Rhiannon Giddens, too, braced herself for backlash when she released the fierce gospel song “Cry No More” a month after Charleston.
“There’s such a backlash against even trying to talk about race,” said Giddens, the singer for the Durham-based African-American folk band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. “There’s an automatic kickback from the white community: ‘Oh, it’s not me; I’m not racist.’ Sometimes in the black community, there’s an overcorrection that’s too aggressive. We can’t even talk about it in conversation.”
But since premiering on NPR.org, Giddens’ striking video, filmed in a single take in a Greensboro church, has had more than 50,000 views.
“I thought a million trolls were going to come out of the woodwork,” she said. “But it got such a positive, powerful response. Even if that’s all it did – if one person just went, ‘Gosh, let me think about this some more. What else can I do?’ – that’s what we’re here for. That’s what musicians are here for.”
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