Music
Rhiannon Giddens
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Keith Bruce
*****
YOUNG Canadian support act Kaia Kater acknowledges that as a black female banjo player she was fortunate to have a role model – and mentor – like Rhiannon Giddens. But while that niche may have been an adequate description of Giddens when she first appeared at Celtic Connections with the Carolina Chocolate Drops (although her virtuosic facility on fiddle would have needed a mention too), it simply will not suffice now.
That group’s ground-breaking rediscovery of roots black country music is just one facet of her multi-voiced personality that embraces the music of the greats she admires and then makes her own. It was her superb version of Odetta’s Water Boy (performed again on Sunday) that brought her to the attention of T-Bone Burnett, who produced her solo debut disc. But she can slip into the shoes of Aretha Franklin just as easily, with a Do Right Woman that happily bears comparison with the original.
As well as acknowledging the Glasgow festival that has guaranteed her a following in Scotland, Giddens the band-leader also grants all her bandmates their time in the spotlight. As usual that included Hubby Jenkins, who has been by her side since the Chocolate Drops, but here also Dirk Powell, who is her production partner on this year’s album Freedom Highway. His sequence of Creole-language Cajun music was not a million miles from her later excursion (added specially for this audience) into Gaelic waulking song, which really does make the world seem one in which we all live together.
As well as the Pop Staples title track it is her own songwriting that distinguishes the new album, and The Love We Almost Had, Better Get It Right The First Time, and We Could Fly were all sensational here. If someone told me Giddens also makes all her own clothes and drives the tour bus, I’d see no reason to disbelieve them.
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