Stacey’s Post-Election Message and The Power of Music

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You were made to outdo your holiday,

your hammocking,

and your pooling.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

This is Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams, and I am your host, Stacey Abrams.

And if you're listening to this podcast, you are likely reeling from the results of the election.

I know that we are exhausted, we are profoundly disheartened, and we are rightly terrified.

I've been thinking today about the fact that my siblings and I and my cousins, we were the first to be born into the Abrams family with the right to vote.

I'm 50 and I'm one of the older ones, and yet that is a marker in our history.

My nieces and nephews, the oldest of whom is 18,

they live in the first generation since Reconstruction to lose civil rights.

I measure those two things because I grew up in the South.

I love my home.

I love my region of the country.

And yet for most of my adult life, I've been working to make my home state, my adopted state, my country, love me as much as I love them.

And it hasn't always worked.

And I look to elections, those times when we have to come together and ask for more of each other and our government as a way to anchor me in the work that I do, as a way to push us to be better than we were the day before.

And sometimes it works.

Sometimes we get these giant leaps forward, the leaps that made the Voting Rights Act of 1965 possible, the leap that made

Vero v.

Wade possible because we elected people who appointed people who could see us as human.

But it doesn't always work.

And sometimes elections like the one we had on November 5th, those elections come around and we forget the progress that we've made and we only remember the pain.

Well, I remember 2016.

I remember

inauguration 2017.

I remember that the last time we found ourselves facing this set of dynamics, we sparked a resistance.

It was a decision that was grounded in not knowing what was to come.

We just knew what we'd been told and we saw what we could see and we pushed back, we railed against, and as more and more evidence piled up, we organized and we persisted.

And in so many ways, it worked.

In fact, for a brief moment, We united against racism and sexism, homophobia and ableism, and those who would do any of us ill.

We came together.

And then it started to fall apart again, or so it seems.

Because November 5th happened and they're back.

And they've written Project 2025 and they've used invective and insult and promises to tell us what they will do.

And now we know what to expect.

Unlike 2016, we know what could happen because we have a Supreme Court that said we're going to not hold them accountable because we have a U.S.

Senate that has suborned and supported and refused accountability, because we have a president elect who has told us what he intends to do.

And now we know that while millions agree with the harm that he has promised, we also have to remember that millions did not agree and they spoke up.

But I want to focus on the 60 million that didn't believe their views mattered enough to show up at the polls.

We need to be curious about why they didn't come.

We need to be worried about what worries them.

We need to lean in in this moment and think about the 60 million, not the 71, but the 60.

Because unlike 2016, we cannot think that it is enough to just resist,

that it's sufficient to persist.

Detente,

just accepting what we have isn't enough.

And so this time, we must insist.

We must insist on a government and leaders that respect us and our needs.

And that doesn't just mean president and our federal government.

I'm talking about the zoning committees that are forcing higher rents because they refuse to adjust, and the school board where your children or your neighbor's kids are being denied books and the truth.

I'm talking about insisting on speaking up when we see wrong or when we need more.

No more polite acceptance or making excuses for prejudice.

We have to demand better of ourselves and of our leaders.

We must insist on fighting for our rights, even if we think we're going to lose, because the record will show that we tried, that we filed lawsuits and lodged complaints and put TikToks out there if we still have TikTok.

That we had social media solutions that we shared and we made history report on our efforts.

We must insist.

We must insist on being more important than anyone's wallet or their wishful thinking that it's not that bad.

Because those who would sanction bigotry to justify profit or their own comfort should be held accountable.

And we must insist.

We must insist on holding power, even if it makes us uncomfortable and even if they tell us it is not ours to hold.

We must insist on believing in our own power and the good change that we have accomplished and the change that will continue to manifest because we exist between elections.

We exist between these moments.

We exist between the harms and we are responsible for making the good and making change.

We must insist.

And so on this show, every week, I will insist that we assemble the pieces so we can come together to build the world we deserve by being curious, by solving problems, and by doing good, even when it hurts, even when it's hard, even when it makes us uncomfortable, because we must insist because we are right.

This week's show is the beginning of our insistence.

It's going to be about music and how we use music to tell our stories, to protest, but also to push us to be better.

And so I encourage you to lean in and listen closely.

But we also want to hear your questions.

What are you curious about?

What are you concerned about?

What are your thoughts on this election?

And it's good for you to reach out now because we're actually going to have our next episode on the election, on reactions, responses, and how we prepare for the four years to come.

So I encourage you to email us at assemblyrequired at crooked.com.

And of course, let me know what's on your mind, what's on your heart, and how we can help.

