Rhiannon Giddens turned heads when she was in the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and especially when she released her recent multi-genre solo album “Tomorrow Is My Turn.”
Today, Giddens debuts the song “Cry No More,” and it's one-shot video, which features only her voice, a frame drum and a choir inside of a church in Greensboro, N.C.
The blues/gospel performance is a response to the tragedy and racially-motivated crimes committed last month inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, S.C.
In a statement, Giddens said:
The massacre at the Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June is just the latest in a string of racially charged events that have broken my heart. There are a lot of things to fix in this world, but history says if we don't address this canker, centuries in the making, these things will continue to happen. No matter what level privilege you have, when the system is broken everybody loses. We all have to speak up when injustice happens. No matter what. And music is one of the best way I know to do so.
Giddens' voice was already such a precise and present instrument. Now, she's using it louder and clearer for a cause.