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I went to the Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi concert in Turin - Italy yesterday. The concert was simply awesome! The two played almost 2 hours of outstanding music, folk, usa, italian , irish arab with a pletora of instrument perfectly aligned !

Giddens was superb, delicate and strong with her political meaning.

The musical mutual alignement of the two artists was a triumph of melody, sentiments and strenght.

Great night ! Thank to the people of Folkclub in Turin who brought back for the second time the two in Italy.

Long life to Giddens - Turrisi.

See you in the States, whenever possible!

Giuseppe Asselle

Verona - Italy

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This show was great. I felt like we saw a show at a cool, hip museum. Her accompanist did a fantastic job explaining the history of not only some of the songs but their instruments as well. We left entertained, "full up" on great music and educated a bit.

Last time I saw Rhiannon she was coming off of The Carolina Chocolate Drops& I honestly don't think I understood the amazing vocal range she has.

Unbelievable and fantastic performance. All 3 performers were incredible. Francesco Turrisi was unbelievable on the many variants of tambourines: breaking into Smoke in the Water at one point.

Rhiannon was such an eclectic mix of styles and communication with serious messages mixed in with explanations of history.

A night to remember. Very special.

This concert was up and beyond all expectations! The band is fabulous, and I was thrilled to see Rhiannon's sister, as well as Greensboro native, Laurelyn Dossett, join her onstage. Rhiannon has so much energy, so much diversity, and her commentary on historical aspects of music was especially enlightening and educational.

We all witnessed something very special. what an amazing voice and a very talented group of musicians. it was lovely to see how much they enjoyed playing their music together. this was one of if not the best concert I have ever been to.i really hope they all come back-regularly!!!! many thanks Rhiannon & co

It was a sellout fabulous show that ended with 2 standing ovations. Could listen to her all night. The instrumentals were electrifying! She shared some of her music's historical inspirations. 3 extemely talented people. She can sing amy genre. She teased us with a little od Ethel Waters and Nina Simone.

What a great voice! Good selection of songs, cover of Odetta was outstanding. Good rapport with the audience, coukd have done with fewer seats so we could have had a bit of a dance, some of the sings were begging for a boogie. Band was excellent and a great show. Good support act as well.

It was a great show to see. She has a great voice and some good songs. I liked seeing her sister singing with her, but I still miss the Carolina Chocolate Drops. She played a lot of banjo and a little fiddle very well. I would definitely recommend seeing her if she played near.

Awesome performance at Chautauqua’s newly redone Amphitheater. Especially with this year’s theme of African-American history, which she showed with her rendition of the folk ballad For the same price. Federico Tossini was a great percussionist and pianist also.

Second time seeing her in Nashville. Amazing performances yet different,you won’t be bored by any means. When she plays the violin or banjo for fast tempo numbers she really rocks the house. Can’t wait to see her again, perhaps in her resident country of Ireland.

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Rhiannon Giddens tour dates and tickets 2024-2025 near you

Want to see Rhiannon Giddens in concert? Find information on all of Rhiannon Giddens’s upcoming concerts, tour dates and ticket information for 2024-2025.

Rhiannon Giddens is not due to play near your location currently - but they are scheduled to play 6 concerts across 2 countries in 2024-2025. View all concerts.

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• February 25, 2024 Setlist

Rhiannon Giddens Setlist at Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland

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• Following the North Star Play Video
• The Love We Almost Had Play Video
• Wrong Kind of Right Play Video
• You Louisiana Man Play Video
• Dimanche Après-Midi ( [traditional]  cover) Play Video
• Briggs' Forró Play Video
• Come Love Come Play Video
• Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad Play Video
• Another Wasted Life Play Video
• Niwel Goes to Town Play Video
• Hen in the Foxhouse Play Video
• We Could Fly Play Video
• God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign ( The Carter Family  cover) Play Video
• Breaking Up Christmas ( Tommy Jarrell  cover) Play Video
• Pretty Saro ( [traditional]  cover) Play Video
• The Lonesome Road / Up Above My Head ( Sister Rosetta Tharpe  cover) Play Video

Edits and Comments

5 activities (last edit by rcox1963 , 26 Feb 2024, 15:10 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Another Wasted Life
• Hen in the Foxhouse
• Too Little, Too Late, Too Bad
• Wrong Kind of Right
• You Louisiana Man
• Breaking Up Christmas by Tommy Jarrell
• Dimanche Après-Midi by [traditional]
• God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign by The Carter Family
• Pretty Saro by [traditional]
• The Lonesome Road / Up Above My Head by Sister Rosetta Tharpe
• Come Love Come
• Following the North Star
• The Love We Almost Had
• We Could Fly
• Briggs' Forró
• Niwel Goes to Town

