(Nonesuch)
The collective and their artistic director’s classy multimedia project highlights the lives lost and land snatched away in building the US transcontinental railroad

Ever since her days with folk revivalists Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon Giddens has championed the marginalised or suppressed elements of American musical tradition. Now artistic director of the Silkroad Ensemble, a multi-ethnic, 13-strong troupe founded in 2000, Giddens has overseen a history of America’s coast-to-coast railroad, or more particularly the army of workers who built it. Most were Irish, African American, Chinese and Japanese, while Native Americans found their lands snatched away.

It’s a substantial project, including a podcast and museum expos alongside this album – recorded live – inspired by or drawn from the times. Giddens, with her opera-trained voice, grabs the glory with renditions of Swannanoa Tunnel, an Appalachian ballad about a route that cost an estimated 300 lives, and Steel-Driving Man, about the fabled John Henry. The record is, however, mostly instrumental, drawing on a well-manicured mix of cellos, banjos and ethnic instruments. It’s all impeccably played, even if the link to railroads and navigation is sometimes unclear; a tabla solo does not evoke a prairie, though Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu does so on Milimo. There is sorrow from Native American activist Pura Fé, who also voices a moving blues, Have You Seen My Man?, before the set climaxes in a collective gospel blaze. Classy, but only intermittently evoking bygone times.