NPR’s Debbie Elliott speaks with musician Anne Harris and Amanda Ewing, the Nashville luthier whose violin Harris uses on her new album, “I Feel It Once Again.”
Transcript :
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
Anne Harris has a new fiddle and a new album to go with it. More on the fiddle in a bit. First, the album, her eighth, called “I Feel It Once Again.” Harris, now 59, has spent her career recording and touring both on her own and with everyone from Living Colour and Los Lobos to Buddy Guy, Shemekia Copeland and Cracker. And you can hear that breadth of influence and experience on this new record. Here’s the title track.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “I FEEL IT ONCE AGAIN”)
ANNE HARRIS: (Singing) I was fine running through the morning.
And I all of a sudden got this story of a person mourning a loss and the juxtaposition of daytime when you can sort of gloss over the things that are painful, and the night coming on when those things rise from the subconscious, and the pain emerges.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “I FEEL IT ONCE AGAIN”)
HARRIS: (Singing) Now I feel it once again.
ELLIOTT: The song, “Everybody Gotta Rise Up.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “EVERYBODY GOTTA RISE UP”)
HARRIS: (Singing) Everybody gotta rise up.
ELLIOTT: That sounds almost like a call to action.
HARRIS: Absolutely. That song really is about my belief in the power of collective community. When we join together, we are a force that I think is unstoppable because our way forward in this world has to be through conscious community, but there’s a lot of work to get towards that. But “Everybody Gotta Rise Up” is my call to arms in that way.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “EVERYBODY GOTTA RISE UP”)
HARRIS: (Singing) Rise up now. Rise up.
I live in the world of American roots music. That’s my home.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “EVERYBODY GOTTA RISE UP”)
HARRIS: (Singing) Shining light on (rise up).
ELLIOTT: And it’s a sprawling home. The Chicago Bay singer-songwriter weaves American folk rock with Afrobeat, soul, blues, Appalachian spirituals, and as you heard just now, when that fiddle wailed, Celtic reels, which brings us to Anne Harris’ new instrument. We’re talking in an apartment in Nashville – the city where Harris recorded “I Feel It Once Again” – and on the windowsill in its case is that violin. Sitting nearby with us is the woman who made it – Nashville luthier Amanda Ewing.
HARRIS: The violin that I’ve been playing on for pretty much my entire playing career – since I was 10 years old – was given to me by my mother. She got it from a college student who was looking for, you know, some quick cash. And I have been playing on that violin since then. Fast-forward to a couple of years ago, coming out of pandemic, and I’m scrolling through Instagram, the ‘Gram.
AMANDA EWING: (Laughter).
HARRIS: And I see this beautiful Black woman maker holding a violin. I began to find out that this was Amanda Ewing and that she certifies as the first Black woman violin maker luthier in the country. And I then started to stalk her. I read everything I could find on Amanda. I read through every article. I looked at all the pictures, all the work, and I was truly moved to tears. It was very emotional for me, and I knew that I had found the baby mama of my future second violin.
EWING: (Laughter).
HARRIS: And that began our path – this commission, which is now a historical commission because we’re the first professional Black women, luthier and violinist, to be recognized on paper.
ELLIOTT: When you say recognized on paper, what does that mean?
EWING: On record. It’s so important to say because it’s recognizing that there are unsung heroes in the makers’ world who are Black and brown. So the people who go on after us and look for individuals who look like them, they’re going to find us.
HARRIS: I had never in my life questioned the hands of the maker that made my instrument, and it just never occurred to me that they would be hands that would look like mine, and that made me a bit sad. Like, why did that never occur to me? And I think this is part of what drives me to really want to bring this instrument and her story out into the world.
ELLIOTT: Amanda, if you would, describe for me what you did to make this instrument.
EWING: Yes. So the top wood, the top plate, is going to be a softer wood, and this is spruce.
HARRIS: Yeah, she’s taking a tree.
EWING: Yeah. So they’re quarter sawn, so they look like blocks of wood you would think you could throw into your fireplace. So it takes a lot of work to actually get it even to start looking like an instrument. And then after that, it takes even more work to get it to be a playing classical instrument.
ELLIOTT: I wish you could see this violin. Anyone who’s listening, it’s like honey. There’s sunshine in there.
EWING: It’s gold.
ELLIOTT: It’s golden.
EWING: It’s golden sunshine. It is. So the typical – traditional maybe – violins have a reddish orange undertone in it. It’s not for me. I knew I wanted it to be golden. I knew I wanted it to feel like sunshine. And when you look at it, you just feel good about your whole entire life.
HARRIS: (Playing violin).
I’m going to play a song called “May Mountain Waltz.”
(Playing violin).
ELLIOTT: And she even let me have a try.
(Playing violin).
HARRIS: Oh, that was nice (laughter).
EWING: With Confidence, now. Go ahead, Debbie.
ELLIOTT: (Playing violin).
EWING: Yeah.
HARRIS: Whoa.
ELLIOTT: (Playing violin).
HARRIS: Yes.
EWING: Yes.
HARRIS: Yes.
ELLIOTT: The violin is a feature of this new album, but it made its stage debut before a live audience the night before we spoke when Anne Harris played with blues legends Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ at a classic American venue nearby.
HARRIS: I knew that I wanted the first public appearance to be on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. I wanted the voice of that violin to really ring in those halls ’cause I thought, what an incredible coming-out party for the instrument.
EWING: (Laughter).
HARRIS: Also my mother told me that her father, my grandfather, who I never met because he passed many years before I was born – and he was from Barbados – his favorite show was the Grand Ole Opry. And he would listen to it religiously every Saturday on the radio, and everyone in the house had to be quiet. And she said, he would be so proud of you.
EWING: It was amazing to hear it, to hear Anne’s spirit also come through the instrument because an instrument has a sound on its own, but then the sound that the player brings into it, and then the sound of the – that the instrument has its own voice ’cause it’s separate. But then I believe when the player and the instrument come together, it becomes more one, a beautiful duo, so to speak. I felt so good hearing it on that stage in Anne’s hands. It was the best.
ELLIOTT: What do you think you bring that’s different to an instrument?
EWING: I am showing people that they can start late, that they can look different, but they can still have an impact in an industry that’s underrepresented with people who look like them. Because right now, what we are used to is the European point of view. But the ancestry – African ancestry to the violin is the goje instrument. And that instrument has been around for a very long time, and it has traveled around. And now it has transformed into what we have as the modern violin, but it has a very rich African history. And I want people to know that.
HARRIS: I just knew when she completed that instrument and handed it to me that it was going to have a force in it, a life force of your spirit, Amanda. And then I could carry my spirit through that, along with our ancestors.
ELLIOTT: That’s Anne Harris along with luthier Amanda Ewing. Harris’ new album is “I Feel It Once Again.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “I FEEL ALRIGHT”)
HARRIS: (Singing) I feel…
Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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