Rhiannon Giddens

North Carolina · born or raisedBorn 1977

American musician (born 1977)

Born in Greensboro
Studied at North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics

Quotations with a citation

And left out people like me—who come from both sides of the track—except, in so many areas of the South, there is no track. There's just people living and influencing each other in spite of what they are told to feel and do

Music has a power to bring us together in ways books, lectures, and indoctrination don't.

Are we going to acknowledge that the question is not, how do we get diversity into bluegrass, but how do we get diversity back into bluegrass?

It's not just Washington, Lincoln, Douglass, and King. It's also the untold thousands of ordinary folk playing banjos, fiddles, guitars, mandolins, basses, and everything else they could get their hands on—to make life a better place.

Like, this instrument right here - you know, born in Africa but then made in America and then altered by white America - I mean, that's the story of so much of our music, you know. And it starts here.

And in that family, it was my grandmother, my dad's mom. My sister was her first grandchild, and she had a choice. She was like I can treat this child differently or I can just treat this child like I love them because they're my grandchild, and that's what she did. And she set this tone, you know, that was like these are my grandchildren. And it was just this love. She was just made of love. And I just - I really feel like one person can make a huge difference if they just, like, believe what their heart tells them.