After the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, 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 as 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 American Railroad tour program includes commissioned pieces by jazz artist Cécile McLorin Salvant and film composer Michael Abels, as well as Silkroad artist and renowned pipa player Wu Man and Silkroad artist Layale Chaker. It also includes re-envisioned arrangements of folk songs by Silkroad artistic director, Rhiannon Giddens, and fellow Silkroad artists Haruka Fujii and Maeve Gilchrist.
Funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.
