NEW YORK, NY - February 8 - RECLAIMING HISTORY: OUR NATIVE DAUGHTERS, premiering on Monday, February 22 at 9PM ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel, pulls back the curtain on one of today’s most renowned international musicians, GRAMMY Award-winner Rhiannon Giddens, and her quest alongside musicians Leyla McCalla, Allison Russel, and Amythyst Kiah to continue to use music to explore powerful stories of Black American women’s experience - their struggles, resistance, resilience, and hopes. 

In January 2018, the banjo-playing Giddens invited the three other renowned Black female banjo players to a studio on the banks of a Louisiana bayou. For twelve intense days they collaborated on Songs of Our Native Daughters, a groundbreaking album for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings under the name Our Native Daughters that Rolling Stone dubbed a “crucial pronouncement in folk music.” The resulting album and tour electrified audiences and musicians alike, illuminating long-overlooked history on a journey into our shared past. 

Through intimate behind-the-scenes footage in the studio, riveting concert scenes, including a climactic performance of the GRAMMY-nominated song “Black Myself,” and interviews with members of the group, the documentary explores four incredible musicians on a creative journey that illuminates long-hidden stories and highlights the brilliance and resilience of Black creative voices. 

RECLAIMING HISTORY: OUR NATIVE DAUGHTERS is a production of Black Robin Media, LLC for Smithsonian Channel. Lynne Robinson is executive producer for Black Robin Media, alongside Linda Goldman who serves as executive producer for Smithsonian Channel.

About Smithsonian Channel

Smithsonian Channel™, a ViacomCBS Inc. brand is the place for awe-inspiring stories, powerful documentaries and amazing factual entertainment, available in HD and 4K Ultra HD across multiple platforms. Smithsonian Channel, winner of Emmy® and Peabody awards, is the home of popular genres such as air and space, travel, history, science, nature and pop culture. Among the brand’s hit series are Aerial America, America in Color, America’s Hidden Stories, Apollo’s Moon Shot, The Pacific War in Color and Air Disasters, as well as critically-acclaimed specials that include The Green Book: Guide to Freedom, Black in Space: Breaking the Color Barrier, Walk Against Fear: James Meredith and Princess Diana’s Wicked Stepmother. Smithsonian Channel is available internationally in Canada, Singapore, Latin America, the UK and Ireland.

About Smithsonian Folkways

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the "National Museum of Sound," makes available close to 60,000 tracks in physical and digital format as the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian, with a reach of 80 million people per year. A division of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the non-profit label is dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among people through the documentation, preservation, production and dissemination of sound. Its mission is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document "people's music" from around the world. For more information about Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, visit folkways.si.edu.

About the Artists

The acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Giddens co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops; she has been nominated for six additional Grammys for her work as a soloist and collaborator. Her newest album, They’re Calling Me Home, is due on Nonesuch Records this April.

www.rhiannongiddens.com

Allison Russell is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist of extraordinary power, talent and grace. In addition to being a founding member of Our Native Daughters and Birds of Chicago (with her husband/musical partner JT Nero), Allison has emerged as a powerful artist, poet and activist. Galvanized by Our Native Daughters’ reclamation of Black Women’s collective experience of trauma and systemic oppression, Allison has radically reclaimed her own history of trauma and abuse in her first solo album — tracing her journey to reckoning, to hard-won joy, and, finally, freedom — in a cathartic body of songs she hopes will serve as a lantern light for others on the same path. Russell’s debut solo record will be released Spring of 2021 (Fantasy Records).

www.allisonrussellmusic.com

Leyla McCalla is a New York-born Haitian-American living in New Orleans, who sings in French, Haitian Creole and English, and plays cello, tenor banjo and guitar. A founding member of Our Native Daughters and the former cellist for Carolina Chocolate Drops, her music is at once earthy, elegant, soulful and witty — it vibrates with three centuries of history and is influenced by traditional Creole, Cajun and Haitian music, as well as by American jazz and folk. McCalla’s most recent creation is a music, dance and theatre work called Breaking the Thermometer to Hide the Fever, which explores the legacy of Radio Haiti-Inter, Haiti’s first independent radio station to broadcast news in Haitian Creole—the voice of the people—until the assassination of the station’s founder. McCalla will release an album companion to Breaking the Thermometer in late 2021. 

www.leylamccalla.com

With an unforgettable voice that’s both unfettered and exquisitely controlled, Tennessee-bred singer/songwriter Amythyst Kiah is “one of Americana’s great up-and-coming secrets” (Rolling Stone). Kiah penned the standout “Black Myself,” which earned a GRAMMY Award nomination for Best American Roots Song and won Song of the Year at the 2019 Folk Alliance International Awards. Kiah will be releasing a reimagined version of "Black Myself" this month on Rounder Records.

www.amythystkiah.com 

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