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Rhiannon Giddens

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Rhiannon Giddens Gig Timeline

• Feb 22 2024 Birmingham Town Hall Birmingham, England Start time: 7:35 PM 7:35 PM
• Feb 23 2024 Pavilion Theatre Glasgow, Scotland Add time Add time
• Feb 25 2024 Vicar Street This Setlist Dublin, Ireland Add time Add time
• Feb 27 2024 RTE Folk Award's 2024 Dublin, Ireland Add time Add time
• Mar 13 2024 The Cabot Beverly, MA, USA Add time Add time

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<div style="text-align: center;" class="setlistImage"><a href="https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/rhiannon-giddens/2024/vicar-street-dublin-ireland-63ad0afb.html" title="Rhiannon Giddens Setlist Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland 2024" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.setlist.fm/widgets/setlist-image-v1?id=63ad0afb" alt="Rhiannon Giddens Setlist Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland 2024" style="border: 0;" /></a> <div><a href="https://www.setlist.fm/edit?setlist=63ad0afb&amp;step=song">Edit this setlist</a> | <a href="https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/rhiannon-giddens-13d2a9f9.html">More Rhiannon Giddens setlists</a></div></div>

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[url=https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/rhiannon-giddens/2024/vicar-street-dublin-ireland-63ad0afb.html][img]https://www.setlist.fm/widgets/setlist-image-v1?id=63ad0afb[/img][/url] [url=https://www.setlist.fm/edit?setlist=63ad0afb&amp;step=song]Edit this setlist[/url] | [url=https://www.setlist.fm/setlists/rhiannon-giddens-13d2a9f9.html]More Rhiannon Giddens setlists[/url]

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You’re the One: Rhiannon Giddens is so gifted that even this flawed album gladdens the heart

Although her performances throughout are strong and persuasive, the album doesn’t knit together convincingly.

You're the One by Rhiannon Giddens

“I hope that people just hear American music. Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, and rock – it’s all there. I like to be where it meets organically,” says Rhiannon Giddens, the outstanding American singer, songwriter, composer, musicologist, author, actor, activist and sometime Irish resident. She certainly does like to play with the possibilities of genre, but the question this album poses is whether she is able to harness this array of styles into a singular album as distinct from a collection of tasty tasters. I suspect not, but her performances throughout are so strong and persuasive that the jury remains out.

You’re the One is her first solo album since Freedom Highway , from 2017, and the first for which she has written all the material. Six years would be an unusually long gap between albums for most artists – popular music can forget you very quickly – but it doesn’t take into account Giddens’s two roots albums with her partner, Francesco Turrisi, the latest of which was the haunting They’re Calling Me Home , from 2021, which won a folk-music Grammy. In addition (in collaboration with Michael Abels) she has written the libretto and music for an opera for which they were awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for music. Omar is based on the autobiography of an enslaved Muslim man, Omar ibn Said, who lived in South Carolina in the 19th century.

Giddens and Turrisi have also written the music for a ballet now retitled Black Lucy & the Bard. And somehow this 46-year-old powerhouse also finds the time to be an activist for racial justice.

You’re the One is, however, generally more personal. If the genres jump around, her lyrics are more grounded, with special mentions for those who have disappointed her. The sassy Too Little Too Late Too Bad summons the spirit of Aretha Franklin. Regret-soaked Memphis soul infuses the gorgeous Wrong Kind of Right, but the narrator of the countrified If You Don’t Know How Sweet It Is is more direct. Ditto the chunky funk of Hen in the Foxhouse and the ribald blues of You Put the Sugar In My Bowl. The tender title track was written for her son, while one of the album’s highlights is when she is joined by Jason Isbell for a duet, on Yet to Be. Other powerful performances include the angry Another Wasted Life and the old-time Way Over Yonder. The most ill-fitting is the Great American Songbook-styled Who Are You Dreaming Of?

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Alone, each of the 12 tracks carries a punch of varying strength, but the album doesn’t knit together convincingly. That said, Giddens is just so gifted that a new album, even a flawed one, gladdens the heart.

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Rhiannon Giddens

Sunday, 25 February 2024

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Giddens’s lifelong mission is to lift up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins.

Among her many diverse career highlights, Giddens has performed for the Obamas at the White House, served as a Carnegie Hall Perspectives curator, and received an inaugural Legacy of Americana Award from Nashville’s National Museum of African American History in partnership with the Americana Music Association.

Readers are advised to check with the venue before relying on the details published here.

