift. Rounding out the album are original compositions and arrangements by Silkroad artists Pura Fé, Sandeep Das, Niwel Tsumbu, and Kaoru Watanabe. American Railroad was recorded live during tour stops at the Green Music Center in Sonoma, CA and Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, CA; it is co-produced by Giddens, Watanabe, and Jody Elff.
The first single from the album, Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of the traditional songs “Swannanoa Tunnel / Steel-Driving Man,” is available today. “Swannanoa Tunnel” is a song written by wrongfully imprisoned Black men and women, who unwillingly risked their lives building the Swannanoa Tunnel in Giddens’s home state of North Carolina. It serves as a tribute to them, ending with a version of the popular traditional tune “Steel-Driving Man” about the folk hero John Henry, who beat the steam drill with his hammer, only to die of a burst heart.
Salvant’s first-ever Silkroad commission, “Have You Seen My Man?,” tells the imagined story of a woman walking slowly along a train track, joined by generations of wanderers who cannot ride the train though it was built by their labors. For Kite’s work, titled “Wíhaŋblapi Mázačhaŋku,” she created a graphic score using the Lakota written language based on dreams from members of the Silkroad Ensemble. Wu Man’s “Rainy Day” combines her instrument, the pipa, with the banjo and voice to reflect the emotions of Chinese wives and mothers who miss their husbands and sons working on the railroad across the Pacific Ocean. Fujii’s “Tamping Song” celebrates the Japanese immigrant contribution to the railroad, particularly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; while Gilchrist’s “Far Down Far” shines light on the tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities within Irish railroad workers. Swift’s take on the spiritual, “O Shout!,” reminds us of the way in which enslaved people in the U.S. were able to communicate complex messages of hope, devotion, freedom, and insurrection—through music.
To shed even more light on the untold stories of the Transcontinental Railroad, Silkroad is partnering with Peabody Award-winning public media organization PRX for a five-episode podcast series hosted by Rhiannon Giddens. Episodes will be released beginning November14, free on-demand across all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pocket Casts, Overcast, and NPR One. You can subscribe here.
The American Railroad podcast will weave together music and story, centering different regions of the country while delving into ties to the railroad and how they resonate today. Guests will include historians, musicians, descendants of railroad workers, members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and Silkroad artists. From Chinese laborers’ crucial role in California’s railroad to the tragic tale of convict laborers in North Carolina, the series will help paint a more accurate and inclusive picture of America’s railroad history.
In conjunction with the album and podcast releases, Silkroad embarks on the second leg of its American Railroad national tour November 7–23, visiting ten cities in the Midwestern, Southern, and Eastern United States with railroad-related cultural history. See dates below and at nonesuch.com/on-tour.
Silkroad and Rhiannon Giddens's 'American Railroad' Album, Podcast, Tour Coming in November
Silkroad and its Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens will release the album American Railroad on November 15 via Nonesuch Records. They will also release the American Railroadpodcast series, in partnership with PRX, the first episode of which will drop on November 14. Both releases are part of Silkroad's multi-year American Railroad initiative and coincide with Giddens and their upcoming American Railroad tour. The first track from the album, Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of the traditional songs “Swannanoa Tunnel / Steel-Driving Man,” is available today and can be heard here. The accompanying performance video can be seen here:
The American Railroad album reflects the program for Silkroad’s inaugural American Railroad tour in Fall 2023. Its thirteen tracks include commissioned pieces by Cécile McLorin Salvant, Suzanne Kite, and Silkroad artist Wu Man, as well as new arrangements of songs by Rhiannon Giddens and fellow Silkroad artists Haruka Fujii, Maeve Gilchrist, and Mazz Swift. Rounding out the album are original compositions and arrangements by Silkroad artists Pura Fé, Sandeep Das, Niwel Tsumbu, and Kaoru Watanabe. American Railroad was recorded live during tour stops at the Green Music Center in Sonoma, CA and Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, CA; it is co-produced by Giddens, Watanabe, and Jody Elff.
The first single from the album, Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of the traditional songs “Swannanoa Tunnel / Steel-Driving Man,” is available today. “Swannanoa Tunnel” is a song written by wrongfully imprisoned Black men and women, who unwillingly risked their lives building the Swannanoa Tunnel in Giddens’s home state of North Carolina. It serves as a tribute to them, ending with a version of the popular traditional tune “Steel-Driving Man” about the folk hero John Henry, who beat the steam drill with his hammer, only to die of a burst heart.
Salvant’s first-ever Silkroad commission, “Have You Seen My Man?,” tells the imagined story of a woman walking slowly along a train track, joined by generations of wanderers who cannot ride the train though it was built by their labors. For Kite’s work, titled “Wíhaŋblapi Mázačhaŋku,” she created a graphic score using the Lakota written language based on dreams from members of the Silkroad Ensemble. Wu Man’s “Rainy Day” combines her instrument, the pipa, with the banjo and voice to reflect the emotions of Chinese wives and mothers who miss their husbands and sons working on the railroad across the Pacific Ocean. Fujii’s “Tamping Song” celebrates the Japanese immigrant contribution to the railroad, particularly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; while Gilchrist’s “Far Down Far” shines light on the tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities within Irish railroad workers. Swift’s take on the spiritual, “O Shout!,” reminds us of the way in which enslaved people in the U.S. were able to communicate complex messages of hope, devotion, freedom, and insurrection—through music.
To shed even more light on the untold stories of the Transcontinental Railroad, Silkroad is partnering with Peabody Award-winning public media organization PRX for a five-episode podcast series hosted by Rhiannon Giddens. Episodes will be released beginning November14, free on-demand across all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pocket Casts, Overcast, and NPR One. You can subscribe here.
