Composed 2016, arr. 2016/25; 4 minutes
The stark title comes from a chilling line in a 19th century slave sale advertisement: a young, enslaved woman and her infant child were offered for sale, the baby included “at the purchaser’s option.” This phrase—bureaucratic, detached, brutal—sparked the song by American musician and composer Rhiannon Giddens.
Born in North Carolina, Giddens moves easily between folk, opera, and historical research into African American musical traditions. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship, multiple Grammy Awards, and the Pulitzer Prize for Music—for the opera Omar. At the Purchaser’s Option began as a song on her album Freedom Highway. Trombonist-composer Jacob Garchik arranged it for string quartet in 2016 for Kronos Quartet’s “Fifty for the Future” project; the string-orchestra version for A Far Cry grows from the spare, haunting original.