Rhiannon Giddens

The acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens uses her art to excavate the past and reveal bold truths about our present. A MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Giddens co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops and has been nominated for additional Grammys for her work as a soloist and collaborator. Giddens’s lifelong mission is to lift up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins. She has been honored with the Legacy of Americana Award for her work uplifting forgotten Black voices in American music. Giddens is featured in Ken Burns’s Country Music series where she speaks about the African American origins of country music, and in 2020, she was named Artistic Director of Silkroad.