We all had a fantastic time at the Album Release Party on Friday, March 6, 2020, at the American Folk Art Museum. Vienna Carroll and The Folk played songs from their new album, Harlem Field Recordings, plus older crowd folk favorites. Enjoy the photos and videos!
I’ll be with my string band and we’ll be having lots of fun. Spirituals, work songs, prison blues, and sea chanteys – exuberant, roots and funky. Stanley Banks (George Benson) on bass, Keith Johnston (Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Jon Hendricks) on guitar and Newman Taylor Baker (Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Henry Grimes) on washboard.
Come on out. Sing along. Admission is free. CDs for sale!
Gorgeous CD artwork by Ken Daley.
“What a voice!
This evening, awesome Vienna Carroll gave a free concert at the American Folk Art Museum. Accompanied by 2 guitarists [Keith Johnson and Stanley Banks] and a washboard percussionist [Newman Taylor], she got everyone singing folk, gospel, spiritual, call & response, and prison labor songs, and deftly wove in stories of resistance to a range of oppressions (slavery, racist police violence, distortions of history). She gave a shout-out to social media as a tool to expose injustice. Her rendition of the lament-lullaby “Hush Little Baby” was beyond heartbreaking. Intense, informative, inspiring.”
– Review by Pam McAllister
Quakers helped. Mostly, Black people Freed Ourselves through the "Slave Grapevine." Watch the story of African Queens kidnapped, enslaved and resisting. Plus, U.S. Colored Troops and the Slave Grapevine in the Black freedom struggle in the U.S.
Read a brief history of slavery and African rebellions in America freeing ourselves.