Giri And Uma Peters Are Picking Prodigies On A Mission

Origins, the first album from the old-time duo Giri and Uma Peters, is stocked with songs that have long been in circulation. The Indian-American siblings bring zippy concision to their Appalachian fiddle and banjo selections and springiness to their Piedmont blues numbers, all of which — aside from for the Giri original "Old Joe" — have come to be closely associated with white musicians and audiences and shown up in folkie repertoires and Grateful Dead set lists. But the Peters aren't appealing to familiarity alone; they're intent on spotlighting the black musical traditions that shaped and spread the tunes. "I wanted to try to change how people listen to and think about them," Giri writes in an essay that accompanies the album. "By exploring the origins of each song, we can use the music as a guide to explore America's history of slavery, the intermixing of cultures, and even racism."

The project doesn't just prove the brother-sister outfit to be worthy of significant attention and stage time in the old-time, string band, bluegrass and folk circles in which they've participated in increasingly visible ways for several years. As it happens, it also served as Giri's eighth grade project at Nashville's Linden Waldorf School. The liner notes, which include song histories and a bibliography, are the work of a 14-year-old who printed his work in a CD insert also taped