This month I spoke with grammy-award winning musician, composer, and amateur historian Rhiannon Giddens. She is known for using her work to highlight the African American presence in traditional American music and present narratives that have previously been pushed to the margins or completely erased.

In 2017 Giddens was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” grant for “bringing to light new connections between music from the past and the present.” Her work is that of many connections, whether it be composing an opera bringing to life the autobiography of enslaved African-Muslim scholar Obar Ibn Said, using her music to tell the story of the 1898 Wilmington coup and massacre, forming the banjo-wielding Black woman quartet Our Native Daughters and singing stories of Black foremothers throughout  several centuries, or showing the ties between the African and Arabian with musical partner Francesco Turrisi on their album “there is no Other.”

In this piece, Giddens and I discuss some other connections-those that have recently surfaced between many American “folk” songs used in music classrooms and blackface minstrelsy. In our conversation we consider the place of music rooted in blackface minstrelsy and racism and what music teachers should know about blackface minstrelsy as an art form. Our discussion ranged from a shared a sense of incredulity at the way the music has been incorporated into children’s musical training, to a shared sense of joy and belonging in finding identity as Black people within traditional music and dance forms that are broadly considered quintessentially white American. 

Brandi Waller-Pace: In K-12 music ed there has been a lot of discussion about songs it turns out have origins in blackface minstrelsy, or otherwise racists origins and the discussion has been around what we consider appropriate, how to approach these songs. And for DTMR what we focus on is the idea that these songs don’t disappear- there's something to be learned and there's history there- but for the sake of elementary music instruction, we shouldn’t be playing a particular game with no context. We have experiences of growing up and realizing that the background of a song was a problem. And the biggest argument we’re coming up against is that if we don’t do these songs in elementary, the history isn't there- they disappear. So I was hoping that we could talk about the place of the music, of teaching the music, and our roles in reclamation and presentation of the music as artists and educators of African descent.

Rhiannon Giddens: So, light fluffy stuff? *

BWP: I was hoping to start with your experiences as a child, with music and music education. What are some things you remember in particular, or things you’ve learned since as a studied musician?

RG: We had the music teacher come like every other week, which kind of seems to be back where we are- if the music teacher comes at all with a lot of schools. I remember the music book, and the box of instruments. I wasn’t into music in middle school at all, but I remember some of the songs I learned in elementary school for sure. I remember what is clearly some of the first completely bowdlerized, whitewashed songs. But it’s really interesting how much we remember those things that we learn in elementary school. And there’s other songs that I remember that I have never forgotten. 

I think there’s a power in that memory, so there’s a power in what they are learning and how, and I think that that can’t really be [taken] lightly- in this context especially- I don’t think it can be taken lightly. I think people dismiss and underestimate the value of early education, and education of early education teachers. People in early education know this, but there seems to be this [idea of], “Oh as long as they’re kind of getting some rhythm, they’re just kids sort of doing stuff.“ It’s kind of amazing how little regard there is for how important those building blocks of like the first ten years are! It’s really incredible. So, all that just to say I think it’s obviously a very important topic.

BWP: One thing I’ve noticed about music teachers is we can lean very heavily on the concept we are teaching, and then there’s this “multiculturalism”- if we are including songs from all over. But I even talk to teachers-specifically black teachers- who say they remember as children singing a song and then finding out as a grown up that the actual background of that song was really racist. They sung the song as a child, they’ve been singing it to their children, and we’re just now at a place where we are talking about this information. Do you have any experience with any moments like that in your study- going, “Man, we were playing this as kids- that’s really messed up?”

RG: [Seems like] every single song I learned. I was in youth choir. It was a wonderful choir- it wasn’t public school but it was a youth choir. And [we sang] “I’m gonna jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton, gonna jump down, turn around pick a bale a day.” And as soon as I started dipping into the history of banjo I just realized [the background] of all those songs- we did that- and I would have been like one of three Black people- of any color- in that choir. And it’s hard because it's [the choir] one of the reasons why I’m the singer I am today. The director is a great teacher and she’s just squarely of her time and not thinking about any of this, ya know, and going “these are great old American songs.” I mean honest to God, “I’m gonna jump down turn around pick a bale of cotton”- like nobody thought that that was not cool (1)?

BWP: Now, you know in the state of Texas, where I teach, it’s still around.

RG: They still do that in school?

BWP: It’s in schools- we have our all-state competition system, and we have a prescribed music list. It has three arrangements of “Pick a Bale of Cotton.” But one is a partner song with “Pick a Bale of Cotton” and “Going Back to Dixie (2).”

