After the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, a trip from coast to coast that used to take months was shortened to just under a week, allowing for the transport of goods and ideas across the continent in ways previously inconceivable. Profit-seeking corporations and the American government financed it, but the people who actually built it and who were most affected by it are the focus of this program of music—Indigenous and African Americans as well Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and other immigrant laborers whose contributions have been largely erased from history. Silkroad’s American Railroad seeks to right these past wrongs by highlighting untold stories and amplifying unheard voices from these communities, painting a more accurate picture of the global diasporic origin of the American Empire.

The project—years in the making—represents Silkroad Artistic Director Rhiannon Giddens’s vision for the Silkroad Ensemble, having first raised the idea early in her tenure. American Railroad will include multidisciplinary components ranging from tours across North America and site-specific visual installations to a video documentary series, recording releases, and curricular materials for use by educators and the public.

The building blocks of the American Railroad program began at artist retreats and site visits across the nation—to the Standing Rock Reservation, New York City, and San Francisco—where artists engaged in historical and cultural research, which informs the overall storytelling and musical direction. The process also included a series of open workshops, titled Train Station Trios, held in Sacramento (CA), New York City, and Springdale (AR). These culminated in informal, hour-long performances with trios of Silkroad musicians and local scholars, featuring new music inspired by the railroad’s impact on that particular area.

The music on the American Railroad tour comes from these workshops as well as additional research. Rhiannon Giddens’s arrangement of “Swannanoa Tunnel,” broken into vignettes interspersed throughout the program, comes from a work song from African Americans forced to labor on the railroad in Giddens’s home state of North Carolina—and it’s a tune which has long been associated with bluegrass and folk artists, its origins forgotten. 

Grammy Award-winning vocalist and composer Cécile McLorin Salvant’s work is inspired by stories shared with and collected by Silkroad artists. Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Abels’ work digs into the nature of cooperation and imagines a world where a win for one doesn't have to come at the cost of someone else. Silkroad artist and pipa virtuoso Wu Man has also adapted a song called “Rainy Day” for the initiative.

Silkroad artists Haruka Fujii and Maeve Gilchrist provide their own re-contextualizations of railroad songs from immigrant communities. Fujii’s “Tamping Song” celebrates the Japanese immigrant contribution to the railroad, particularly after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, while Gilchrist’s “Far Down Far” shines light on the tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities within Irish railroad workers. Both pieces were originally created for Silkroad’s recent Uplifted Voices—another program intended to germinate ideas for American Railroad—but have been re-orchestrated for this program.

Select stops along the American Railroad tour are complemented by education and community engagement activities, including residencies at local universities comprising guest lectures, panel discussions, master classes, and open rehearsals; and public programs that allow audiences of all ages to engage more deeply with local railroad history. On the 2023 tour this activity included Silkroad’s Mazz Swift leading a workshop through Project MUSIC (Music Uniting Strangers Into Community). Silkroad’s Project MUSIC leverages partnerships within the justice system to bring shared musical experiences to carceral communities across the country, where walls are a literal and figurative divider. It also included a partnerhsip with For Freedoms, an artist-led organization that centers art as a catalyst for creative civic engagement, discourse and direct action. Together, they displayed four compelling billboards in Los Angeles that told the story—from a visual perspective—of the fraught legacy of American Imperialism and the quiet histories of those who toiled to build this country.

The next tour of Silkroad’s American Railroad takes place in November 2024.