I Feel It Once Again

Chicago-based fiddle player and singer-songwriter Anne Harris boasts a CV diverse enough to not only include many years touring and recording with trance bluesman Otis Taylor (whose pioneering Black Banjo Project was a formative influence) but also collaborations with Vieux Farka Touré, Shemekia Copeland, Los Lobos, Anders Osborne, Living Colour and even Jefferson Starship. It’s perhaps not that surprising then that her eighth album, produced by Colin Linden, should prove quite so dazzlingly eclectic, weaving Americana, spirituals, folk and blues, into a profoundly spiritual and personal continuum. It marks her first recordings with her newly commissioned violin, the first ever official violin commission between two professional Black women, luthier Amanda Ewing and Harris, while her version of the instrumental ‘Snowden’s Jig’ celebrates The Snowden Family Band, “the longest lasting Black string band of the 19th century”, which featured two fiddle-playing sisters, “possibly the only females known to do so at the time”. ‘I Believe in Being Ready’, “a traditional Appalachian spiritual arranged by Harris and Linden”, and mid-century gospel song ‘Time Has Made a Change’, directly reference Harris’ historical antecedents while impressive self-written material such as ‘Everybody Gotta Rise Up’, ‘Can’t Find My Way’ and the spectral title-track forge a fiercely contemporary link.