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Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi: They’re Calling Me Home review – big, beautiful laments

(Nonesuch) From lockdown in Ireland, Giddens and Turrisi range across folk traditions on exceptional covers and originals

R hiannon Giddens’ new album with Francesco Turrisi, her partner in life as well as music, explores two subjects that occupied them (and, frankly, the rest of us) over the last tumultuous year. One is often comforting: home. The other is usually the opposite: death. But for this American and Italian, locked-down in their adopted Ireland, they found that exploring these subjects through songs from the perspective of their respective upbringings was uplifting. “Every culture has these songs that are laments,” said Giddens. “Those feelings that you have … you experience them through the song and at the end, you’re a little bit lighter.”

This is a big, beautiful album, a showcase for direct, punchy emotions and Giddens’ vocal versatility. She trained as an opera singer and executes astonishing levels of beauty and control on Monteverdi’s Si Dolce è’l Tormento and When I Was in My Prime, a folk song previously covered by Pentangle and Nina Simone. Old-time staple Black As Crow is different and delicate, its banjo-plucked tenderness further softened by Emer Mayock’s Irish flute. Then O Death lands with a whack, as heavy, funky gospel blues: Turrisi does propulsive work on the frame drum. Giddens goes the full Merry Clayton . There is mournfulness on a joint a cappella, Nenna Nenna, an Italian lullaby that Turrisi used to sing to his daughter, as the couple’s close harmonies twist and yearn with great feeling. But there’s also hope in Niwel Tsumbu’s beautiful nylon string guitar on Niwel Goes to Town, and even on the title track, by US bluegrass singer Alice Gerrard, about an old friend “on his dying bed” leaving songs behind him, his “sweet traces of gold”. This album is full of dazzling examples in this vein. They’ll live on.

Also out this week

Eli West ’s Tapered Point of Stone (Tender & Mild) is the first solo set from the American roots guitarist and Bill Frisell collaborator. Exploring the joy of communal music-making after his father’s recent death, it’s rousing stuff, with mandolins, dobros and fiddles all tangling happily. Anna Tam ’s Anchoress (Tam Records) is a ghostly set of British traditionals, spiked into moments of grandiosity by Tam’s showy soprano (she’s a former Mediaeval Baebe). Nyckelharpas and hurdy-gurdys give her endeavours a necessary heave of grit. Further out is Howie Lee ’s Birdy Island ( Mais Um ), morphing Chinese traditional music with bass, Chicago footwork and AI-manipulated birdsong. It’s quite a feat to sound this ancient and futuristic simultaneously.

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‘The kind of a tour that I’ve been dreaming of,’ Rhiannon Giddens says of new shows

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The adjective “renaissance” is often overused when describing someone proficient in a wide range of fields. In the case of Rhiannon Giddens , the term would be drastically underused to sum up the ride she’s been on since releasing her 2015 solo debut “Tomorrow Is My Turn,” following her successful run with old-time string band The Carolina Chocolate Drops.

A renowned banjo player and a 2000 graduate of Oberlin College, where she studied opera, Giddens has had quite the recent five-year run. She released two albums with creative/romantic partner Francesco Turrisi (2019’s “There Is No Other” and 2021’s Grammy-winning “They’re Calling Me Home”), wrapped up the second of two seasons playing a gospel-singing social worker on the television drama “Nashville,” wrote a pair of children’s books (“Build a House” and “We Could Fly”), scored music for the Nashville Ballet (“Lucy Negro, Redux”) and was commissioned to write music for an opera for which she won a Pulitzer Prize for Music (2020’s “Omar”).

And that doesn’t include stints hosting a podcast (Aria Code with Rhiannon Giddens), being named the artistic director of the cross-cultural music organization Silkroad Ensemble, overseeing a 12-part video series called “The Banjo: Music, History and Heritage” or being named the musical director of the 2023 Ojai Music Festival. And let’s not forget she recently released the Jack Splash-produced “You’re the One,” her first solo album since 2017’s “Freedom Highway,” and has another album, “My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall,” coming out in April. That album features contributions of several African American vocalists, including Allison Russell and Valerie June, performing songs from Randall, a rare African American songwriter working for four decades in country music.

If this sounds like a rather hectic pace to maintain, understand it is the North Carolina native’s modus operandi.

“I tend to work better when I’m also doing eight other things,” she admitted during a Whatsapp call from her home in Ireland. “I think I’m destined to go through life constantly stressed, but it is what it is. I’ve had a lot of amazing opportunities that I’m grateful for.”