RG: Even better!*

BWP: Even better....*

So it seems we have music teachers who may be of the past because of literal age, but a lot of this is being perpetuated in the present. And so part of what we do at Decolonizing the Music Room is say “Hey, we need to take a look at this.” And it’s so funny you brought that up because “Pick a Bale of Cotton” was on my questions list. A really bad discussion including this song was kind of my entry point into talking to teachers about these issues.

RG: But these things aren’t happening now. This is part of our history. Nothing is like that now., Why don’t we teach this?”*

BWP: or “And if we can’t do ‘Pick a Bale of Cotton,’ we can’t do ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.’”*

RG: Oh, because it’s a column. You have a negative song of slavery, so it’s another negative song of slavery which is singing about freedom- from slavery!

BWP: So what I’m really trying to chip away at is the idea that if we don’t do the songs in elementary, we won’t teach the history. Because to me the obvious falsehood is in one saying “Children, here’s this ugly history. Now let’s play it.” Which I’m sure no-one’s doing. So, when I’m talking to teachers about the place of Blackface minstrel music-because we know there’s a place for study or performance, when you have agency as a professional performer. Where does it go? When I’m talking to teachers who say “It’s going to disappear,” what am I going to tell them? What place do you see for it, as we are helping little humans grow up and talking to others in the community about this music?

RG: That’s a hard one. That’s a really hard one, because I go back and forth from “Why the hell do they need to learn these songs, as children?” It’s in so many other aspects of the culture. But then you go, “Well it’s an opportunity to talk to them about it,” but you’re not gonna, because they’re what- 8? 6? So, to me that whole contextualizing argument doesn’t work because it’s very hard to contextualize some of those songs for children. Children understand way more than we give them credit for but there’s also- I think you can also give them the wrong things trying to give ‘em information- I don’t know, it’s hard. I think you can get them to fall in with very sophisticated concepts, but the illogical reality of how stupid racism is is probably not one that I would want to- I don’t know. I don’t know how my life was increased by measure by learning these songs as a child. When they’re a part of the fabric in so many different ways-of culture. But then there’s so many songs that you can teach kids that have a place in American history, that have nothing to do with any of these songs. There’s SO MANY songs.

BWP: I think it’s interesting- on the one hand there are people who are digging their heels in, on the other hand there are people who are absolutely are saying “There’s no reason. There’s no reason to keep these songs in children’s literature.” It’s really starting to gain momentum. And I think there's a level of understanding that a lot of teachers need to gain.

So looking at teaching stats, music education is mostly white (3). The number of Black music educators lags behind the number of Black students (4). And of course the distribution is a problem when we look at districts. So, I guess my question is as a music teacher, what do I need to know about blackface minstrelsy to even begin to gain some kind of context- to make a choice?

RG: I think the most important thing-I think the thing that I try to impress upon people the most when I don’t have a lot of time, but I try to just kind of touch on the subject, in terms of what I would hope they would take away if they’re going to do anything with it is that blackface minstrelsy is not a monolith and it served different purposes at different times in the country. Maybe there’s two myths about blackface minstrelsy: one is that it’s the same thing for 80 years. Ya know, white people putting on blackface and acting stupid on stage, and that’s it. And the other myth is that it’s either actual real real Black music that white people have stolen wholesale, or it’s white music that they’ve dressed up as Black music, even though they’re white, ya know- and neither one of those things is true. 

So I would start with, it’s a mixture of working class, deep-seeded mask work that was coupled with the nascent sort of white supremacy ideals that had been fomenting for a while- I wouldn’t even say you could say “white supremacy” at this point, but like the color- the way that Black had been painted as the other, and less than, and negative- and how that had been, ya know, all done overseas before even coming over to the New World. That’s all wrapped up in the first years of blackface minstrelsy. But, before African Americans were emancipated, there was a lot more of usage of it as a working class, political statement in a lot of ways, ya know? There is the entertainment portion, there is the consumerist portion of the- ya know- how the banjo was taken up as a commercial instrument, and all that stuff within this time period. But, even separate from music a lot of these minstrel songs were used as political statements- the words were written and rewritten and changed. Which is why I’m not necessarily not advocating for words to be changed, because I’m like “This is part of the tradition, right?” They’ve been altered, the tunes- and this is like the way the broadsides worked over in England, ya know? 

