True to the Band’s Spirit, Rising Appalachia Releases ‘Live from New Orleans at Preservation Hall’
PAYING HOMAGE TO THEIR COMMUNITY AS WELL AS THEIR SPIRIT — Rising Appalachia released their new album, Live From New Orleans at Preservation Hall, on Nov. 11. Late in October, Leah Song, one of the two frontsisters of the band, sat down with Luna to discuss the new record.
“We have deep, deep, deep community and family in New Orleans,” she said. “We lived down there for many years.”
Musing about the album’s place name, Song explained that New Orleans doesn’t feel like a city, but a village of musicians. Preservation Hall’s story dates back to the 1950s and is one of the city’s most legendary spots in the history of New Orleans jazz music. The space, according to Song, is a magical and powerful small venue. Playing in the hall just felt right — the band was joined by their friends, jazz musicians Aurora Kneeland and Branden Lewis, and together the two brought their sounds and jazz traditions to Rising Appalachia’s record.
Live records, Song explained, are truer to the band’s spirit. “Recording live allows for an organic process that allows the musicians to be present in the making of it all,” she said. “There is no time to hyper-fixate on anything. It takes perfection out of the equation and just becomes about creativity.”
Composed of frontsisters Song and Chloe Smith, Biko Casini, David Brown, Arouna Diarra, and Duncan Wicke, the band sets out to make music with long-haul band members and crew members, each person family, each person a part of a place that the sisters kept returning to. Rising Appalachia is steeped in traditional music from all over the world. Song expressed her deep hope that people learn about their own ancestral roots and the traditional music of wherever they came from.
“Every single one of us has access to traditional folk music, no matter where or how far back you are linked to your own ancestry,” she described. “It is a deep motivation for us to have those conversations be brought into the contemporary vernacular, so that we can be learning about the harvest songs and the songs of struggle or of ritual that all come from our old traditions.”
Song added that the goal is not to romanticize the songs of our past, but to put them into a language that is still alive and breathing.
Rising Appalachia’s music is rooted in the places they’ve called home. Some songs inspire catharsis, some a dance party, while others inspire social justice and communication. But above all else, the band is a community of storytellers and music makers.
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