Rhiannon Giddens Reanimates Black Feminism

Rhiannon Giddens had a crazed look during her Austin City Limits taping Monday night. In a black polka-dot dress, her eyes widened and her lips twisted as she hunched over her banjo while playing a haunting and dark phrase to segue into the menacing “Spanish Mary,” a cut off of the Bob Dylan-inspired Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes.

Performance embodying virtually all African-American music, the singer plumbed all its pain and truth via her North Carolina roots. Spiritual awakening of gospel, deep soul, simple folk, and the sultry intimations of the blues on her 2014 solo debut, We Rise, and last year’s T-Bone Burnett-produced Tomorrow Is My Turn all coalesced as cannily as they did in her Grammy-winning band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Giddens interprets these root musics’ shaping of the Depression-era through the use of old-timey instrumentation (fiddles and banjos) as she revels in the style of Southern black music.

The hourlong set last night at the Moody Theater incorporated heartbreaking country covers including a tender and ruminating rendition of Dolly Parton’s “Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind.” Whereas Parton’s voice booms with a slight snarl in the jaunty original, Giddens’ voice is honey-smooth and elegant. She offered more of the same on Hank Cochran’s “She’s Got You,” popularized by Patsy Cline. The latter version remains a backdrop of classic Americana in small-town diners on Highway 66, but Giddens’ longing, earnest voice imbued it with R&B grit as she crooned, “I’ve got these little things, she’s got you.”

The classically-trained opera enthusiast, 39, let her pipes loose on the burly, Odetta-penned “Waterboy.” Like the source, the song – as rendered by Giddens’ sixpiece backing band – boasted thundering bursts of double bass seesawing between bellows of provocative timbres and drawn-out folk hollers. Straight R&B, she dived into loss and lament with the dark and unnerving vibe of early Delta Blues via Geeshie Wiley’s “Last Kind Words.” Her take, polished and refined, could be lost amongst blues purists looking for that unsettling sensation and lo-fi guitar chucks, but backed by slick session pros, she could do no wrong.

Receiving a standing ovation, Giddens ended her main set with the trailblazing “Mouth Music,” off 2015’s Factory Girl EP. Contrasting everything before it, the tune showed off Gaelic vocal stylings as her scatting rose into a sonic sprawl untangling the sinewy limbs of her Celtic leanings and African-American history of the South. The encore included a moving medley of Rosetta Tharpe’s “Lonesome Road” and “Up Above My Head,” marking Giddens’ ascendency to antebellum blues bandleader.

Although her performance consisted almost entirely of renditions of her favorite artists, don’t label Rhiannon Giddens a mere interpreter. Storytelling the Black feminist canon of Nina Simone, Odetta, and Elizabeth Cotton in her own nuanced image, she’s pure reanimator.