Thank you so much.

Music is a powerful tool.

In an instant, it can change your mood, your perspective, or your life.

The right song becomes an anthem that plays in our heads when we're screwing up our courage.

For me, that's usually ludicrous.

Or it's the lyrical explanation for the complex emotions caused by a breakup that sounds much better and much more profound when sung in four-part harmony.

No matter the motivation, music is an outlet, a force that builds us up or keeps us steady.

It holds the capacity to move millions and to resonate with each individual.

And every lyric, every note, every beat has the potential to share a message.

Women have used their music as a form of resistance for decades.

Taking risks, remaining present,

singing the truth even when the world is telling you to shut up.

I think music is one of the most powerful ways to put a message out there.

This girl is on fire!

That voice, of course, is from the extraordinary Selena Gomez, speaking in a documentary that she and I co-produced called Louder, the Soundtrack of Change.

The genesis of the idea is simple.

We both share the belief that music is one of the most effective, transformative tools we have in advocacy.

And for women, it's been a formidable weapon to fight for visibility and for change.

Whether during elections or during protests that highlight the struggles in between, music provides a roadmap of what's at stake and why our voices matter.

On this show, we focus on how we can build a toolkit that can help us navigate the difficult spaces, but also give us a sense of the possible.

Like most of us, I have a playlist for each and songs that can help me make it from one point to the next.

In this campaign, one of those moments was Stevie Wonder singing Redemption Song at a Kamala Harris event here in Atlanta.

Songs of freedom

is all I ever made.

As Stevie Wonder so poignantly reminds us, we know what music can do.

And that is inherently political with a small P.

But this is an industry that touches so much of our lived experiences, and how we are included often defines how we are viewed.

Indeed, the music industry itself is a construct of the society we live in, meaning it's not free of limits and it's certainly not free of inequalities.

That's why when women or people of color are able to sing and sing louder to make themselves heard, it's worth taking note.

Rhiannon Giddens is an artist who has consistently pushed boundaries, chafing against what's expected of her and against the constraints of the music industry, like its tendency to box singers into a genre.

Here she is in the documentary.

I

shall not be moved.

Music itself is a great way to broach this topic of what is the story we've been told about America in a way that people can hear.

Randon Giddens is first and foremost a singer and composer.

Her list of awards proves how multifaceted her talents are though.

She's won Grammys, a Pulitzer, and the MacArthur Genius Grant.

She founded the Carolina Chocolate Drops, where she was lead singer, fiddler, and banjo player.

She's released albums, written in an opera, and hosted a PBS show.

Her voracious curiosity has led her to research and unearth the narratives of enslaved people across the U.S., and especially in her home state of North Carolina.

And she is one of the most well-known contemporary banjo players, educating us about its history and its place in American music.

I'm incredibly lucky that today, Rhiannon Giddens also joins me on Assembly Required.

So, for those who haven't, you know, stalked your career or haven't heard your origin origin story, you attended the very prestigious North Carolina School for Math and Science, and then you attended Oberlin College, where you studied opera at the Oberlin Conservatory.

Well, you made this transition from the very structured world of opera to your very free-range approach to music.

So for a lot of folks who are listening, they're here because we're taking these big problems, trying to figure out our point of entry.

And

one of the things that stop us is fear.

So, what was your biggest fear in making the leap from opera to

every other musical genre imagined by man and woman?

I wasn't seeing it that way.

I was,

you know, I was working a day job as most opera singers do right out of school.

I was doing corporate graphic design, actually, is what I ended up doing, self-taught.

But

when I, the scariest thing was actually just making the leap into full-time music.

And also the fact that that when you go to opera school, I think things are changing now, but like they don't teach you how to have a career.

They teach you how to sing, you know, the ARIA or the op, you know, or be die gracefully on command.

You know, they don't really teach you how to, how do you build a career?

How do you, how do you eat while you're auditioning?

Like, all of these things, you know, how do you best sort of parlay what you've learned into something that will actually earn you money?

And unfortunately, in our society, we ask our artists to be entrepreneurs and to, you know, deal with the economic world.

So we're not particularly great at it.

So that was the scariest thing.

It really was.

Once I found the banjo and sort of left the world of opera, but not forever, I find out later,

that was really the kind of the scariest thing was kind of stepping out with that annette and just figuring it out for myself.

But it was the best training I could have possibly.

asked for.

The opera world is very sort of regulated.

It's like you audition, somebody else picks you, somebody else tells you where to do

the show, what to do, how to do it.

You know, you get directed.

And then, of course, obviously your artistry, you are in control of that.

