Silkroad has released “Far Down Far,” the new and second single from its forthcoming album with Silkroad Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens, American Railroad. The album, due November 15 on Nonesuch Records, reflects the program for Silkroad’s inaugural American Railroad tour in Fall 2023. It was recorded live during stops at the Green Music Center in Sonoma, CA and Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, CA; and it is co-produced by Giddens, Kaoru Watanabe, and Jody Elff. You can watch a live performance here:

Composed by Silkroad artist and Celtic harper Maeve Gilchrist, “Far Down Far” is inspired by the jig “The Far Down Farmer,” transformed by the stories and sounds of the Irish laborers who toiled over the building of the railroads. Gilchrist explains, “I was drawn towards a jig called ‘The Far Down Farmer,’ pulled from Francis O'Neill's Music of Ireland, a collection of over 1,850 pieces of Irish folk tunes and songs. During my research into the Irish involvement in the building of the American Transcontinental Railroad, I read about the tension that existed on occasion between Catholic and Protestant workers. The Catholic workers—often from a more economically depressed background—were sometimes referred to as ‘Far Downers.’ I took this simple, two-part jig, and deconstructed the vocabulary, using the motifs and intervals as if I were building a train, laying the tracks and allowing the melody to build up momentum and speed as it gets slung between our respective instruments. I hope that this composition pays tribute to the roots of the tune and the back-breaking work of the workers on both sides of the religious and cultural divide while allowing the melody to fly in the hands of women who would likely never have been given a fiddle or a flute—let alone a hammer to build with!”

In addition to Gilchrist’s “Far Down Far,” the American Railroad album includes commissioned pieces by Cécile McLorin Salvant, Suzanne Kite, and Silkroad artist Wu Man, as well as new arrangements of songs by Rhiannon Giddens and by fellow Silkroad artists Haruka Fujii and Mazz Swift. Rounding out the album are original compositions and arrangements by Silkroad artists Pura Fé, Sandeep Das, Niwel Tsumbu, and Kaoru Watanabe.

The first single, Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of the traditional songs “Swannanoa Tunnel / Steel-Driving Man,” was released on October 1. “Swannanoa Tunnel” is a song written by wrongfully imprisoned Black men and women, who unwillingly risked their lives building the Swannanoa Tunnel in Giddens’s home state of North Carolina. It serves as a tribute to them, ending with a version of the popular traditional tune “Steel-Driving Man” about the folk hero John Henry, who beat the steam drill with his hammer, only to die of a burst heart.

Additionally, Salvant’s first-ever Silkroad commission, “Have You Seen My Man?,” tells the imagined story of a woman walking slowly along a train track, joined by generations of wanderers who cannot ride the train though it was built by their labors. For Kite’s work, titled “Wíhaŋblapi Mázačhaŋku,” she created a graphic score using the Lakota written language based on dreams from members of the Silkroad Ensemble. Wu Man’s “Rainy Day” combines her instrument, the pipa, with the banjo and voice to reflect the emotions of Chinese wives and mothers who missed their husbands and sons working on the railroad across the Pacific Ocean. Fujii’s “Tamping Song” celebrates the Japanese immigrant contribution to the railroad, particularly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Swift’s take on the spiritual, “O Shout!,” reminds us of the way in which enslaved people in the US were able to communicate complex messages of hope, devotion, freedom, and insurrection—through music.

In conjunction with the album release, Silkroad also embarks on the second leg of its American Railroad national tour from November 7-23, visiting 10 cities in the Midwestern, Southern, and Eastern United States with railroad-related cultural history.

AMERICAN RAILROAD TOUR