NEW YORK (AP) — Most people familiar with singer Rhiannon Giddens know her scholarly side.
She won a MacArthur “genius grant” for her work making sure the contributions of Black Americans aren’t ignored in the history of folk and country music. Earlier this year, she earned a Pulitzer Prize for co-writing the opera “Omar,” about an enslaved Muslim man who lived in Charleston, South Carolina. She’s produced an online series on the history of the banjo — which she plays adeptly — and has lectured at Harvard, Stanford and Yale.
Her saucy side, not so much.
That will change for anyone who hears “Hen in the Foxhouse” or the Nina Simone homage “You Put the Sugar in My Bowl” on her new album, “You’re the One,” out on Friday.
The disc is the most broadly inviting work of Giddens’ career, a potent stew of folk, country, rock, soul and Cajun steered by producer Jack Splash, who has worked with Alicia Keys, Valerie June, Solange Knowles and Kendrick Lamar. A listener can commiserate with some done-me-wrong songs, luxuriate in love or just dance.
To hear Giddens tell it, she needed a change after her work with “Omar.”
“I just needed a break,” she told The Associated Press this week. “I mean, do you want to go onstage and try to entertain, sing correctly, talk about minstrelsy, slavery and American capitalism in ways it’s not going to drive off your audience, while educating them at the same time and having them walk out with a smile on their face? It’s a lot.”
There’s no required study hall on “You’re the One,” but that doesn’t mean there aren’t meaningful moments.
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