A Song and Story for Today

Build a House began as a song — and as a response to the troubled times we’re living through. In the summer of 2020, while on lockdown at her current home base in Ireland, Rhiannon Giddens observed the protests over racial injustice that erupted across the United States and needed to channel the anger and outrage — and sense of helplessness — that they unleashed for her.

“This song came knocking … and I had to open the door and let it in,” Giddens says. She wrote the words first, matching them with a melody whose haunting directness makes it sound like a folk song that has been around for a long time. It perfectly suits the story her lyrics tell of the ongoing struggle of African Americans — from the moment they were enslaved and forcibly brought to the Americas.

To introduce the song, Giddens collaborated virtually with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, whose mantle as artistic director of the Silkroad Ensemble she inherited soon after. To the accompaniment of Ma’s cello, Build a House was first streamed on Juneteenth of 2020.

“There are so many stories made invisible: too-often-violent histories hidden beneath the surfaces of our cities, our institutions, our music. It’s our job to make them visible,” Ma tweeted to announce the song’s birth.

As it happened, Giddens chanced upon a Twitter comment suggesting that she make Build a House into a children’s book. She recalls that the suggestion reawakened a long-dormant desire to venture into this art form. The circumstances of pandemic lockdown suddenly provided an opportunity.

Giddens chose as her collaborator the Atlanta-based author and illustrator Monica Mikai, whose bright, personalitysaturated images have graced numerous children’s books, including a biography of Georgia politician and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams (Sarah Warren’s Stacey Abrams: Lift Every Voice).

Mikai’s vivid images match the uncompromising honesty of Giddens’s poetry. Using a ballad form whose repetitions make it readily adaptable to a children’s book, the song recounts experiences of oppression and violence faced by Black people that are an undeniable part of American history — as well as the determination to keep pushing forward for a better life.

The book shows a Black family surviving all of these tribulations, starting with the long centuries of enslavement. A scene set during the Reconstruction era, for example, shows a white man on a horse torching the house the family has finally been able to build for themselves.

The family finds a way to lift their spirits with music — the father playing fiddle, the mother and daughter banjos — but “then you came and took my song and claimed it for your own,” sings the narrator. Yet the family continues to rebuild and, in a particularly memorable image near the end of the book, to draw from the well that replenishes them. And they persist in playing their instruments.

“Monica Mikai’s illustrations are incredible and exciting to engage with on their own terms,” says Giddens. “I love reading Build a House to kids because they get it immediately. And it’s exactly these kinds of stories that we need to tell.”

MAY This concert is approximately 45 minutes.

—THOMAS

This concert is made possible with the generous support of Kathleen Kane and Jerry Eberhardt

There will be an intermission during the concert

Sunday, June 11, 2023 | 5:30pm

Libbey Bowl

Strings Attached

Amy Schroeder violin | Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Seckou Keita kora | Rhiannon Giddens vocals/multi-instrumentalist

Wu Man pipa | Francesco Turrisi multi-instrumentalist | Mazz Swift, Michi Wiancko violins | Mario Gotoh viola

Karen Ouzounian cello | Shawn Conley bass | Joshua Stauffer theorbo

Michael ABELS

Isolation Variation

Amy Schroeder violin

Duo Improvisation

Kayhan Kalhor kamancheh | Seckou Keita kora

INTERMISSION

Nassim KHORASSANI Lullaby

Rhiannon Giddens vocals | Karen Ouzounian cello

Francesco Turrisi piano

Selections to be announced from the stage

The Company