At the Purchaser’s Option
We have been very much taken by the story behind Rhiannon Giddens’ song ‘At the purchaser’s option’. Her song is a response to the advertisement she saw from the time of slavery, in which a young woman was offered for sale with her nine month old baby ‘at the purchaser’s option’. We recorded the string quartet arrangement of this song on our latest album which we called ‘But Not My Soul’ which we took from those lines in Giddens’ song:
You can take my body You can take my bones You can take my blood But not my soul
Our album is a tiny contribution to never forgetting what slavery has done to so many people. As white women we can probably and hopefully never feel the pain of those kept in slavery and the inequality which their descendants have experienced, but we believe it is a responsibility of all of us to keep remembering.
Video: Rhiannon Giddens