And there’s a lot of political content in them too, but they were “to the tune of ‘xyz.’” So, I think within the knowledge of the history of blackface minstrelsy could be keys in what we could do with that music now. One of the reasons why I was very free to do the adaptation of “Get Up in the Mornin’” that I did- which was I just wiped all the words clean- but I was very faithful to the tune (5). Because for me it’s- and this brings us to myth number two- the idea that this is either Black music or European music played on the banjo- which I’ve [unfortunately] heard people say. But there is this middle ground, sort of dating ground which is it’s a mixture of what was going on at the time. Which is this African started- that first syncretization of European and African forms which starts in the Black community-in South America, the Caribbean, and then does that sort of back and forth thing. All of that stuff was going on in the riverways- that creolization of American culture is pretty down home about the beginnings of the musical part of minstrelsy. 

So I think that within the history of it is the key to the salvation of it. For me it’s like, how do we liberate the positive aspects of minstrelsy- which before now was, “There was no positive aspects”- it’s like, actually, it is an art form like any other. It was an art form that was heavily negative in a lot of ways but- particularly before emancipation- I feel like there’s a lot to be learned from there about Black culture, about Black music, and in a lot of ways it’s the record we have of the influence and the co-creation that we were involved in. It’s hard to find. I mean, it’s hard to trace- not hard to find but it’s hard to nail it down and to go “Well, what aspect of this, and what aspect of that is it?” But I find the tunes- especially as I’ve been dealing with a lot of the banjo tunes, not so much the hoary old chestnuts that we all know- which are all great tunes too, which is why we still frickin’ sing em’ (6)! But, I think there’s a lot of grey area in what we can do. And I kind of think if somebody could take some of these songs and make some tweaks that were acknowledging what was going on, without erasing it. As I talk myself through your question- I’ve never really thought about it this way- but I kind of feel like that would be an interesting solution. If somebody who is very deeply seated in it, and who could really pull in some interesting aspects of them and create a whole new way of looking at some of these songs. I don’t know. It’s a thought.

BWP: Yeah, I think I’d like to dig deeper into the idea of someone who’s very seated in that. So, I’ve done a little bit of writing on the idea of- not that this history belongs completely to Black people or completely to white people- but when we’re talking about a certain level of impact and a certain level of history, I find a lot of white educators saying “Well, it’s fine by me,” and that’s the viewpoint- that’s it. So, can you elaborate more on the idea of who we should be looking to in terms of someone seated in the tradition when were getting this feedback, because a lot of us are silos in music ed. We’re the only people on our campus, so someone can say- I’ve had a teacher say- “‘Pick a Bale of Cotton’ just made me feel so happy as a kid, and so that’s why we’re doing it.” And that’s kind of it.

RG: Wow. Geez. I don’t even know what to do with that. The part of the problem is the myopia of- I won’t say all white people- but a lot of white people. They’re just so unused to having to examine their outer life and their inner life. They’re just so unused to having to actually think about this stuff. To be honest it’s-as you know- it’s like a slog. Because people are just so fecking oblivious. How do we do things that can change the paradigm and feeds our soul without having to constantly educate people over and over again? I don’t know.

BWP: What I’m noticing now is the overlap in disciplines is getting more and more frequent. I’m a musician and music educator, and I’m finding ethnomusicologists, I’m finding folklorists- not that these people weren’t here doing this stuff before, but it feels like something is happening right now- there’s a level of overlap that I don’t know necessarily existed before. We are all meeting each other.

RG: The world is crazy right now. It’s been crazy, and it’s going to get crazier. It’s paramount that we are able to maintain our sanity within it, because it’s so necessary, what we’re doing. And I think the support of each other-like you said- can cross disciplines, but all kind of with the same vibe. Like it doesn’t matter exactly how you’re doing it, but you're doing that thing. And I’m finding that more and more kind of my focus, like how can we support each other. It is such a constant battle, and it’s so tiring, it’s so tiring- as you know.

BWP: And we’re talking as adult professionals, obviously- we have a lot of agency over how we approach the music, but kids, they’re doing what the teacher says. So that's a concern for me in getting educators to understand that, to some extent, children are being forced- like whatever songs we pick for them is what they are going to do. There isn’t the agency in that. And without the understanding of those complex ideas there’s even less agency.  I’m hoping you can speak to what teachers need to know about the difference in an adult- and I don’t want to even say adult, because we have people like Giri and Uma- they’re not adults, but they have studied, they have agency in their work, vs. my ten-year-old who is in class, who is being given something by the teacher, who very likely is teaching songs that I’ve determined don’t need to be approached in that way (7).

