Rhiannon Giddens (born February 21, 1977) is an American musician, actress, and author known for her eclectic folk music. She is a founding member of the group Carolina Chocolate Drops, where she was the lead singer and played fiddle and banjo.
Giddens is from Greensboro, North Carolina. 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); 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). 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).
In 2014, Giddens participated in the T Bone Burnett-produced project 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 in the Billboard top 40. She worked on Mountain Hymn song for the popular video game Red Dead Redemption 2.
In 2023, the opera Omar, co-written by Giddens and Michael Abels, won a 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. Giddens does not claim a specific tribal affiliation. Her parents met as college students in the city of Greensboro. Giddens' parents separated soon after her birth, when Deborah 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.
Giddens is a 1995 alumna of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, North Carolina, and a 2000 graduate of Oberlin Conservatory at Oberlin College, where she studied opera.
In 2005, Giddens attended the Black Banjo Then and Now Gathering in Boone, North Carolina. At the time she was spending time participating in Scottish traditional music competitions (specializing in the Gaelic lilting tradition, also known as mouth music). There she met Dom Flemons and Súle Greg Wilson. The three started playing together professionally as a "postmodern string band", Sankofa Strings. During the same 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 released albums, Giddens and Flemons teamed with other musicians and expanded the Sankofa Strings sound into what became 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. 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. The friends started singing together in 2003, but did not begin recording until 2008.
As of November 12, 2013, Giddens became the only remaining original member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. In 2013, she began pushing further into a solo career. She participated in "Another Day, Another Time", a concert inspired by the Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis. Many critics have said that Giddens had the best performance at what was called "the concert of the year". Late in 2013, she contributed the standout a cappella track "We Rise" to the LP We Are Not For Sale: Songs of Protest by the North Carolina 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 North Carolina NAACP and the Moral Monday movement. In early 2014, she recorded 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 February 2015, Giddens released her debut solo album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, on Nonesuch Records. Also produced by Burnett, the album contains songs made famous by Patsy Cline, Odetta, Dolly Parton, Nina Simone, and 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 performed at the TFF Rudolstadt world music, folk and dance festival in Germany. Her performance was broadcast live by the German national public radio Deutschlandfunk. Rhiannon appears on Jon Lindsay's single "Ballad of Lennon Lacy" (Redeye Distribution, August 21). The song tackles the mysterious hanging death of Lennon Lacy, a black teen from rural Bladenboro southeast of Lumberton, North Carolina.
On November 27, 2015, to coincide with the Black Friday Record Store Day event, Giddens released Factory Girl (EP) on Nonesuch Records, which contained music culled from the same T Bone Burnett–produced sessions which yielded Tomorrow Is My Turn. A digital version of Factory Girl was made available December 11, 2015. The sessions for the album and EP were in Los Angeles and Nashville, with a multi-generational group of players assembled by Burnett. Musicians on Factory Girl include Burnett; fiddle player Gabe Witcher and double bassist Paul Kowert of Punch Brothers; percussionist Jack Ashford of Motown's renowned The Funk Brothers; drummer Jay Bellerose; guitarist Colin Linden from Toronto; veteran Nashville session bassist Dennis Crouch; and Giddens's Carolina Chocolate Drops touring band-mates, multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins, and beat-boxer Adam Matta.
Giddens appeared on Jools Holland's Hootenanny on December 31, 2015, shown on BBC Two. She performed songs from her 2015 album Tomorrow Is My Turn, including "Waterboy" and a cover of "St. James Infirmary Blues" with Tom Jones. In January 2016, she was selected to take part in Transatlantic Sessions. The collaboration between American and Celtic musicians is a coveted honor. The ensemble performed as part of Celtic Connections in Glasgow, and a short UK/Irish tour. Her performances on the tour included the stirring tribute to David Bowie "It Ain't Easy". On October 8, 2016, she was featured on Austin City Limits.
Later in 2016, Giddens became the first American to be honored as Folk Singer of the Year at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and it was announced that she would be receiving the prestigious Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. She was the first woman and first person of color to receive the prize. Also in 2016, it was announced that Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops would be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.
In 2017, Giddens became only the fourth musician to perform at both the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals. Later that year, she gave the keynote address at the World of Bluegrass Business Conference 2017. According to Bluegrass Today, "Giddens (has) shattered long-held stereotypes... By the time she was done, she had systematically dismantled the myth of a homogenous Appalachia." In June 2017, Giddens appeared in the multi-award-winning documentary The American Epic Sessions, directed by Bernard MacMahon, where she recorded "One Hour Mama" and English folk ballad "Pretty Saro", on the restored first electrical sound recording system from the 1920s. Both performances were released on Music from The American Epic Sessions: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. After hearing the playback of these direct-to-disc recordings, she said, "you feel like your soul is coming out of the speaker."