And while much of Giddens’ other recorded work deals in weighty subjects ranging from the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing of a Baptist church in Alabama that killed four little girls to the evils of slavery, the dozen songs that make up “You’re the One” allowed the musical polyglot to step back and not write about such heavy fare.

“I’ve been doing pretty heavy mission-based work for a long time with my music and I’m happy to,” she explained, turning her thoughts to her new album. “I think it’s my raison d’être . I needed to play a little and I just needed to take a break. I definitely felt like things were getting mentally a bit tough.

“There are these songs that hadn’t really fit into anything,” Giddens said. “I was playing around with form, looking at the American Songbook and thinking about people who’ve inspired me in American musical history like Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone. I was just taking those inspirations and turning them into songs and just writing and putting them away. It seemed time to give them life.”

For folks looking to see how this sounds live, Giddens says to expect more of that spontaneity and juicy musical interplay in her shows.

“I’m going to be doing most of the songs on the record and everyone on the stage, with the exception of one musician, was all on the record, which is always a great thing,” she said. “We’ll also be doing some of the older stuff from my previous records. It’s a big band — there are six people on stage who are all incredible musicians. It’s just the kind of a tour that I’ve been dreaming of. We’re going to have improvisational moments and a whole lot of songs you’ve never heard me do. My goal is to just have a righteous time every night.”

As for Giddens’ other pursuits/accomplishments, being a children’s author whose influences include Virginia Hamilton, Robin McKinley and Shel Silverstein, ranked rather high for her.

“That was a pivot that came about during the pandemic,” she said. “I always wanted to write kids’ books.”

And then there’s that certain accomplishment of landing a Pulitzer Prize for Music for composing an opera based on the Arabic language autobiography of Omar Ibn Said, a highly literate Muslim cleric who was enslaved and brought over to the United States in the early 1800s, during which time he died in bondage, but not before penning his memoirs.

“The Spoleto Festival USA approached me about it and asked if I’d ever heard of Omar Ibn Said and I said no,” Giddens said. “They told me a story about him being brought to South Carolina as a slave and they asked if I’d be interested in writing an opera about it and I agreed. And then I thought, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ But yeah, it was an amazing experience. I’m not sure it’s one I want to repeat, but it got delayed a few years by the pandemic, which only made it better to give us a little extra breathing room to finish the things we needed to.”

Rhiannon Giddens and special guest Charly Lowry will perform at Eisenhower Auditorium on 7:30 p.m. March 19. For more information, visit cpa.psu.edu .

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Rhiannon Giddens is almost as much a historian as she is an acclaimed singer, songwriter and banjo and fiddle player, which is why Ken Burns made such good use of her as an expert witness in his “Country Music” series. She combines her depth of music lore with a gift for storytelling in a new audio mini-memoir, “To Balance on Bridges,” which Audible is announcing today as the newest forthcoming entry in its “Words + Music” franchise, a series that has top musicians speaking as well as singing their truth. Giddens’ entry comes out July 22, and Variety has an exclusive preview (below).

Variety spoke with Giddens from her current home in Ireland about how she came to do her installment of “Words + Music,” which, at about an hour and 15 minutes, combines a compact and selective autobiographical narrative with the performance of eight rearranged songs from her repertoire. In coming up with “To Balance on Bridges,” Giddens follows in the recent footsteps of others who’ve done similar projects for Audible, from St. Vincent to Sting to Sheryl Crow, though none have had anything like her trenchant thoughts on race, identity and string-band music in America.

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She was drawn into the project by T Bone Burnett , her original producer when she left the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops to begin making albums as a solo artist. (Burnett joined Audible as a member of the Emerging Voices Advisory Board, and he provides a brief introduction to “To Balance on Bridges.”)

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“It was T Bone who brought me in to do it, and it was always a very attractive idea. but we couldn’t really schedule it,” Giddens says. “It’s changed quite a bit from when we were first talking about this. -It was originally a three-night concert that was going to be recorded, to then take the best of those three nights, and (the spoken sections were to be) like an interview situation with someone. Then the pandemic happened, and I think Audible in general shifted” ideas about how some of the “Words + Music” entries would be recorded. “They obviously needed to pivot and shift to a different way of doing it. And so it became more of a script — more pre-thought about what I was saying. They’re two very different things; even if the outcome is similar, the way that you arrive to it is fairly different. So once I kind of got my head space into, ‘Okay, this is going to be a recorded thing,’ then we were off to the races.”