RG: Yeah, I mean, then you start getting into how we teach. How the school system is set up. I mean, it’s not set up for- I mean we’re just talking the average school, right? Teachers are working within very stiff structures of overtesting, of catering to one learning style, of catering to one culture style, you know. So within all of that, no [adequate] lunch time, no [adequate] recess time, overcrowded- within all of that it’s kind of like- it’s hard to separate what they’re getting, just even in the musical context. But, I mean, I’m just trying to think of my kids- cuz you know, my kids are-they’re not gonna be, it’s like your kids- they’re getting a lot of stuff at home. You know- kids who aren’t getting stuff at home, and that classroom is the chance that they might get some knowledge that will be really good for them, or will situate them in American history in a way that’s positive, or whatever.

BWP: And their identities- that identity construction is very particular for me. I feel like some of the things I’ve heard you say in interviews and online resonate with me. I’m not of mixed ethnicity but as a kid I was bussed in an integration program around all the white kids, and I had complex identity issues with blackness and feeling the need to distance myself from it (8). And honestly it’s really this traditional music that has kind of brought me back full circle to being very very ok with being super Black. And in “super Black” meaning varying things. 

RG: That’s very true. I mean, it’s like you said. I’ve felt very similar as neither, as fish nor fowl, and then I found this music and was like, “Oh.” Cause I did all that stuff before I knew. I was calling- I called a contra dance, I called a square dances. I didn’t know we [Black people] did all that! I had no idea (9)! So, the idea of playing music that is considered so American- because the things is: this is what they took away from us, right? So the blues and the jazz is seen as, you know, something that Black people brought with them. It’s way more complicated than that, but it’s like “This is what we contributed to the American dream. This is Black music”- whereas square dancing and traditional fiddle and banjo music, it’s like “But this is American music.” You know, the way that it’s spoken about is very much in that kind of- well this is the other. And this is all done very specifically. So when I found out, it was like ‘Oh yeah- we are American music! That’s right.”

BP: It’s our stuff!

RG: It’s us. And I had that similar thing, I found my identity through that. I didn’t feel like a freak anymore. I was like, “Oh, ok. This is who I am, and this is my connection.” And so, it’s- when you think about it. I think what you’re doing, I mean you have to- when you’re teaching these kind of songs, there has got to be ways of acknowledging, you know, the creation of how this came about, without having to really dig into a lot of super negative things, but being real about as much as you can for each age group. There’s gotta be a way to figure that out. I keep coming back to, “But that there has to be material that is doing that.”

BWP: I think that there’s so much to choose from. Just the idea that, like, it almost feels like if it isn’t rooted in blackface minstrelsy, there’s not an American folk thing- it’s almost like teachers sometimes are equating that tradition with it- like “that is the American tradition.” It’s implicit and sometimes it’s a bit more explicit. But even as an African American person and having children I want reflected in the music, there’s just so much more, where we can still include the parts of history that are a little bit harder, but we don’t have to sing “Jump Jim Joe” -- which is quite a common song to sing, unfortunately (10).

RG: This is the problem - the wrong people are doing these songs. We need some deep seated people- in not only what it is to be Black, what it is to be American, but what it is to know this music. And there’s not a whole lot of people, but there are some.

I guess this is why I started writing songs! Started writing songs about slavery, I started writing songs from viewpoints that are never freaking considered. It’s like, “If I don’t do it”-I’m not saying that somebody else couldn't do it, but it hadn’t been done so I was just like “I just wanna do it, because these stories need to be told.” 

BWP: Something I thought hard about before I named Decolonizing the Music Room was the choice of the word “decolonizing,” and looking back at that historically. So for me it’s “What did colonization do?” and “What are we undoing?” but there are very specific academic contextual definitions and specific movements tied to decolonization. What are your thoughts on our place as African American people in colonization and decolonization?

RG: I think that there’s humanistic things we colonize-it’s what we do. I was listening to this podcast about the Inca, and how it was always one small tribe that has whatever it is it takes to take over, and become the big organization- either get taken over, or get bigger and then collapse under its own weight. It’s what happens over and over again, we colonize. Obviously, the combination of the English colonial mindset and the advent of the economic insanity and technological boom that happened, along with the religious poison that was coming out of Spain- it was a pretty toxic brew, and I think that colonization is really representing that mindset. But then I think, “You know, Julius Caesar massacred the Gauls, absolutely massacred them. Rome- Lord almighty, they just killed people- they just rolled right over them. It’s just what’s been done. But that being said, it doesn’t mean that it’s something that needs to stand- just because it’s been done. Yeah, we need to decolonize our mindsets because this way of living is leading us down to the end of the planet.

You kinda gotta put your flag in the sand somehow. It’s just being willing to say, “This is why we chose this. Challenge it if you want, but we thought about this, and this is why.” Carolina Chocolate Drops was that way. There’s a confidence in knowing why you called yourself something. If it’s the best term, it’s the best term.