Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi performed "At the Purchaser's Option," the opening track to Giddens' 2017 album, Freedom Highway, from home in Ireland for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert's online series Play at Home today. You can watch it here.
Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi performed "At the Purchaser's Option," the opening track to her 2017 album, Freedom Highway, from home in Ireland for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert's online series Play at Home today. You can watch the performance here:
"I came across an advertisement from the 1830s for a young woman," Giddens has said about writing the song; "thinking about her, and how she had to maintain her humanity against horrific odds inspired this song named for the end of the ad: 'She has with her a 9-month old baby, who is at the purchaser's option.'"
Giddens spoke about the song in her 2017 interview on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, which received an encore broadcast on the show's Juneteenth episode earlier this month. You can hear it again at npr.org.
You can pick up a copy of Freedom Highway and listen to the album here.
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