Rhiannon Giddens

Born in 1977 in Greensboro, North Carolina, Rhiannon Giddens first trained in voice at the Oberlin Conservatory before turning that background toward American traditional music. A singer, fiddler and banjo player, she works at the intersection of folk, old‑time, bluegrass, country, blues, gospel, jazz and some Celtic repertoires, with a constant attention to the history of popular forms and their circulation. She emerged in the mid‑2000s with Sankofa Strings and as a co‑founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a string‑band project that brought overlooked African‑American repertoires back into the foreground of the roots narrative. After participating in The New Basement Tapes in 2014, Giddens developed a solo career with Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015) and Freedom Highway (2017). She then pursued a more transatlantic direction with Francesco Turrisi on There Is No Other (2019) and They’re Calling Me Home (2021), before returning to a more personal songwriting approach on You’re the One (2023). In parallel, she composes for the stage and co‑wrote the opera Omar with Michael Abels, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2023.