Don’t tell Giddens that she has, in effect, recorded her autobiography, because she swears that is something she would never do. The fact that these “Words + Music” pieces are mostly coming in under 90 minutes is allowing a lot of ace musicians who feel they would never have the inclination to write a memoir to casually sneak one in, with just enough sketchy selectiveness about what to discuss, and a carefully chosen set of songs, to make it something shorter, sweeter and more innately musical than the dreaded “life story.”

“I would never think about writing an autobiography, unless it was just a music book where I use my experience to illuminate songs,” the North Carolina-born singer insists. “This in particular was pushed by the music, and then what am I going to say about those songs? Why am I picking them, and what are the pieces of my life that are relevant to those pieces? And so that’s how it was driven. I’d never write an autobiography unless it was just a music book that I use my experiences to illuminate things. I’m never interested in telling my story unless it feeds a larger point that I’m trying to make, just about some of the stuff that I’ve been working on for the last 15 years.”

Giddens talks a great deal in the piece about being “neither/nor, something more,” a phrase she recalls from her childhood. “People often talk about the different sides of the track. I was born on the track, in the middle of a lot of different dualities,” she declares at the outset, growing up as the “definition of ethnically ambiguous” and being of mixed “caste” to boot. She had a father who “could sing Schubert to make you weep” and a grandmother who watched “Hee Haw” every Saturday night, among other disparate cultural influences. She wound up going to Oberlin with the intent of going into classical music. Her performance here of “The Trees on the Mountain” from the opera “Susannah” makes clear how far she might have made it in that world.

But the world of roots music called louder. She had an epiphany when she learned the banjo was not invented as part of white mountain music. “That was all a lie… African descendants in the Caribbean actually invented the banjo, and for the first couple hundred years it was played only by Black people. Louder for the folks in the back: The whitest instrument in America was actually Black. Cue my head exploding.”

Giddens puts a humorous emphasis there on her own shock at learning this bit of musical history to draw fellow explorers in. “I’ve always thought it was important to be open about how it was such a late discovery for me, and that it was such a complete discovery,” she says, “so that it invites people to then discover with me more. It’s like, let’s discover this together, because we’re all kind of in the same boat in terms of what we know about a lot of this stuff.”

The piece is hardly all fun and discovery, as Giddens brings in the slave-themed “The Purchaser’s Song” and talks about the horror that enveloped her when she really researched that time. The song itself, though, is a thing of remarkable beauty; although Giddens has performed it on banjo hundreds of times in concert, she chose a piano accompaniment for this version, reflecting a previously unrecorded arrangement of it she’d done for a ballet in Nashville.

In writing this, as a spoken-word piece with music interludes, “I would think of songs, and then I would think of a story and then that would inspire me to think of another song. I tried to pick songs that either existed in another recorded form, but that I had an opportunity to do in a really different way, or were just perfect illustrations. I was trying to find a journey through especially the last 20 years, since I’ve been doing music. But I just really want to be on the record as saying, like, there’s just so many different ways of doing things, not just like one same type of thing over and over, like eight different types of blues songs. I believe you don’t have to be focused on just one thing to live a fulfilling life; (that it’s better to be), broadening out and not knowing how your journey is going to end — and obviously I am still alive, so I don’t know. You can’t guess what’s going to happen for you, and I think that’s a great place to be. So I wanted to pick things that illustrated those moments in my life that I couldn’t have predicted.”

“To Balance on Bridges” was written and recorded at a point in Giddens’ life where, for now, she does have a happy ending — having been given a MacArthur “genius grant” that afforded her years to record and tour music that has a more ethnomusicological bent, without fear of how to make it completely commercial viable, followed by serendipitously meeting Italian musician Francesco Turrisi, who has become her partner on her last two albums as well as in their chosen life in Ireland. Their most recent album, “They’re Calling Me Home,” came out in April on Nonesuch.

“It does feel like I’m at a moment of transition in my life, and it does feel very satisfying to be able to say that since I graduated (from Oberlin’s music school) in 2000, that I’ve been sort of on this arc. And it’s not to say that I’m not still on it, but I feel like a lot of the stuff that I did on the record that I just put out with Francesco, it’s kind of like the record I would’ve made 20 years ago, had I been able to. I had to have 20 years of experience to make it, and the right partner to do that. And so it does feel like it’s a not an end, but a pause point of reflection.

“I’ve always said that you should never sort of reflect on your life too soon, because there’s so much to live. Like the 21-year-olds putting out an autobiography: I’m like, ‘Okay, so you’re a millionaire. But do you have something to say, and to read?’ That’s not to say that they shouldn’t do it, but it’s just not something I’ve ever really understood. And this is not an autobiography, but it’s like an autobiographical piece , which I’m content at 44 to do. I would never want to do something much bigger than that, but I’m naturally at a point in my life where I kind of go, okay, this has been an a journey. All of the things that have happened have gone into the music that I’m making now, with someone else who feels very similarly in his head. And I never would have foreseen that when I was 22.”

