Rhiannon’s Return, with Blues-Soul Hat On

Ever-Versatile, Award-winning American Treasure Rhiannon Giddens Returns to Santa Barbara, Ushering her Blues-Soul Persona and Band into the Arlington Theatre

By Josef Woodard Fri Apr 12, 2024 | 03:31pm

It is an understatement to report that multifaceted artist Rhiannon Giddens has been enjoying multiple spotlights in the past few years, and in multiple, sometimes surprising dimensions. This especially fertile and versatile phase could be identified by the span her entry into the world of Opera — the chamber opera Omar (co-composed with Michael Abels) earning her a Pulitzer Prize — and her hip banjo picking cameo on “Texas Hold ‘Em,” from Beyonce’s buzzed-about and chart-topping country album Cowboy Carter.

In between those poles, Giddens has worn other hats and modes of musical dress and has thankfully included the 805 region on her touring map. She appeared in the lofty role of music director/performer in last June’s Ojai Music Festival, then returned as director/performer with the Silkroad Ensemble at The Granada Theatre last fall.

The saga continues as Giddens’s band rolls into the Arlington Theatre on Tuesday, April 23, hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures (also behind the Silkroad evening). Her return to town is part of a promotional tour for her 2023 album You’re the One, which finds Giddens tackling yet a new terrain, that of the blues-flavored, old school, soul format along with touches of gospel, jazz, and Cajun sauce, in a more electrified texture than her past acoustic-leaning projects.

You’re the One, her third solo album and first composed solely of originals, finds Giddens summoning up a new yet naturally evolutionary zone of her musical being. Her former narrow and stereotypical profile as an Americana artist (African-Americana/musical historian department), bursting forth from the group Carolina Chocolate Drops, keeps expanding into an uncategorizable and fascinating artistic persona.

“My spirit of desire to do things is bigger than my body can handle at the moment,” she said in an interview with the Independent last fall. “But I tend to know who to collaborate with, and that’s why I’ve been able to do what I’ve been able to do. I find the folks to work with, to provide what I don’t have so that I can do the thing that I do have really well.

“I love collaborating, but I have taken on a bit too much at this point, but I’m maintaining now and learning to say ‘no.’ I don’t wanna ever get to the point where I’m not giving all that I have to something because I’m too busy.”

In a broader sense, Giddens’s diverse spate of artistic ventures over the past several years, in keeping with her diversity of talents and ambitions, has come to pass after she broke into a wider public and cultural visibility when she became a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient in 2017. On the very day she was informed of her awardee status, I asked Giddens if the award opened a new door of possibility for her career. She laughed and said, “Yeah, a big old fricking huge door. Absolutely amazing.”

Throughout, she has held fast to the mission of expanding knowledge and appreciation of Black American lives and Black contributions to American culture, going back to slavery. Central to that mission is her mastery of the banjo, that instrument of African origin and which played an important role in black communities around her native North Carolina landscape.

To date, Giddens’s audiences have been largely of the white variety, which she is resigned to, much as she would like to extend her music and message into the Black community. The white audience factor, she says, “is born out of our culture. That has to do with an ‘always going on to the next thing’ in Black culture, because there is no nostalgia. Nostalgia has, heretofore, been a negative in the Black community. I want to challenge that, and say ‘yeah, there are a lot of negative things in our history, but there are a lot of positive things, too, and there are a lot of stories overcoming some amazing, incredibly hard things.’

“That’s part of what I’m trying to do, artistically and musically. I know there will be some connection that will get me an’ ‘in’ in the Black community. It hasn’t come yet, so I’m being patient and will keep working on things and playing to the amazing audiences that we have.”

Audiences keep showing up, from different demographics, and Giddens keeps pushing envelopes and satisfying her various roots-exploration gameplans. Luckily for locals, she swings through town on a regular basis. She’s the one.

Her Arlington performance has as an opener, Charly Lowry, a Native American from North Carolina and protégé of another indigenous artist/activist, Pura Fé — heard in the Silkroad Ensemble concert. Lowry was also a semi-finalist on American Idol, but don’t hold that against her. —Josef Woodard

Rhiannon Giddens will be at the Arlington Theatre on Tuesday, April 23, at 8 p.m. See artsandlectures.ucsb.edu.