But when you're a folk musician, I mean, it's like a lot of it is up to you.

And that was a hard, that was a hard sort of start over, but it was.

I learned a lot and I've kind of used that time ever since.

So you just referenced the fact that you tried to abandon opera, but it found you again.

Talk a little bit about that.

The reason I left opera wasn't really because I hated it.

It was because I didn't like the world so much.

It wasn't really for me.

I'm a barefoot, no makeup girl, as you can tell.

And that world is very, you know,

like I said, in 20 something years, a lot has changed.

But like when I was in it, it was still very much kind of conservative.

And how you could participate in it was very much, you know,

in the hands of other people.

But I always loved it.

And so I kept, you know, kind of kept it in my mind and my heart.

And then was approached by the folks who run the Spoleto Festival, which is a beautiful music festival in Spoleto, South Carolina, in South Carolina, in Charleston.

And they asked me to write an opera.

And I went, okay.

And then I went, what am I doing?

Oh my God.

How did I get into this?

But the story they asked me to represent on the operatic stage was one that I couldn't really turn down.

So that's what I generally do is that I, you know, if the thing is right for me to do because it's connected to my mission in life, which is, you know, uncovering and highlighting forgotten or erased African-American stories, then I say yes.

And then I usually have to figure out how to do it later.

You know, after I've said yes already, so after I've committed.

So when I was in high school, I was talking to a friend.

I grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi, before I moved to Georgia.

And we were having this conversation about music, and I declared that I hated country music.

And so instead of defending it or agreeing with me, she just said, why?

And I didn't have an answer.

So over the next few months, I made myself listen to every station on the FM dial for at least three days.

And over time, I understood that, you know, there were this range of musical styles and genres that I'd never given true consideration.

And it turns out that among the genres, I loved country music and folk music and bluegrass.

But I also instinctively understood that these were not the same.

And one of your myriad talents is your ability to challenge the boundaries of genre.

So I didn't know you in 1989 when I was exploring, although you would have been a great guide.

So tell teenage Stacey or anyone listening, what does it mean to be a folk singer?

What does it mean to make a folk song?

What are the defining characteristics?

And how do you distinguish it from other relative genres?

Well, it's a really good question.

And I will say, to start, in 1989, I didn't know any of this either.

You know, this has been something that I've come to as a young adult.

I was in my early to mid-20s when I started learning what I've now learned a lot more about, which is that, well, first of all, folk music is just music made by people.

And there's this idea of commercial music and popular music and folk music.

And I think really it's what is the function of this music.

And a lot of folk music has been written by folks to tell the story most often people with not a lot of power because, you know, classical and all that stuff kind of takes care of their aristocracy.

But, you know, for those of us who

are working class, folk music is that vehicle to tell our stories.

And so

you don't really get genre, like commercial genres until the advent of the recording industry in the 1920s.

And that's really, I call it the great segregation of American music because before then, you had styles, you had, you know, local local style, you know, like this, this is this regional style, this is what they play over here, but it was pretty connected and people just played and listened to what they wanted to.

And sometimes it was rural themes, you know, that most people who were still living in rural areas, like the move to the urban centers is really, you know, that wasn't happen, that hadn't happened en masse yet, especially amongst the black community.

That was starting to happen with the Great Migration.

So these kind of themes were really attractive to a lot of people.

So it really is more like, oh, this is dance music.

This is story music.

This is community music.

And then the music industry becomes a thing around the creation of the CD, the CD player, listen to me, the record player, cylinders, and the record player.

And then they go, well, we got to sell this stuff.

So, how do we sell it?

Well, we're going to put it in a box.

You know, we're going to say, we're going to go to these people.

Here's your music.

We're going to sell it back to you.

I mean, it's kind of crazy, like, when you think about it, but I really think that that is really where our concept of genre was sort of initially formed.

And then each subsequent sort of fight, you know, there's hillbilly and race records.

There's

rock and roll and RB.

There's rap.

You know what I mean?

It's like

it keeps, they keep reinforcing these divisions, these sort of fake

divisions that they sort of tie to race, even though really in the beginning, they weren't at all.

I mean, one of the reasons I thought about that story when I was preparing for this conversation was for me that I discovered I loved rock music and I found out I'm not a huge fan of heavy metal, not because I don't like the sound, but because I like lyrics.

So for me, the sort of distinguishing feature in the music I like was lyricism.

But you,

what you just said is part of the reason I wanted to do this episode, which is

part of the way we understand ourselves as a nation, part of the way we enter the field of advocacy is by seeing that we have a role to play.