Of the new project, Giddens says, “This has been a great process, and Audible is a really stellar group of people who made the process as easy as possible  or me to get it done. It’s just been a delight from beginning to end, other than the actual writing, which, you know, made me want to pull all of my hair out sometimes. But they couldn’t do anything about that, but everything else, they made a breeze.”

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Rhiannon giddens, www.rhiannongiddens.com.

The acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Giddens co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, and she has been nominated for six additional Grammys for her work as a soloist and collaborator. She was most recently nominated for her collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, there is no Other (2019). Giddens’s latest album, They’re Calling Me Home, is a twelve-track album, recorded with Turrisi in Ireland during the recent lockdown; it speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death, which has been a tragic reality for so many during the COVID-19 crisis.  

Giddens’s lifelong mission is to lift up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins. Pitchfork has said of her work, “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration,” and Smithsonian Magazine calls her “an electrifying artist who brings alive the memories of forgotten predecessors, white and black.”

Among her many diverse career highlights, Giddens has performed for the Obamas at the White House, served as a Carnegie Hall Perspectives curator, and received an inaugural Legacy of Americana Award from Nashville’s National Museum of African American History in partnership with the Americana Music Association. Her critical acclaim includes in-depth profiles by CBS Sunday Morning , the New York Times , the New Yorker , and NPR’s Fresh Air , among many others. 

Giddens is featured in Ken Burns’s Country Music series, which aired on PBS in 2019, where she speaks about the African American origins of country music. She is also a member of the band Our Native Daughters with three other black female banjo players, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, and Amythyst Kiah, and co-produced their debut album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019), which tells stories of historic black womanhood and survival. 

Named Artistic Director of Silkroad in 2020, Giddens is developing a number of new programs for the organization, including one inspired by the history of the American transcontinental railroad and the cultures and music of its builders. She recently wrote the music for an original ballet, Lucy Negro Redux , for Nashville Ballet (premiered in 2019), and the libretto and music for an original opera, Omar , based on the autobiography of the enslaved man Omar Ibn Said for the Spoleto USA Festival (premieres in 2022).

As an actor, Giddens had a featured role on the television series Nashville .

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Rhiannon Giddens and Brittney Spencer on Country Music’s Black History

The musicians reflect on their roots as country artists and why the genre they love is at a turning point

Country music’s popularity is at an all-time high in America, with the genre boasting a more diverse audience than ever before. But the marginalization of Black performers was once an institutional part of the business. For decades, artists of color in the Nashville-centered music world were largely excluded from popular venues and circuits, and labels divided their releases into records for white audiences and “race records” for nonwhites.

Giddens, a founding member of the Grammy-winning Black string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, is one of the preeminent banjo players in the country and an educator on the West African origins of the instrument, which was brought to America through the slave trade. Giddens has released three solo albums and won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Music for Omar , the opera she cowrote with composer Michael Abels. In 2017 and 2018, she appeared on the CMT series Nashville, which was set against the glitzy backdrop of the city’s mainstream country scene, portraying gospel singer and social worker Hanna Lee “Hallie” Jordan.

As for Spencer, after years of working as a backup singer, she released her highly acclaimed solo debut EP, Compassion, in 2020, followed by a headlining tour and spots opening for Willie Nelson, Reba McEntire, Megan Thee Stallion , and Jason Isbell. In January, she unveiled her first full-length album, My Stupid Life, which incorporates elements of rap and gospel, and touches on subjects like friendship and new beginnings.

Giddens and Spencer recently connected to discuss their roots as country musicians and why they hope this is a pivotal moment for the music they love and the culture at large.

Brittney Spencer: I got into country music because of the radio. In Baltimore, where I grew up, I was on the school bus a lot when I was in middle and high school; our trips were long, because I was studying classical music at this art school that was across town. The bus driver played an alternative station that played a little bit of everything. You would hear Mariah Carey and Prince, and then Journey and Tim McGraw.

Rhiannon Giddens: Were you studying vocals or instrumentals?

BS: I played clarinet until the seventh or eighth grade. But guitar has all my attention now. It’s such a songwriting tool for me. I like playing it. It’s a comfort onstage, but I would absolutely not consider myself an instrumentalist. Not like you. I will never forget when I saw this video of the Carolina Chocolate Drops maybe four years ago. I had never seen anybody who looked like us just up there jamming out. Thank you for that, seriously.

