Spotlight On: Rhiannon Giddens

ABOUT THIS WEEK’S SHERO IN THE SPOTLIGHT:

Rhiannon Giddens was born in the South, and grew up in North Carolina. In some ways, her musical career has been a personal journey of finding and claiming her place as a woman of color in musical spheres that are typically and overwhelmingly white and male. First as an opera student at Oberlin College, then after graduating, as a fiddle and banjo player in the Grammy-winning string band trio, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, who became the first black string band to play the Grand Ole Opry. Since then, Rhiannon's burgeoning career has been punctuated by other history-making firsts and a fierce commitment to activism that she embodies through her work, including the 2019 project, Our Native Daughters. Rhiannon Giddens’ latest ceiling-breaking first was just announced, as she takes the helm as artistic director of Yo-Yo Ma’s Grammy-winning ensemble and social justice organization, Silkroad. This is now capping an extraordinary, whirlwind couple of years that saw Rhiannon win the MacArthur Genius grant in 2017, land a recurring television role on the series nashville, write a ballet, release another solo album in 2019 with Francesco Turrisi called There Is No Other… and, she launched a podcast with the metropolitan opera called Aria Code and began working on a musical. 

Listen in as the unstoppable Rhiannon Giddens joins Carmel Holt in an intimate conversation about taking on new challenges, making her music her activism, and her personal experiences with being outnumbered and other-ness.