And this artificial fracturing, as you laid it out, of our music has an influence on where we think we belong.

And you once said that blues, jazz, country, it's all the same thing.

It's all coming from the same American well of cross-cultural collaboration.

Talk to me about why for you this was a necessary and I would say in this moment, an extraordinarily relevant statement.

Because it shows us, for me, American music in particular, right?

Because American music is made up of the musics of people from all over the world and it is a special thing which is why people all over the world love American music because they can see a bit of themselves in it so for me it's like these divisions are deadly because they allow us to be separated, they allow us to be controlled, they allow us to be not empathetic to other people by going, well, you're fundamentally different from me.

Whereas the music, when you look at the history of the music, you take an instrument like the banjo, which is one of the reasons why I've used the banjo as an emblem of what I feel like is the American spirit, is that it's a great example.

The banjo is an Afro-Caribbean invention by people of the African diaspora who were enslaved in the Caribbean.

And then it becomes the absolute emblem of the white mountaineer, even though it was an instrument that everybody played, that everybody played the banjo.

It was massively popular through the 1800s, the 1900s, you know, and it's only like the last 50 years that we have this idea that it's only a particular kind of banjo, an instrument, and people who play it.

But for for me, it's like you have African invention, European ingenuity, and then this back and forth between all these different cultures taking bits of the banjo and changing it.

And it becomes this uniquely American instrument.

And that to me is how the music has come about because it's like, you know, whatever reason you ended up in America, whether you were coerced, whether you came of your own free will, but still.

from economic coercion probably from you know your home country you're living cheek by jowl with other poor people and this is the music of poor poor people.

And that's the thing that annoys me when people try to package it up and say, Well, you can't have this or that's over here.

It's the music of people coming together because you don't have all of these genres, country, folk, whatever.

You don't have any of them without cross-cultural collaboration.

You take one of the strands out, the whole thing collapses.

So it's not all white, it's not all black, it's not all brown.

It is a mixture, but we have to acknowledge the different strands that go into that because that's how we go, oh, you don't look like me, but like I know that, you know, all of our histories are tied together in this music.

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So one of the pieces of your story and how you engage music is that you understand music is not only entertainment.

It's a historical record.

It's a touchstone.

And yet we continue to confront this debate about what that history actually is.

And you've just given, I think, you know, a seminar, a master seminar on the history of how the lines were broken and how the stories got erased.

But we're reaching this moment where

we've got to start understanding our stories better if we want to figure out what happens next.

So this is a very complicated way for me to ask, you know, what else do we need to do or say?

to make progress in getting people to both credit and understand

how we've shaped music and what does that mean for how we shape our country going forward?

Well, I mean, for me, and this is why I try to, I started, I have started emphasizing the working class, cross-cultural, collaborative aspects of this music.

For me, it is understanding that as much of a construct that blackness is, so is whiteness.

And that a lot of white Americans don't know their own history or they pick one strand.

And this idea that when you go back,

we're all poor.

You know what I mean?

And everybody's got a story.

And the more that we understand that, I think the more that we can empathize with other people's stories.

I just think that's really super powerful, that the idea that this music is where people keep coming together.

And then these genres come and they sort of, and you see it each time, every 20 years, you know, it's like,

and then people sneak over here and they sneak over there and they like join each other's recording sessions.

And it's just the history is all out there.

These amazing academics have been doing this work so that I can sort of read their books and make gross overgeneralizations.

But like, that's my job as a performer because I'm a mixed race woman of the South, you know, and I grew up in the country before I moved to the city.

I was like eight or nine when we moved to Greensboro.

But like before then, I spent all of my time in McLean'sville and in Julian.

And there's black parts of the country and white parts of the country.

But gosh, a lot of it is the same.

You know, of course, how they're treated by people is not the same.

And of course,

there are, of course, important differences, but when you talk about the rhythms of life, you're talking about when you don't have any money.

It's shocking how much of that life is similar and how much I recognized from each side, as much as

they were issues.

There's always issues.

But I just think that I see,

for me, I see that in a way that leads me to see how much we are alike alike and how much the differences are really, really

tissue paper thin, but they are used in a way that makes people think they're much bigger than they are.

And I just think that music

is something that is supposed to bring us together.

Music is something that's supposed to heal us.

Like when you think about the role of the musician, the artist, the prophet, the person who's supposed to see what has gone rotten in society, and they use their art, their poetry, their music to tell that.

You know, we've been doing that since time immemorial.

So it's like just because money is involved in the music, in music right now, like, excuse me, that is part of the problem.