The American Railroad podcast will weave together music and story, centering different regions of the country while delving into ties to the railroad and how they resonate today. Guests will include historians, musicians, descendants of railroad workers, members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and Silkroad artists. From Chinese laborers’ crucial role in California’s railroad to the tragic tale of convict laborers in North Carolina, the series will help paint a more accurate and inclusive picture of America’s railroad history.
In conjunction with the album and podcast releases, Silkroad embarks on the second leg of its American Railroad national tour November 7–23, visiting ten cities in the Midwestern, Southern, and Eastern United States with railroad-related cultural history. See dates below and at nonesuch.com/on-tour.
Silkroad and Rhiannon Giddens's 'American Railroad' Album, Podcast, Tour Coming in November
Silkroad and its Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens will release the album American Railroad on November 15 via Nonesuch Records. They will also release the American Railroadpodcast series, in partnership with PRX, the first episode of which will drop on November 14. Both releases are part of Silkroad's multi-year American Railroad initiative and coincide with Giddens and their upcoming American Railroad tour. The first track from the album, Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of the traditional songs “Swannanoa Tunnel / Steel-Driving Man,” is available today and can be heard here. The accompanying performance video can be seen here:
The American Railroad album reflects the program for Silkroad’s inaugural American Railroad tour in Fall 2023. Its thirteen tracks include commissioned pieces by Cécile McLorin Salvant, Suzanne Kite, and Silkroad artist Wu Man, as well as new arrangements of songs by Rhiannon Giddens and fellow Silkroad artists Haruka Fujii, Maeve Gilchrist, and Mazz Swift. Rounding out the album are original compositions and arrangements by Silkroad artists Pura Fé, Sandeep Das, Niwel Tsumbu, and Kaoru Watanabe. American Railroad was recorded live during tour stops at the Green Music Center in Sonoma, CA and Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, CA; it is co-produced by Giddens, Watanabe, and Jody Elff.
The first single from the album, Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of the traditional songs “Swannanoa Tunnel / Steel-Driving Man,” is available today. “Swannanoa Tunnel” is a song written by wrongfully imprisoned Black men and women, who unwillingly risked their lives building the Swannanoa Tunnel in Giddens’s home state of North Carolina. It serves as a tribute to them, ending with a version of the popular traditional tune “Steel-Driving Man” about the folk hero John Henry, who beat the steam drill with his hammer, only to die of a burst heart.
Salvant’s first-ever Silkroad commission, “Have You Seen My Man?,” tells the imagined story of a woman walking slowly along a train track, joined by generations of wanderers who cannot ride the train though it was built by their labors. For Kite’s work, titled “Wíhaŋblapi Mázačhaŋku,” she created a graphic score using the Lakota written language based on dreams from members of the Silkroad Ensemble. Wu Man’s “Rainy Day” combines her instrument, the pipa, with the banjo and voice to reflect the emotions of Chinese wives and mothers who miss their husbands and sons working on the railroad across the Pacific Ocean. Fujii’s “Tamping Song” celebrates the Japanese immigrant contribution to the railroad, particularly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; while Gilchrist’s “Far Down Far” shines light on the tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities within Irish railroad workers. Swift’s take on the spiritual, “O Shout!,” reminds us of the way in which enslaved people in the U.S. were able to communicate complex messages of hope, devotion, freedom, and insurrection—through music.
To shed even more light on the untold stories of the Transcontinental Railroad, Silkroad is partnering with Peabody Award-winning public media organization PRX for a five-episode podcast series hosted by Rhiannon Giddens. Episodes will be released beginning November14, free on-demand across all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pocket Casts, Overcast, and NPR One. You can subscribe here.
The American Railroad podcast will weave together music and story, centering different regions of the country while delving into ties to the railroad and how they resonate today. Guests will include historians, musicians, descendants of railroad workers, members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and Silkroad artists. From Chinese laborers’ crucial role in California’s railroad to the tragic tale of convict laborers in North Carolina, the series will help paint a more accurate and inclusive picture of America’s railroad history.
In conjunction with the album and podcast releases, Silkroad embarks on the second leg of its American Railroad national tour November 7–23, visiting ten cities in the Midwestern, Southern, and Eastern United States with railroad-related cultural history. See dates below and at nonesuch.com/on-tour.
Trumpeter/composer Ambrose Akinmusire and guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson's album Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings is due June 12 on Nonesuch. It features four new compositions by each musician plus one collaboration; you can hear the track "Soundcheck" now. The duo, long admirers of each other’s musicianship, began playing together periodically back in 2009. They rehearsed the music on Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings in January 2025, just before performing it at the NYC club The Stone; they recorded the album the next day at Sear Sound. “I think it’s partly a shared aesthetic and an ease of communication. I feel comfortable to try whatever,” Halvorson says. Akinmusire concurs, “I think it’s rare to find an improviser that all goes and nothing has to go at all. It’s rare to feel like you don’t have to do anything and you can do anything. And that’s what I love about playing with Mary.”
Flea releases the album he has aspired to make for more than 35 years, Honora, today on Nonesuch Records. After a nearly five-decade (and counting) career as one of his generation’s defining rock bassists, he has returned to his first musical loves, jazz and trumpet. The New York Times says the album’s ten songs “embody a deep pathos.” This first full-length solo record features six original tracks composed and arranged by Flea – including “A Plea” and “Traffic Lights” (feat. Thom Yorke) – as well as interpretations of Frank Ocean and Shea Taylor’s “Thinkin Bout You,” George Clinton and Eddie Hazel’s “Maggot Brain,” Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman,” and Ann Ronell’s “Willow Weep for Me.” Watch the new visualizer for “Wichita Lineman” (feat. Nick Cave) and all other album visuals with direction, animation, and illustration by nespy5euro.
