Honestly, walking into a record store—or scrolling through Spotify—can feel like a chore sometimes. You’re looking for something that hits, but most of it just feels like background noise for a coffee shop. Then you stumble across Rhiannon Giddens. If you haven’t sat with her 2017 masterpiece, Freedom Highway, you’re basically missing out on one of the most vital pieces of American art produced in the last decade. It’s not just "folk music." It’s a haunting, beautiful, and sometimes terrifying excavation of what it means to be American.
You’ve probably heard her name in passing. Maybe from her days with the Carolina Chocolate Drops or her recent Grammy wins. But this specific album? It’s different. It feels like it was pulled directly out of the floorboards of an old house.
The Story Behind the Sounds
The record wasn't made in some sterile, high-tech studio in LA or Nashville. Instead, Giddens and her co-producer Dirk Powell headed to Powell’s studio in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. They recorded in a wooden room built before the Civil War. You can actually hear the room in the tracks. There’s a creak, a certain warmth, and a weight to the air that you just can't fake with digital plugins.
Giddens didn't just write these songs out of thin air. She spent years digging through slave narratives from the 1800s. She looked at old advertisements for human beings. Most people don't want to look at that stuff. It’s ugly. But Giddens takes that ugliness and turns it into something that demands you listen.
📖 Related: Isaiah Washington Movies and Shows: Why the Star Still Matters
The first track, "At the Purchaser’s Option," is a gut-punch. It’s based on a real 19th-century ad for a 22-year-old woman. The ad mentioned she had a nine-month-old baby who could be included "at the purchaser’s option." Giddens sings from that woman's perspective. It’s not a song of defeat, though. The refrain—"You can take my body, you can take my bones, you can take my blood, but not my soul"—is basically a manifesto of human dignity.
Freedom Highway: More Than Just a Cover
The title track is a cover of the Staple Singers’ civil rights anthem from 1965. Pops Staples wrote it after the Selma-to-Montgomery marches. While the original is iconic, Giddens gives it this New Orleans second-line energy that feels like a celebration and a protest all at once. She brings in Bhi Bhiman for a duet, and their voices together sound like a community refusing to back down.
It’s easy to think of these stories as "history," like they’re stuck in a museum. But Giddens makes sure you know they aren't. In the song "Better Get It Right the First Time," she bridges the gap between the plantation and the modern street. It’s a track about a young Black man just trying to exist, featuring a rap verse from her nephew, Justin Harrington. It’s jarring to hear a rap break on a "folk" album, but that’s the point. The struggle hasn't changed; only the scenery has.
👉 See also: Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett: Why Fans Are Still Divided Over the Daimyo of Tatooine
Why This Album Hits Different
Most "political" albums feel like a lecture. Giddens avoids that trap by making everything personal. She’s a mother, and that perspective bleeds through every track. Whether she’s singing a lullaby like "Baby Boy" or the chilling conversation in "Julie," where a slave refuses to help her mistress hide gold from Union soldiers, it’s all about the human connection.
- The Instrument as a Message: Giddens plays a replica of an 1858 banjo. It has a deeper, growlier tone than the bright, plucky banjos you hear in bluegrass. It sounds like the earth.
- Collaborative Spirit: She didn't do this alone. Between Dirk Powell’s fiddle, Leyla McCalla’s cello, and those New York horns, the musical palette is massive.
- Vocal Range: She’s opera-trained, but she doesn't use it to show off. She uses it to convey everything from a whisper of fear to a roar of defiance.
What Most People Get Wrong About Rhiannon Giddens
A lot of critics try to pigeonhole her as a "revivalist." They think she’s just trying to preserve old music like a curator at the Smithsonian. That’s a total misunderstanding. Giddens isn't looking back because she’s nostalgic. She’s looking back because the past is still talking to us.
She once said that artists have a responsibility to be the "conscience" of a culture. On Freedom Highway, she isn't just playing old tunes; she's reclaiming a narrative that was stolen or silenced. She’s giving voices to women who were treated as property and men who were shot down for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
✨ Don't miss: Why Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Actors Still Define the Modern Spy Thriller
Practical Ways to Experience the Music
If you're just getting into Giddens, don't just put the album on as background music while you wash dishes. You’ll miss the nuances.
- Read the Lyrics: Especially for "Julie" and "At the Purchaser's Option." The storytelling is dense.
- Watch the Live Sessions: Her NPR World Cafe performance of the title track is electric. You can see the physical effort it takes to pull this music out of the air.
- Listen for the Banjo: Try to hear the difference in that 1858 replica. It’s the "bass" of the album's soul.
Taking It Further
Music like this isn't meant to just be consumed; it’s meant to be lived with. If you find yourself moved by the themes in Freedom Highway, your next step should be to look into the actual slave narratives that inspired her. The Library of Congress has an extensive digital collection of these firsthand accounts. Reading the raw words that Giddens translated into melody gives the album an even deeper, more haunting resonance.
You might also check out her later project, Songs of Our Native Daughters, which continues the work she started here, collaborating with other Black female artists like Allison Russell and Amythyst Kiah. The road Giddens is walking is long, but as the song says, we're marching that freedom highway, and we aren't turning around.