Quiet as it’s kept, the banjo is an instrument of the African diaspora. In a performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Jan. 12, Rhiannon Giddens talked about the theft of the banjo and the forms of music that came from it. The concert, the world premiere of Shawn Okpebholo’s song cycle Songs in Flight, opened with three original songs performed by Giddens, whose banjo and lyrics communicate just as much as her spoken interludes between pieces.
“I learned your words and wrote a song to put my story down. But then you came and…
