Opening with the banjo-plucked defiance of a slave’s story and ending with a march down the Staple Singers’ long, bending road towards justice, the new album by Rhiannon Giddens, Freedom Highway, establishes her as a compelling voice of the ongoing struggle for civil rights, an indispensable folklorist and a master of American music who finds inexhaustible inspiration in jazz, blues and the old-time string music she mastered while with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Her songwriting is in full, fierce flower on this album, as is her vibrato-flecked voice.…
Opening with the banjo-plucked defiance of a slave’s story and ending with a march down the Staple Singers’ long, bending road towards justice, the new album by Rhiannon Giddens, Freedom Highway, establishes her as a compelling voice of the ongoing struggle for civil rights, an indispensable folklorist and a master of American music who finds inexhaustible inspiration in jazz, blues and the old-time string music she mastered while with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Her songwriting is in full, fierce flower on this album, as is her vibrato-flecked voice.…