Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens 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. In addition to her work with the Grammy-winning Chocolate Drops, Giddens has released five solo albums: Tomorrow Is My Turn and Freedom Highway , 2019 and 2021’s There Is No Other and They’re Calling Me Home , and You’re the One . 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 . 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.