On this episode of Soundcheck, revisit a special live performance and interview from our archives, recorded in 2019. Multi-instrumentalist, composer, host of the podcast Aria Code, and MacArthur Fellow Rhiannon Giddens collaborated with Italian pianist and percussionist, Francesco Turrisi on there is no Other: twelve songs that explore the connections between European, Arabic, African-American, and Mediterranean sounds with an opposition to "othering" and “a celebration of the spread of ideas, connectivity, and shared experience” (Nonesuch Records).

The duo’s artistic cross-pollinations and discoveries draw from Italy, Ireland, Iran, Africa, and Brazil, among other places, and reflect the history of the movement of both people and instruments (with particular attention paid to both the trans-Saharan and the trans-Atlantic slave trade). Giddens and Turrisi have mentioned in interviews that audiences probably won’t be thinking about how cultures meet, collide, and create new forms. But perhaps as the players weave their magic, the result might also be that the music will start deep and productive conversations about migrations. Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi, along with bassist Jason Sypher, join us in-studio to perform some of these songs. – Caryn Havlik

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