And I think part of the reason why it's been hard to really connect to what music is supposed to be doing in our society because there's so much money wrapped up in it.

And people are scared.

They're scared to say things because they don't want to lose their jobs.

They don't want to lose their ability to put gigs on.

And I get it.

I totally do.

So

we just do what we can.

You're not just doing what you can.

You've sort of started paving your own roads.

And one of the ways you've done that is where gender and race intersect.

I had the privilege of spending a few years getting to know Jesse Norman before she passed.

And there's a story of, oh, she's extraordinary.

The story, for those who don't know Jesse Norman, she's this amazing opera singer, African-American from Augusta, Georgia.

There's a story of Linda Martell, who is one of the first women to be a powerful black woman in country music.

And then we can go through the litany where there are barriers and there are prejudices that infect how women can be a part of this cross-cultural collaboration.

And as a woman of color, how do you decide where you're going to enter?

a musical genre and what do you do to prepare yourself for being uninvited i i realized when I first started actually really getting out there and being

a working musician, it was with the band called the Carolina Chocolate Drops,

which I created with Dom Flemins and Justin Robinson.

We co-created this band that was really built around an elder's music.

You know, Joe Thompson, who was 86 when we met him, an African-American fiddler who was like musical lineage goes back to the time of slavery.

And so we were kind of his cultural heirs, his cultural and musical heirs, are the people who played his music, but like we were the first like young black people to form a group around his, his, his, um, his repertoire.

And so that's kind of, you know, catapulted us out into the world.

But I was constantly surrounded by men and constantly, you know, had to fight being put in front as the girl singer, but not as the

banjoist, you know what I mean?

And I really fought that and fought that and fought that.

And then I kind of got to a point where I just realized that I was reading slave narrative stories and these stories of these women in particular were hitting me because I'm like, why don't we ever hear their stories?

It's not just Harriet Tubman.

There's so many important black women and women of color.

And so I started realizing that's what started my songwriting was

that realization that I wanted to tell those stories.

Like we couldn't tell our stories in a way that like, you know, say British ballads are very clear, linear.

They're very, they tell the story of whatever happened.

You know, we couldn't do that because our lives were forfeit.

So I started imagining, what if we could?

How would I write a folk song from the 1800s, you know, telling the actual story?

And so that's what got me into writing anything, was

wanting to pay homage to those generations of women of color who came before me so that I could tell their stories.

So for an artist who's listening to you who has this burning passion that she's sitting on because she is afraid of losing the commercial success or she's concerned that this is not the right space when

the call is coming from inside your house and inside your head.

What do you do to convince yourself to break through, to keep doing something when that's not the expectation people have of you, or where the consequences of the songs that you write and the stories you tell could mean that you lose your job?

My mom always said to me, don't do anything for money, property, or prestige.

Like, Like, you have to do it for your purpose.

You have to have, you know, a reason.

And so I've really held that close.

And so within that, it's not just that.

You have to,

you know, I think

stay centered on why you're doing this.

For me, it's very clear.

I'm here.

I am, I was literally put here on this earth to do this work.

And it is work.

It is a mission.

It is something that my ancestors have prepared me to do.

I really

believed that very strongly the way that my life has rolled out.

So that's what I stay on.

So when something comes in, if it serves that, I do it.

Now, of course, I have to think about, you know, how much money I'm making so I can pay people.

I mean, there's always economic considerations, but they should never be number one.

And so if you can't walk away from it with your head held high, don't do it.

Like if you do something and somebody says, all right, you're canceled, and you can't go, you know what?

I followed my conscience and I'm, I will just, I'll need to do something else, that's fine.

Then I think that, I mean, I've never been afraid of shutting everything down and just being like, all right, I'm out.

Also, though, I pick my battles so that I can use the power that I've been given.

I save it for where I think I'm going to make the most difference.

I'm not really a big fan of just getting on social media and just going.

I mean, there's lots of things I think that I don't always say.

Then there's sometimes I go, you know, some people in that country, that strip of land that's being pummeled, like they like some of my friends need to see that I'm speaking up.

You know what I mean?

Like there's different reasons why I say things, but it's not always to try to make things stop because I can't make things stop.

You know, I can't make war stop.

I can't make racism stop.

But what I can do is use my art in a way that is

positive, that is adding to the conversation.

I could rant and rave every day of the week on my, on my social media, but that's not going to do anything.

like writing an opera about a Quranic scholar from Senegal, right?

That is doing something.

And there's people who've given me the opportunity to do these things, to write these pieces

to showcase my songs.

And people keep asking me to do it.