RG: I feel very fortunate to have that history, as hard as it was to be where we were. None of us are alone, but when we were first starting out, there was this feeling of isolation. There was [the blues musician] Taj Mahal and some other folks, but it wasn’t enough to get a momentum going. We needed community.

BS: How does it feel knowing how things were when you started versus where they are now?

RG: It took longer than we thought. My bandmates and I met our mentor, Joe Thompson, in 2005 at the Black Banjo Gathering [in Boone, North Carolina, which featured lectures, jams, workshops, and performances], and the Carolina Chocolate Drops started really being out there as a band in 2006. There have been some solo fiddle and banjo acts since then. But what’s happening in country now, it feels awesome. I feel a little sad because I left Nashville in 2018. But I also didn’t have the community around to help me stick it out. I’m super happy, but there is a little tiny bit of “We didn’t have that.” The only thing that makes me nervous is whether this is going to be sustained by systemic change within the country-music industry. I’m very interested in exploring how we can take this country music that we love and shake up the whole industry. It’s very focused on certain things that I’ve never really been interested in, in terms of looks, in terms of glitz and glamour.

.css-1pfpin{font-family:NewParisTextBook,NewParisTextBook-roboto,NewParisTextBook-local,Georgia,Times,Serif;font-size:1.75rem;line-height:1.2;margin:0rem;padding-left:5rem;padding-right:5rem;}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-1pfpin{padding-left:2.5rem;padding-right:2.5rem;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1pfpin{font-size:2.5rem;line-height:1.2;}}.css-1pfpin b,.css-1pfpin strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-1pfpin em,.css-1pfpin i{font-style:normal;font-family:NewParisTextItalic,NewParisTextItalic-roboto,NewParisTextItalic-local,Georgia,Times,Serif;} “NASHVILLE has ALWAYS used BLACK MUSIC, and it’s always used Black MUSICIANS and SINGERS.” —Rhiannon Giddens

BS: I can relate to both things you just said. I felt a little guilt when things started happening for me. I’ve met several Black artists and songwriters who wanted to do country, and their performing-rights organizations [which collect song royalties on behalf of songwriters and publishers] told them, “It doesn’t feel like Nashville is ready for Black country artists.” This was in the 2010s. I’ve been here for 11 years now, but there are people who got here long before me. So I’m right there with you in hoping that there is some sort of change that actually lasts.

RG: The thing that’s been my saving grace—because I never set out to be a country singer; country is just something I’ve always loved—is the banjo and my mission surrounding the banjo. That’s kept me centered and sane.

BS: I watched this video of you the other day, and you were talking about clawhammering and, as you put it, “old-timing” with banjo. You also played the banjo part on Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em.” My favorite thing about that song is hearing your old style of playing mixed with this really modern production approach. Where did you learn to clawhammer?

RG: I graduated from school [at Oberlin College in 2000] and then went back home to North Carolina and started hearing old-time banjo. I was like, “That’s funky. I want that.” I was a square dancer, so that’s where I heard it. I was a caller; I used to call dances even before I knew that Black people invented calling. Then I bought a Deering banjo and locked myself in my room and sounded really bad for a while. I took a couple lessons, and I’d go to jams. Then I started playing with Joe Thompson. He was an older traditional Black fiddle player from North Carolina, and that’s where I got my vibe. I’d play with him for hours and hours and hours.

BS: The first time I ever learned about the origins of the banjo was watching you on Nashville. I became obsessed. At that time, Nashville didn’t talk about race. So when I saw you on the show, that was a huge deal for me. I was like, “Who approved this? And can you all do more?”

RG: I thought the showrunner of Nashville was incredibly cool, because I went to my interview with my banjo and I was like, “This needs to be in the show.” I played him a song and he was like, “You know what? You’re right.” They wrote it into the script. I told him about the Chocolate Drops, and those two guys [on the show with me] were actually former Chocolate Drops. When it aired, there were crickets. Nobody said anything.

BS: It made a huge impact—and I’m sorry you had to wait almost 10 years to hear that. I was actually an extra on Nashville for two episodes. Around that time, I sang in a choir at the CMT Awards behind Carrie Underwood. I think it was 2016. But it was then that I started noticing a lot more Black faces in the backgrounds in country music.

RG: Nashville has always used Black music, and it’s always used Black musicians and singers.

BS: Who are some of the integral Black country musicians everyone should know or have influenced you?

RG: I’m into the old-time and string-band stuff, so Libba [Elizabeth] Cotten and Etta Baker. Those two Black female instrumentalists—they didn’t sing—were very influential in American music. People studied Libba Cotten’s guitar style. A lot of them know her because of [her song] “Freight Train,” but not as many people know Etta Baker. They’re both also North Carolina gals.

