Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens (born February 21, 1977) is an American musician known for her eclectic folk music.

She is a founding member of the country, blues, and old-time music band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, where she was the lead singer, fiddle player, and banjo player.

Giddens is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina.

Giddens is a 1995 alumna of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and a 2000 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory at Oberlin College, where she studied opera.

The friends started singing together in 2003, but did not begin recording until 2008.

In 2005, Giddens, who at that time was spending time participating in Scottish traditional music competitions (specializing in the Gaelic lilting tradition, also known as mouth music), attended the Black Banjo Then and Now Gathering, in Boone, North Carolina.

There she met Dom Flemons and Súle Greg Wilson.

The three started playing together professionally as a "postmodern string band", Sankofa Strings.

During that same time period, Giddens was also a regular caller at local contra dances and featured in a Celtic music band called Gaelwynd.

Later in 2005, after both Gaelwynd and Sankofa Strings had released CD albums, Giddens and Flemons teamed up with other musicians and expanded the Sankofa Strings sound into what was to become the Grammy winning Carolina Chocolate Drops.

In 2007, Giddens contributed fiddle, banjo, "flat-footin'" dancing and additional vocals to Talitha MacKenzie's album Indian Summer.

She appears in the Smithsonian Folkways collection documenting Mike Seeger's final trip through Appalachia in 2009, Just Around The Bend: Survival and Revival in Southern Banjo Styles – Mike Seeger’s Last Documentary (2019).

Performing as a soprano, Giddens and mezzo-soprano Cheryse McLeod Lewis formed a duo called Eleganza to release a CD in 2009.

Because I Knew You... consists of classical, religious, theater, and movie music.

Giddens and Lewis were middle school classmates who reconnected after college while working in the same office.

As of November 12, 2013, Giddens became the only original member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

In 2013, Giddens began pushing further into her solo career.

Giddens participated in "Another Day, Another Time", a concert inspired by the Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis.

Many critics have stated that Giddens had the best performance at what was called "the concert of the year".

Late in 2013, Giddens contributed the standout a cappella track "We Rise" to the LP We Are Not For Sale: Songs of Protest by the NC Music Love Army – a collective of activist musicians from North Carolina founded by Jon Lindsay and Caitlin Cary.

Giddens' protest song joins contributions from many other Carolina musical luminaries on the Lindsay-produced compilation (11/26/13 via Redeye Distribution), which was created to support the NC NAACP and the Moral Monday movement.

In 2014, she participated in the T Bone Burnett-produced project titled The New Basement Tapes along with several other musicians, which set a series of recently discovered Bob Dylan lyrics to newly composed music.

The resulting album, Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, was a top-40 Billboard album.

In 2023, the opera Omar, co-written by Giddens and Michael Abels, won the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Giddens is of multiracial ancestry.

Her father, David Giddens, is European-American.

Her mother, Deborah Jamieson, is a descendant of African Americans and Native American tribes including the Lumbee, Occaneechi, and Seminole.

David and Deborah met as college students in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina.

Giddens' parents separated soon after her birth, when Deborah Giddens came out as a lesbian.

Rhiannon and her sister Lalenja grew up in Greensboro and nearby rural Gibsonville.

Lalenja Harrington is a director for Beyond Academics, a four-year certificate program supporting students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

A singer and songwriter herself, Harrington occasionally collaborates with her sister on musical projects.

In early 2014, Giddens recorded for Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes alongside Elvis Costello, Marcus Mumford, Taylor Goldsmith and Jim James.

The album was produced by T Bone Burnett and is a compilation of partial, unreleased lyrics written by Bob Dylan.

In addition to her work with the Grammy-winning Chocolate Drops, Giddens has released five solo albums: Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015) and Freedom Highway (2017), 2019 and 2021's There Is No Other and They're Calling Me Home (both collaborations with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi), and You're the One (2023).

In February 2015, Giddens released her debut solo album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, on Nonesuch Records.

Also produced by Burnett, the album includes songs made famous by Patsy Cline, Odetta, Dolly Parton, and Nina Simone, among others.

The Wall Street Journal said the album "confirms the arrival of a significant talent whose voice and distinctive approach communicate the simmering emotion at the core of the songs."

Additionally, the Los Angeles Times called the album "a collection that should solidify her status as one of the bright new lights in pop music."

In July 2015, she had a big stage at world music folk and dance festival at TFF Rudolstadt in Germany.