Giddens sings and plays music throughout this interview. Click the audio link above to get the full experience.
Musician Rhiannon Giddens describes herself as “a folkie to the bone.”
“There are times when I’m playing the banjo and I simply feel the ancestors. I feel the spirits come through,” she says. “That’s the only thing that’s kept me going in this industry — knowing that I’m connected in that way to the people who came before.”
Giddens plays music from the Black string band tradition dating back to slave times, and she played banjo on Beyoncé’s hit “Texas Hold ‘Em.” She’s also the artistic director of the Silk Road Ensemble, which was founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and is dedicated to playing with musicians from around the world, drawing on their musical traditions.
Her latest album, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, takes its name from an Emily Dickinson poem. For Giddens, the theme of hope connects directly to her ancestors, who lived lives of extreme poverty in the American South.
“What right do I have to not have hope when I don’t have to worry … about starving?” she says. “I’m not saying I’m a Pollyanna, because I don’t have a lot of faith in humanity, but I have a faith in humans.”
Karen Cox/Nonesuch Records
“There’s times I’m playing the banjo and I just feel the ancestors,” Rhiannon Giddens says.
Karen Cox/Nonesuch Records