“When I look at the MAKEUP of BLACK COUNTRY ARTISTS right now, there are NOT too MANY of us that are LIKE one another.” —Brittney Spencer

BS: My family’s roots are in North Carolina. My grandmother, her and her family got chased out of North Carolina because my great-grandfather was selling moonshine. The police told my grandmother if he ever came back, they were going to shoot him dead. He went to Baltimore and set up roots. That’s how my family ended up in Baltimore.

RG: Oh my God. My great-grandfather was a moonshiner too. Maybe our great-grandfathers knew each other. I wrote a song about it called “Moonshiner’s Daughter.” I created a little fantasy around my grandmother, because she was literally Bible-reading. She didn’t drink anything.

BS: I’m going to check it out and send it to my grandmother. She’d get an absolute kick out of that. But going back to the momentum point you were talking about, I see us coming up in big waves now. So many artists are forging their own paths musically and creatively and not letting the current status of the industry define their sound. When I look at the makeup of Black country artists right now, there are not too many of us that are like one another.

RG: What industry and commercialism tend to do is create these models. An artist becomes famous, and then they want to make more of those. As tough as it’s been to be a Black person in country music—and while there haven’t been very many of us who’ve achieved visibility and success in that genre—we have a lot of freedom. There’s no “You have to be like this person.” It’s “You be yourself.” And it would be great to hold on to that and that energy. Because I think in the music industry in general, there’s too much of that and it kills the individual spirit.

BS: I agree. I think about Cowboy Carter. Beyoncé put me and three other female country artists on the song “Blackbiird.” What I love so much is that our voices are all so different. Each of us makes very different kinds of country music. Throughout my career, I’ve said, “I don’t look like anybody in this genre.” Not even just in terms of my complexion; there aren’t many plus-size women. But when you aren’t the status quo, there is no pressure for you to live up to some sort of expectation that’s always been in place.

RG: Who were some of the country artists who really made you go, “I want to do this”?

“We’ve got to turn this MOMENT into a MOVEMENT, into systemic CHANGE. That’s ALL I WANT.” —Rhiannon Giddens

BS: I would say my all-time favorite band is the Chicks. They were my introduction to country music. I loved their stories. I loved their harmonies. They sounded like church to me, which is where I came from. I sang in church, and that’s where my foundation was. I also loved listening to a lot of ’90s country, like Faith Hill, Tim McGraw. I loved Shania [Twain]. I’m a big Reba and Dolly [Parton] person. I love Sara Evans. I feel like it was around the time of Taylor Swift that I started to think that I could do country. There was something about her being from the Northeast, like me. She didn’t have a twang. She was really poetic, and she was not afraid to be emotive. She had some really cool pop sensibilities in her melodies, and I enjoyed that. When I got to Nashville, it was Chris Stapleton and Maren [Morris] and Kacey Musgraves. I didn’t have just one hero. I had to find parts of myself in a lot of different people. I’ve had a lot of influences, but I always wanted to make sure I was my biggest one. … Being on the road as much as I have for the last four years with a lot of different kinds of artists, I’ve learned so much. I’ve opened up for Willie Nelson, Grace Potter, Megan Thee Stallion. I’m like, “Yo, all this stuff is just connected and threaded together.” I understand why so many artists hate the concept of genre.

RG: One positive from all of this is that we get to talk about the history. We get to talk about the people who came before us, the people upon whose shoulders we stand.

BS: I think that’s so vital. We are watching people knock down doors in real time. It’s important to know what was being done back in the ’60s, because a lot of those people are still here. I did a documentary with Frankie Staton [who began singing in the late ’70s] that came out in 2022 [ For Love & Country, on the contributions of Black artists in country music]. I remember crying after hearing Frankie say that record executives used to tell her, “Well, you know [Black country star] Charley Pride, don’t you? Why don’t you go see if he’ll give you a record deal.” And she’s like, “I don’t think he has a label.” The way people were pushing her off—it’s important to know that that happened.

RG: I think we have a big opportunity right now to do something with this community that’s coming along and this focus on the history and on the responsibility that we have to the people who came before us. I think that it’s really good timing that Alice Randall had her book and album come out in April, because that’s history. We’ve got to turn this moment into a movement, into systemic change. That’s all I want.

Ariana Marsh is Harper Bazaar ’s senior features editor. Working across print and digital, she covers the arts, culture, fashion, literature, and entertainment—and a bit of everything in between.

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