So I guess for me, it's like, you got to know what story you're there to tell, why you're there to tell it.

I don't do it for applause.

I don't do it for the awards, although I say thank you.

I put them on my shelf.

I'm proud to have them, but I do it because I'm here to do that.

You know, I'm here to tell these stories.

And I'm just, I just, it's hard.

And I'm not complaining because the Lord knows my life, I haven't got a good life, you know, but it runs everything.

So it complicates things, but I'm grateful for it.

I wouldn't be in the music industry still, to be honest with you, if I didn't have that

strong center of why I'm doing this.

I would be out.

I would be gone.

So I'm grateful for it, even though it's hard.

I'm grateful for it because it keeps me, it keeps me centered around the things that matter to me.

Thank you.

For those of us who are grateful that you stay here, thank you.

I mean, one of the reasons I was so delighted to have you as a guest today is because, one, as I mentioned in our pre-call, I have followed your career since tomorrow is my turn.

And, you know, I own your albums both on MP3 and on CD, which is a topic for another episode.

Yes.

Greg, Barry, thank you for leading the way.

Oh, but

if you want to do a quick plug, buy CDs because it's one way to make sure that the artists actually make money off of their music.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Most people do not make anything off of streams.

Okay.

We've talked about it before, but we'll do more.

But you have always, you know, you've used your voice and your complex vocals to challenge listeners.

I mean, one of the reasons I loved your music and kept coming back to it is that you force thinking.

It's not just I can turn on your albums and just like kind of fade.

Yeah, listen.

And you want to be there, and you're a little irritated that you're being confronted, but you're also grateful for it.

And you know, earlier this year, for example, you recorded How I Long for Peace, which was originally written by folk singer, I think Peggy Seeger, with Chris Matthews and the Resistance Revival Chorus.

And you did that for National Voter Registration Day.

Thank you again.

And you did it in partnership with Joy to the Polls and Headcount.

Oh, how I long for peace.

I cannot understand

how sisters, wives, and mothers

cannot stop the slaughter of the husbands, sons, and brothers.

Oh, how I long for peace.

You seem to understand at a visceral level why music is a tool for activism.

And that's one of the reasons I wanted you here today.

You understand that it's both a soundtrack, but it's also a galvanizer.

And going again to origins, is there a song that first marked you because of its impact on how you viewed the world?

I mean, to be honest, you know, my dad

is,

well, it was, I guess he's probably not in any more given age.

He was a hippie when I, you know, my parents were hippies.

That's why they, how they met, you know, and

I was raised with with the

folk revival movement.

So not, it was like a commercial sort of regathering of folk music.

And it was very popular.

And so I would have heard like,

you know, where have all the flowers gone?

And these sorts of, you know, Pete Seeger kind of things.

And

I think

the song that I really, really, like, I was a kid.

Well, there's two songs, I'd say.

One was the this Civil War, you know,

the Civil War song, a girl singing to her

love.

She's trying to convince him to take her, take her with him to the battlefields, you know, and

he won't do it until she finally tells him, like, it's because, you know, she loves him so much.

And he's like, you know, and it's just, it's just, you know, just thinking about the people involved in these conflicts.

Like, so I'm a kid singing this song.

I'm so, you know, into it.

And then the other song is a Tracy Chapman song.

Last Night I Heard the Screaming, which is not what it's called.

It's called The Wall, I think.

Yeah.

But that's the first line.

I like literally saying that in my sixth grade

talent show, a cappella.

It was merciful.

I was mercilessly teased for this, but

that's how I was in the sixth grade singing a song about domestic violence, you know.

But the power of a song that will get you into

the person who's singing it, the perspective.

You know, in that song, it's like she's listening and she's hearing it and she's like, that's,

it's affecting her in this certain way.

The power that music has, you know, to combine the words of somebody, you know, in that situation or listening to that situation with the music that then cements it into your brain and sort of like hits your,

you know, whatever the animal part of your brain.

It's really powerful.

And I do have so many songs that as I've grown older that are activist songs.

I was kind of primed from a very young age, I think.

Look, Behind the Wall is one of those songs that I love to do.

Behind the Wall, that's it.

Yeah.

She's the other one I buy.

One of the others.

I'm in good company.

Look,

I've got a group of folks.

I've got everything.

Brandy Clark, anything she prints.

Amazing.

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So Selena Gomez and I recently co-produced and released the documentary Louder, the soundtrack of change.

And our goal was to trace the history of women in protest music and how we use song not only to tell our stories, stories, but to call ourselves into action.

One of the breakout stars in that documentary is yours truly, Rihanna Giddens.

