STORY BY KIT STOLZ
RHIANNON GIDDENS, the musical innovator and MacArthur Award “genius,” who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize this May, and who will direct the Ojai Music Festival this June, spent most of the pandemic at home in Ireland with her family. Despite the isolation, far from the Piedmont in North Carolina where she grew up, and despite the cancellation of a planned musical tour, Giddens’ career developed in new and surprising ways while in isolation, including her writing a picture book for children, called “Build A House.” The book is based on an earthy folk song Giddens wrote early in the pandemic, expressing her frustration, both with her situation, and with racial politics back home in the U.S. “I wrote the song out of frustration with being locked down in Ireland and watching the [George Floyd] protests and just thinking about my life’s work, which has been dealing with so many of these topics,” she said. “I got a bit salty, and I sat down
and asked — you brought me here to build your house. Why?” “Build a House” is the African-American story told from the perspective of a young Black girl living in the South, who sees her parents working on a plantation, gathering cotton under the watchful eye of a distant white overseer in a suit, and doesn’t understand why.
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