Earlier today, Come Hear NC debuted the latest installment in its In the Water live session series, which features intimate recording sessions with musicians in meaningful locations around the state.
In the Water is part of Department of Natural & Cultural Resources and the North Carolina Art Council’s ‘Year of Music’ campaign that celebrates the state’s rich musical legacy.
In this session, Rhiannon Giddens, a Greensboro native and the founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, traveled to Wilmington to commemorate the lives lost in the 1898 Wilmington Massacre.
The violent massacre, which left more than sixty people dead, occurred when white supremacists overthrew the local government and burned down the black-owned paper, along with multiple black businesses and properties. Previous to the massacre, Wilmington had served as a hopeful Reconstruction model for racial relations, with a black middle class that was involved in local politics. The event is not just a forgotten chapter in North Carolina history; it’s one that’s been continually revised and sanitized for over a century in the interest of white supremacy.
“It is so hard because things were working…They weren’t perfect but things were working,” Giddens says in the video, “And for that to not be knocked down but completely destroyed, stamped out and then forgotten about, that’s just tragic.”
Giddens was recently nominated for the 2020 Grammy Award for Best American Roots Performance; She is also a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient and previously has been nominated for five Grammy Awards and won one. A deep, thoughtful interest in the origins of roots music fuels Giddens’ musical career. In this video, she performed the traditional song “Pretty Saro,” alongside the songs “At The Purchasers Option,” and “He Will See You Through.”
Previous In the Water episodes have included Mary Lattimore performing in Historic Happy Valley’s Chapel of Rest, Vanessa Ferguson performing at the childhood home of Nina Simone, as part of the campaign to preserve Simone’ s birthplace, and the debut of a new Mountain Goats song, “Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light,” at John Coltrane’s Hamlet, N.C., birthplace.
Watch Giddens’ powerful performance and interview below.
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