You are featured prominently in part because of your ability to connect those dots.

You know, we profile nearly every style of music from RB to punk to folk to rock and beyond.

Why did you agree to be interviewed?

I mean, it's the usual.

It's, you know,

something that's talking about something that's near to my heart.

So it's like, I'm representing, I realize that I represent

the genre, whatever you want to call it, the, the, the history, the era.

I know a lot of things kind of intersect in me.

And so I just want to be there for the cause and to try to tell the history of the banjo wherever I go.

It's like literally my obsession because I just believe so strongly in the beautiful way that it represents a larger story of America.

So any opportunity to be also with like-minded people and to be put next to folks who are also doing that just in different ways is was kind of irresistible.

So I felt very honored to be asked.

So we're in the middle of this political moment.

You mentioned earlier what you talk about versus what you don't talk about.

But how do you respond to critics who say that artists should just make music and stay out of politics altogether?

I say, first of all, everything is political.

Life is political, right?

So this idea that if you want to talk about something that means something, if you want to talk about something that affects people other than yourself, then that's politics.

That's an issue, you know, if they're using it as a derogatory term.

So that's number one.

Number two, I'd say they don't know anything about art

because that's art's job.

It's literally in the job description of artists is to,

you know, say the thing that is say the thing out loud, you know, to say the thing that needs to be said in a way.

Like the thing that I love about what I get to do is

music is universal.

It's a universal connection that people, it disarms people.

And that's why I get angry when people use music to divide, you know, because I'm like, that is the opposite of what music should be doing.

Music is supposed to bring us together.

I am an artistic director for the Silk Road Ensemble.

And it's like, when you see people from all over the world, coming together and maybe they don't all speak the same verbal language, you know, in terms of non-musical language,

you know, or maybe they all speak varying degrees of, you know, our lingua franca, which in, you know, over here happens to be English, right?

But they're all masters of their art.

And the way that we talk is by listening louder than we speak.

And that's what music gets you to do.

So

I just, I really, really think that artists are supposed to do this.

And so when people say shut up and sing, I'm just like, you have mistaken a commercial product for what we're trying to do.

Like, that's not the end.

That's not the end result of what art should be is a consumable product for sale.

It should be something that makes you think.

It should be something that warms your heart.

It should be something that, you know, makes you cry.

It should be, I've had people over and over again with

varying songs go, now I can cry.

Like, it was like bananas when Silk Road just put out a record or is putting out a record.

And the first single off of that, it's about the American Railroad.

And so we're telling the story of the different oppressed folks who actually built the railroad.

So Irish folks and black folks and Chinese folks and all sorts of brown people.

And the first single off that was called Was Suananoa Tunnel,

which is about the convict laborer that built the tunnel through that pass of the Appalachian Mountains.

And there was the cave-in, and it became the song that became sort of a bluegrass standard and all this stuff.

So

that was the single.

It was two days after Hurricane Helene when that came out.

And it was like, and we still, we still put it out because we're, you know, the whole thing was planned to put out.

It had nothing to do with knowing that there was going to be a hurricane.

But like, then it became, it was a grieving song for the men who were lost in that tunnel collapse, but it became a grieving song for Swananoah, which was like wiped off the map.

Somebody was like, oh, now I can cry.

Or this is like, you know what I mean?

Music like creates emotional pathways from person to person, from person to their, you know, innermost emotional self.

We do the best job we can.

So music is supposed to destroy all that.

Like it's supposed to just like skip all of the business and go straight to the heart.

And that's what it's for, you know?

So

that's why I like to not say a bunch of stuff.

I like to do it.

I like to put it in the music.

I like to put it in the opera.

I like to put it in the ballet.

I like to put it in the songs, into the music, into

the art.

and then that has a life of its own.

A statement on Twitter.

It's not to say that those aren't platforms that aren't important,

but for what I'm doing, I feel like I'm doing it, and I'm just going to keep doing it as much as I can.

Well, the album you reference is called American Railroad.

It is coming out on November 15th.

And one of the things we like to do here on Assembly Required are call to actions.

In fact, we recently had an episode on extreme weather events where we talked about Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton, and just the disasters, and specifically what it means in terms of what happened in North Carolina.

So, what should folks who are listening do if they want to help out?

Folks should go to the reputable places to see what is needed right now.

So, like, if you go to your

national like Red Crosses and all that stuff, that's fine and everything, but you don't know how much of that's actually going to get to what's happening in North Carolina.

And this is going to be months, years, decades probably of a recovery.

So, you know, if you want to wait and see, okay, what can I do later?

