For me the bare feet are grounding. I'm connected to the Earth in a way that I cannot be any other way.
— Rhiannon Giddens
People seem ready for a more in-depth idea of folk music, culture and history.
I'm not good at planning ahead because it's just too much. I plan, set it up and then don't think about it again until it's almost time. That's just how it goes.
I would be thrilled with anybody who cites my work as something that inspired them.
In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.
It's not about me, it's about the music. I don't do this because I want to be a star. I don't do this because I want to make a lot of money.
My work as a whole is about excavating and shining a light on pieces of history that not only need to be seen and heard, but that can also add to the conversation about what's going on now.
I like Queen Latifah.
I think songs can have different lives.
At some point you have to take responsibility for who you are and where you are and being able to listen to other points of view, whichever side of the tracks you're on.
When I do Gaelic music, I've learned about Gaelic culture; I've tried to learn the language. Whenever I do mouth music and there's Gaelic speakers in the audience, and they come up and go, 'Good job,' I'm always like, 'Phew.'
We're not here as a black band playing white string band music. You know, we play stuff in the Appalachians, we play stuff in the white community, but we really highlight the black community's music.
I had this dream like years ago. I had this dream - I wanted to be in an all-black string band.
I decided to study music my last year in high school.
When I first heard the minstrel banjo - I played a gourd first - I almost lost my mind. I was like, Oh, my god. And then I went to Africa, to the Gambia, and studied the akonting, which is an ancestor of the banjo, and just that connection to me was just immense.
When I first got into string-band music I felt like such an interloper. It was like I was sneaking into this music that wasn't my own... I constantly felt the awkwardness of being the raisin in the oatmeal.
My stuff lives in Nashville but I live wherever my children are.
I kind of have found my identity through the music, through the roots music of North Carolina, and kind of realized that that's my identity as a North Carolinian.
The truth, the real history, is way more interesting and representative of what America actually is.
I stood on people's shoulders, so I want to be there for somebody else to take it even further.
Nobody can know what their legacy is going to be, you know?
I'm so interested in the feminism of women in American music. These ladies, going out on the road, way before the opportunities and advantages that I have - it was absolutely rough out there. The fact that they were still able to get their art out there and do what they're doing is really impressive to me.
We have to talk about the negativity, but we have to enjoy the beauty of what this country, culturally, has done.
I'm not an urban black person. I'm a country black person.
I used to subscribe to Nintendo Power. The first issue had 'Mario 2,' and it had all the characters rendered in clay. So I started making all of these characters out of clay.
Each song has its own way that it likes to be done, but it can be more than one way. If you tap into it, you can feel it.
You have to find the balance of figuring out how can I be effective? How can I use my platform for good, you know, without jeopardizing everything so that I don't have that platform anymore.
I mean, my training at Oberlin has been absolutely valuable.
There is a black folk music audience. They're just very small.
Black women have historically had the most to lose and have therefore been the fiercest fighters for justice.
So my mom's folks are from one side of Greensboro - and, you know, outside of Greensboro. And my dad's folks, the white side, is from another very small town outside of Greensboro. So both sides are coming from the country.
Getting into the banjo and discovering that it was an African-American instrument, it totally turned on its head my idea of American music - and then, through that, American history.
I love the U.K. folk scene. In the States, nobody knows what to do with me. There's still a very narrow definition of Americana.
People say, 'I'm tired of thinking about race, it's a drag.' Yeah, well, welcome to my life! I don't care who you are. We have the time and the headspace for this stuff. The least you can do is take a moment.
My dad's white, my mom's black, and I've struggled with being mixed race.
We have been fed so many false narratives, many of them racialized to deliberately feed a racist agenda. It's important to address and dig into that wherever you can.
The best part of a MacArthur is having some pressure taken off from touring relentlessly.
The question is not how do we get diversity into bluegrass, but how do we get diversity back into bluegrass?
What's really interesting to me is to have a connection to what was going on in the past, but to make it a living thing.
I'm still black in the eyes of America.
I'm not gonna force something or fake something to try to get more black people at my shows. I'm not gonna do some big hip-hop crossover.
Every song has a heart, and I just go for that.
I'm a North Carolina native. Grew up in North Carolina.
You know, I really feel a responsibility to the music, and I teach workshops in music sometimes. And folks do come to me and they go, 'How do I make this blues song my own? How do I feel like I'm not an impostor doing this?' And I'm like, 'That's an excellent question.' That's where you should start, where you go, 'How does this speak to me?'
I really got into Gaelic music and the whole sound of it, and I got to go to Scotland.
I think that we definitely want to experiment, and if there's a hip-hop song that we like, we'll cover it. We don't want to be one of those bands that's like, you know, you know - Carolina Chocolate Drops does hip-hop. I mean, just know - you know, if it naturally works itself in, you know, cool.
History is my biggest teacher.
Well, you know, the original banjos were all handmade instruments. Gourd - it would be made with gourds and whatever, you know, materials would have been around. And, you know, first hundred years of its existence, the banjo's known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument, you know?
I remember so vividly the first time I saw one of Marshall Wyatt's superb compilations called 'Folks He Sure Do Pull Some Bow' and seeing a picture of a black fiddler and freaking out. I had stumbled upon the hidden legacy of the black string band and I wanted to know more.
White people are so fragile, God bless 'em. 'Well, I didn't own slaves.' No you didn't. Nobody is asking you to take personal responsibility for this. But you're a beneficiary of a system that did. Just own that and move on.
