Our (Brilliant) Native Daughters: Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell (Part 2)

Each member of Our Native Daughter enjoys a successful solo career and has received multiple music awards.

Rhiannon Giddens

In 2017, Rhiannon Giddens, 47, received the MacArthur Genius Award. Two years later, National Public Radio (NPR) named her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century, a well-deserved honor for Giddens, a multiple award-winning creative powerhouse, who displays her diverse talents through opera, ballet, television, books, and film. She juggles an overwhelming number of projects with energy and stamina that eludes mere mortals.

In 2022, Giddens collaborated her longtime partner, instrumentalist and composer Francesco Turrisi, to co-write and perform for Black Lucy and the Bard for PBS’s “Great Performances.” She and composer Michael Abels won the Pulitzer Prize in Music (2023) for Omar, an opera about a Muslim slave.

Last August, Giddens released a third solo album of original songs, You’re the One. According to Roots World, it is “a diverse but cohesive roots album with a pop sheen … (with) styles (that) fit together seamlessly, demonstrating the range of Giddens’ songwriting and vocal talent.”

Notably, for International Wrongful Conviction Day (October 2), Giddens released “Another Wasted Life” about Kalief Browder, a young Black man who died by suicide in 2015 at the age of 22 after three years in solitary confinement at Rikers Island jail in New York City.

Giddens is a two-time Grammy Award winner (in 2023 for Best American Roots Performance for “You Louisiana Man,” and 2021 for Best Folk Album, They’re Calling Me Home).

Recently, Giddens played banjo and viola for “Texas Hold’em” from Beyoncé’s 2024 Cowboy Carter album.

In addition to making music and touring, she hosts “My Music with Rhiannon Giddens” on PBS, and Aria Code, a bi-weekly podcast on WYNC.

Amythyst Kiah

The Tennessee-born banjo player, Amythyst Kiah, 38, has earned her share of accolades. In 2020, she won a Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song (“Black Myself”). Variety named her song, "Wild Turkey,” one of The 50 Best Songs of 2021.

Pathos born of personal tragedy infuses Kiah’s deep throated vocals on “Wild Turkey.” The lyrics echo her struggles (and subsequent downward spiral) in the aftermath of her mother’s suicide--by drowning--when she was a teenager.

“For a long time, I didn’t understand that when people commit suicide, it’s because they believe the world will be better off without them … and I interpreted that as being abandoned. Writing this song was a way to make amends … to recognize that numbing myself wouldn’t work for me in the long run.”

Kiah’s Wary + Strange album was among Rolling Stone’s "25 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2021."

About notes for Still and Bright (debuts October 25), state that this album “explores the vast expanse of her inner world: her deep-rooted affinity for Eastern philosophies and spiritual traditions ….” In July, Kiah released “Play God and Destroy the World,” a track from the album, featuring singer/songwriter SG Goodman.

Leyla McCalla

A founding member of Our Native Daughters, singer and songwriter Leyla McCalla boasts an impressive mastery of the cello, tenor banjo, and guitar. Born in New York City, her parents, Jocelyn McCalla and Regine Dupuy, are Haitian emigrants with long histories of social activism.

Hence, it is not surprising that her 2022 album, Breaking the Thermometer, pays tribute to Haiti’s Radio Haiti (1970-1983) and its owners, Jean Léopold Dominique, and his wife, Michele Montas. The couples’ investigative reporting (in Haitian Kreyol) and their human rights advocacy culminated in Dominique’s assassination on April 3, 2000, in Haiti.

Cited as one of the Best Albums in 2022 by The Guardian, Variety, Mojo and NPR Music. McCalla also received the People’s Voice Award by Folk Alliance International.  

The works of “Black feminist Afrofuturist thinkers,” such as science fiction writer Octavia Butler and adrienne marie brown, are the inspiration for Sun Without Heat released in April 2024. The title track quotes Frederick Douglass’s 1857 address: “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation … want crops without plowing the ground … want rain without thunder and lightning … want the ocean without the roar of its mighty waters.” McCalla adds the lyric, “Can’t have the sun without the heat”.

“Songwriting is a modality to tell the stories that need to be told,” (McCalla) explains. “Sometimes these are painful stories to tell.”

Allison Russell

Canadian born Allison Russell, 42, is a Grammy winner, and self-taught singer, songwriter, poet, activist, and multi-instrumentalist (cello, guitar, banjo, and clarinet). Her musical journey includes joint ventures with American rappers, Sa-Roc and Mumu Fresh, singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile, and the legendary folk singer, Joni Mitchell.

Irish singer, Hozier, features her on his album Unheard released this year.

Russell’s music mirrors the complexity of her life. She identifies as queer despite an 11-year marriage to T.J. Nero, a singer, songwriter, and producer. “I fall in the middle of the spectrum of orientation. I’ve been in love with women, and I’ve been in love with men, and I’ve been in love with trans people, and I’ve been in love with non-binary people ….”

Trauma marked Russell’s childhood. Her Canadian mother gave birth at age 15. (Her Grenadian father left Montreal unaware of the pregnancy.) The unwed mother experienced postpartum depression and schizophrenia. Consequently, Russell spent a brief period in foster care.

After her marriage to a U.S. born white expatriate, her mother regained custody. Shortly thereafter, her stepfather began to sexually abuse Russell. The abuse ended when she ran away from home at age 15.

Her soulful rendition of “4th Day Prayer” from Outside Child, revisits her violation: “Father used me like a wife. Mother turned the blindest eye. Stole my body, spirit, pride. He did, he did each night.”

In a New York Times interview, Russell describes completing the album as cathartic. “One of the things that I think we don’t talk about as survivors is the extreme joy that comes when you are over on the other side.”

She won Best American Roots Performance at the 2024 Grammy Awards for the song, “Eve Was Black” from The Returner. Her other awards include the Juno Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year, the Americana Music Association’s 2023 Spirit of Americana Award & 2022 Album of the Year Award, two International Folk Music Awards, three Canadian Folk Music Awards, and four UK Americana Music Awards.

Russell’s multi-genre music reflects her unorthodox approach to songwriting, relationships, and personal redemption.

Wista JohnsonAugust 9, 2024