You want to do some now?

It just, it's, it's not a, it doesn't have to be an all or nothing thing.

There's a lot of places on the ground, Beloved Asheville, for example.

The Blue Ridge NPR station has a really lovely list of places that they kind of continually update.

The needs will shift.

So I think just thinking for a second.

and not just donating to maybe usual places, going to finding one of these, you know, one of these websites like Blue Ridge, Ridge, you know, the NPR Blue Ridge Station or Beloved Asheville

and just trying to go, what is it that I can give here?

What can I do here?

Don't go there until they're ready.

You know, figure, you know, just kind of like educate yourself about what people are saying, about what they need, because it is massive.

I have a lot of friends in the area, and the needs are huge, from like potable water to, you know,

getting dug out of the side of a mountain you know getting getting property cleared to highways that are destroyed i mean it's just you it runs the gamut so i just say always be aware of where you're donating try to get as local as you can and try to figure out what is needed in this moment thank you so last two questions so today's conversation and the reason you were the perfect guest was i wanted to talk about the importance of music as a tool for activism, as a tool for action.

And as I said, we'd like to give folks the call to action.

And you just laid laid out a beautiful one when it comes to recovering from the hurricane and the storms.

What else can our audience do to advance the work of music as a tool for activism?

Our society is set up for distraction, for consumerism, for individualism.

And so the idea of being collective,

One of the things that music does is brings us together as a choir.

That was the power of music in the civil rights movement in the 60s.

In terms of the music, I want to hear people sing.

I want to hear people sing.

Every time in my show, I always end with something where everybody sings together because that's really where it's at.

You know, it's really hard to hate somebody that you're singing with, you know, that you're making music with, that you're agitating the molecules together and creating harmony.

And, you know, the nice thing about a choir, I think we have to become, if we're talking about activism and trying to make our country a more equitable place for more people we have to become a choir which means when you're in a choir and i don't remember where i saw this i saw this as a quote and you run out of breath what happens you have to stop singing and pick it up again after you've breathed but the sound continues because the person next to you is still singing right so we all have to figure out what is our piece what is our piece that we're uniquely like situated to help and like sometimes we don't know what that is we have to kind of i i sort of did that I was like oh I'm gonna try this I'm gonna try this and then when you find it it's like just stick to it you know instead of trying to be all things to all people and like I lean into it and somebody else's job is to rally the the you know the folks and just knowing where you your unique gifts that you've been given fit

and

then creating a group of people whose whose stuff that they do kind of fits with yours and the more that we do that we kind of create this web then that can stand somebody falling from a building onto it.

You know what I mean?

We can all catch a little bit of that person instead of one of us getting smashed underneath.

You have actually given me a fantastic response because Rihanna Giddens, you are now the honorary director of the Assembly Required Choir.

Thank you for your service.

All right, let's go.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for being on the show today.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

I cannot understand

how sisters, wives, and mothers

cannot stop the slaughter of the husbands, sons, and brothers.

Each week, we want to leave the audience with a new way to act against what can feel inevitable.

An opportunity to make a difference, a way to get involved, or just get started on working on a solution.

in a segment we like to call our toolkit.

At Assembly Required, we encourage the audience to be curious, solve problems, and do good.

To learn more, check out the documentary I produced with Selena Gomez, Louder, the Soundtrack of Change.

It's available now to stream on Macs.

Enjoy the remarkable untold stories, the incredible footage, and the unforgettable music.

And be inspired by interviews with really smart musicians and journalists, all about how women in music challenge us and change the world.

If you loved hearing from Rhianna Giddens, then support her work with the Silk Road Ensemble and buy the album American Railroad when it comes out on November 15th.

Go to silkroad.org for more information.

And you can help independent musicians earn more whenever possible if you opt to buy the physical copy and not just the download.

If you want to do just a bit more good, plan ahead for Biscuits and Banjos, a festival Giddens is organizing in April of next year, dedicated to the reclamation and exploration of black music, art, and culture in her home state of North Carolina.

That's at biscuitsandbanjoes.com.

Lastly, we want to hear from you.

What lingering questions do you have about the election and about what comes next?

We're gathering listener questions and comments about the election, and we hope to tackle that in the next episode.

So please send us an email at assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail or text us at 213-293-9509.

That wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

Meet you here next week.

Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Alona Minkowski and our associate producer is Paulina Velasco.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Evan Sutton.

Our theme song is by Vasilius Vitopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroote, Kyle Seglund, Tyler Boozer, and Samantha Slossberg for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long, Madeline Haringer, and me, Stacey Aprams.

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