American Railroad
Silkroad Ensemble with Rhiannon Giddens

As a social-impact organization and home to a Grammy Award-winning musical ensemble, Silkroad works to inspire innovative collaborations that add more equity and justice into the world through the power of the arts. Today, under the leadership of Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens, Silkroad reaches new heights through a commitment to new music, a re-sparked mission towards cultural colla­bor­ation, and a reinvigorated focus on high-quality arts education that both reflects its mission and the times in which we live.

Silkroad’s newest initiative, American Railroad, illuminates the impact of African American, Chinese, Irish, and other immigrant communities on the creation of the US Transcontinental Railroad and connecting railways in North America, and the impact of those railways upon communities displaced by them, including indigenous ones. Exploring the dissemination of cultures across the United States, the railroad was to North America what the Silk Road was to Asia, Africa, and Europe.

After the completion of the Trans­conti­nental Railroad, a trip from coast to coast that used to take months was shortened to just under a week, allowing for the transport of goods and ideas across the continent in ways previously inconceivable. Profit-seeking corporations and the American government financed it, but the people who actually built the railroad and who were most affected by it are the focus of this program—Indigenous and African Ameri­cans as well Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and other immigrant laborers whose contribu­tions have been largely erased from history. Silkroad’s American Railroad seeks to right these past wrongs by highlighting untold stories and amplifying unheard voices from these communities, painting a more accurate picture of the global diasporic origin of the American Empire.

Led by artistic director Rhiannon Gid­dens, each stop on the American Railroad tour will contextualize—or rather re-con­textualize—the railroad through music. Chinese traditional musics on the suona and pipa are contrasted with the fiddle and banjo of Black musical traditions, or their Indigenous and Celtic counterparts. These cultural intersections reveal a thread of commonality despite their varied origins, and remind us of the intricate richness of the Ameri­can story.

The program includes three new com­missions by Cécile McLorin Salvant, Su­zanne Kite, and Silkroad artist Wu Man, as well as re-envisioned arrangements by Rhiannon Giddens and fellow Silkroad artists Haruka Fujii, Mazz Swift, and Maeve Gilchrist.

Giddens’ new arrangement, broken into vignettes interspersed throughout the program, is inspired by “Swannanoa Tunnel,” a work song from the African Americans forced to labor on the railroad in Giddens’ home state of North Carolina—a tune that has long been associated with bluegrass and folk artists, its origins forgotten. Grammy Award-winning vocalist and composer Cécile McLorin Salvant’s work is inspired by stories shared with and collected by Silkroad artists. And Oglala Lakota artist, composer, and academic Suzanne Kite has created a graphic score using the Lakota written language based on dreams from members of the Silkroad Ensemble.

Silkroad artists Haruka Fujii and Maeve Gilchrist provide their own recontextualizations of railroad songs from immigrant communities. 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. Both pieces were originally created for Silkroad’s recent Uplifted Voices—another program intended to germinate ideas for American Railroad—but have been re-orchestrated for this larger tour.