Carnegie Hall

While you may think of Carnegie Hall as a destination for classical ensembles, opera stars, and jazz performers, our stages also have a rich history of hosting a variety of folk musicians. Often summarized simply as “music of the people,” this genre of music was re-popularized in the United States between the mid-1940s and 1960s, though its origins date back much earlier.

What exactly do we mean when we refer to folk music as a genre? For starters, it’s much more than the stereotype of a lone troubadour with an acoustic guitar. Chicago’s preeminent Old Town School of Folk Music describes the genre as “cultural expressions rooted in the traditions of diverse American and global communities.” Folk music comprises a wide swath of songs and traditions, and its style shifts with people, cultures, and times. It is historical songs and songs from immigrant communities that have been preserved by oral traditions and written on the page. It’s labor songs, union songs, and songs of protests. Folk music can be played on any instrument, as long as there’s a story to tell.

Knowing this, it’s no surprise that folk music has also been a natural vehicle through which historically marginalized communities can find the space and agency to tell their own stories in their own voice. In what follows, we look back on historical moments in which iconic women of color in folk music have graced the Carnegie Hall stage and celebrate their contributions to American musical history.

One of the earliest instances in which a woman of color performed folk music at Carnegie Hall was on March 7, 1949 in a concert called “New York: A Musical Tapestry.” The show featured jazz and blues singer Laura Duncan, known for political activism and for her performance of the protest song “Strange Fruit” at Madison Square Garden in 1938. She was featured as a guest alongside artists like Pete Seeger and The Weavers, clarinetist Artie Shaw, and drummer Slick Jones. The performance included folk songs in English, Russian, and Incan, as well as instrumental music and spirituals.

Odetta, one of the most well-known and influential Black folksingers, first performed at Carnegie Hall on January 25, 1958. Often referred to as “the Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” she was beloved for her orchestrations and interpretations of traditional ballads, old blues, and contemporary folk songs. Her 1963 LP Odetta Sings Folk Songs—which included covers of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” as well as traditional and gospel songs like “Shenandoah” and “This Little Light of Mine”—was one of the best-selling albums that year. She went on to perform at Carnegie Hall nearly two dozen times.

Elizabeth Cotten—who performed at Carnegie Hall on September 30, 1978—can be best described as one of the mothers of American folk music. Born in 1893, she was a self-taught multi-instrumentalist who switched between picking guitar and banjo. She learned music by ear and taught herself the local rags and dance songs she heard in her youth. As a teenager, she wrote her first popular song, “Freight Train,” which was eventually rediscovered by the Seeger family. It went on to be covered by everyone from The Beatles to counterculture icon Jerry Garcia, blues legend Taj Mahal, and contemporary folk musicians like Devendra Banhart, Laura Veirs, and Laura Gibson.

Buffy Sainte-Marie remains one of the most famous and beloved Indigenous singer-songwriters in North America. A pacifist, activist, and educator as well as a guitarist, pianist, composer, and producer, Sainte-Marie often leans heavily into the Cree and Mi’kmaq traditions of her birth parents and adopted parents in songs like “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone.” She first performed at Carnegie Hall in September 1963 during an event presented by Sing Out! Magazine called the “Hootenanny at Carnegie Hall,” returning multiple times throughout the 1960s. More recently, her album Medicine Songs won a Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year in 2018.

As folk music continued to evolve in the 1990s, so did the rise of third-wave feminism. From riot grrrl to Lilith Fair, women in music took greater stands and demanded more rights and representation. During this decade, Carnegie Hall introduced two new series, Folk Masters (1990) and Folk Festival (1992, 1994), both of which aimed to program more diverse folk music from different cultures and communities. These shows celebrated and helped to validate regional forms like zydeco, gospel, Delta blues, merengue, jibaro, and more.

Today, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens is leading the way for many women in folk music. With her spectacular banjo and fiddle playing, passionate vocals, and perceptive songwriting, she embodies a boundless curiosity that explores untold stories and reclaims American musical traditions. She began her career in folk music as a co-founder of the old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops in 2005, and has since released solo records, collaborated with a range of artists from Amanda Palmer to Yo-Yo Ma, composed the score to and starred in the ballet Lucy Negro Redux, and has acted in the hit drama series Nashville. And that’s just to name a couple of her accolades.

Giddens first performed at Carnegie Hall in 2017 on a program titled “The Music of Aretha Franklin” and returns this season as curator of a 2022–2023 Perspectives series. She recently appeared to sold-out houses with the supergroup of Black women banjoists Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell as Our Native Daughters, and as a duo alongside her partner, multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Additionally, Giddens performs with members of the Silkroad Ensemble, for which she has served as artistic director since 2020. Each of these events shed light on the shared history of a variety of performance traditions around the world, explores the complex history of Black influence in American music, and much more.

Throughout the 2022–2023 season, we’re thrilled to present even more exciting, virtuosic programming that explores and expands on the folk music genre, highlighting women of color from around the world. From Mexican singer-songwriter and mariachi traditions of Natalia Lafourcade and Flor de Toloache, respectively, to the East African jazz and pop of Somi and the Kurdish folk sounds of Aynur, these women are just a few of many who are highlighting the diversity of this storied genre and crafting its future.