Songs of Our Native Daughters by Our Native Daughters

The late 2010s have been a boom time for women forming supergroups in the name of mutual admiration, solidarity, or common mission. Some enjoy greater visibility than others, but none has greater historic significance than Our Native Daughters, made up of four women of color—Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, and Amythyst Kiah—who all perform roots music on banjo and found each other in the folk scene. Invited by Giddens to the remote bayou studio of her co-producer Dirk Powell to write and record together, the four members reclaimed and reimagined old tunes, styles, and stories, many dating back to the enslavement of African people, recentering them on the perspectives and multifaceted survival strategies of black women. Each of the contributors brings a different sound, spirit, and texture into the circle—from dignified satire (“Barbados”) to sinewy defiance (“Black Myself”), spryly syncopated revelry (“Music and Joy”) to supple reverence (“Quasheba, Quesheba”)—for a collective work as loose, lively, and welcoming as it is tenacious.

'Songs of Our Native Daughters' gathers together kindred musicians Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell in song and sisterhood to communicate with their forebears. Drawing on and reclaiming early minstrelsy and banjo music, these musicians reclaim, recast, and spotlight the often unheard and untold history of their ancestors, whose stories remain vital and alive today. The material on 'Songs of Our Native Daughters' -- written and sung in various combinations -- is inspired by New World slave narratives, discrimination and how it has shaped our American experience, as well as musicians such as Haitian troubadour Althiery Dorval and Mississippi Hill Country string player Sid Hemphill, and more.

8 ▲

9.1 / 10

The Smithsonian Folkways-issued debut album from Carolina Chocolate Drops frontwoman Rhiannon Giddens, former Carolina Chocolate Drops cellist Leyla McCalla, multi-instrumentalist Allison Russell (Po' Girl, Birds of Chicago), and alt-country/blues singer/songwriter Amythyst Kiah, Songs of Our Native Daughters is a bold, brutal, and often beautiful dissertation on racism, hope, misogyny, agency, and slavery told from the perspective of four of modern roots music's most talented women, who also happen to be black.

Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell and Amythyst Kiah have joined forces to confront the abuse of African American women with authority and pride