The Bookish Life of Rhiannon Giddens

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Rachel Rosenberg enjoys storytimes, books, movies, travel, cross-stitching and sarcasm. She was published successful Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul 2 astatine the property of 14, and is truthful kinda the literate equivalent to the small redheaded miss from 1982’s movie adaptation of 'Annie'. Find her connected Twitter: @LibraryRachelR

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Rhiannon Giddens has been wowing audiences since 2005. She is simply a much-acclaimed American people instrumentalist who has won a Grammy, an International Folk Music Award, a MacArthur Genius Grant, and a Pulitzer Prize. Besides being an accomplished solo artist, she has besides been successful galore well-respected bands including arsenic a founding member of The Carolina Chocolate Drops. Her penning is profoundly immersed successful African American past and folklore, and arsenic of 2022, not lone is she a lyricist, singer, banjo player, fiddler, and violist, but besides a children’s publication writer with 1 already published and much to come. While 1 could constitute odes to Giddens based connected galore aspects of her career, present is an exploration of her much bookish influences and projects.

Giddens was calved connected February 21, 1977, successful North Carolina, increasing up successful the Black country of Greensboro and successful the whiter portion of Guilford County. Her experience, arsenic the kid of a achromatic begetter and Black mother, has informed overmuch of her life. Of that, she has said that “I’m mixed…And I perpetually learned however to spell backmost and distant betwixt 1 satellite to the other. And truthful navigating that hitch has made maine who I am.”

She studied opera astatine Oberlin and past moved connected to playing with The Carolina Chocolate Drops, a state and blues drawstring set that lasted for a precise palmy 9 years. The Carolina Chocolate Drops won a Grammy for their medium Genuine Negro Jig, released 5 albums and 1 EP, opened for legendary acts similar Taj Mahal and Bob Dylan, and performed connected the Grand Ole Opry. Eventually, the radical parted ways and Giddens released her archetypal solo album, Tomorrow Is My Turn. Her 2nd solo album, Freedom Highway, featured songs exploring the lives of often forgotten African American voices, past and modern. From that album, her opus “Julie” was written aft a story successful The Slaves’ War, a 2008 anthology of oral histories, letters, diaries, and different first-person accounts by enslaved radical of the Civil War.

In 2019, Giddens composed euphony for the Nashville Ballet’s adaptation of Lucy Negro, Redux, a ballet based connected the mentation that the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets was a Black brothel owner. Adapted from the 2015 poesy postulation by Caroline Randall Williams, it was critically acclaimed for however it meshes a Shakespearean communicative with inactive applicable taste questions astir however Black women are othered.

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Also successful 2019, Giddens created euphony with 3 different banjo-playing African American people artists: Amythyst Kiah, Allison Russell, and Leyla McCalla — different erstwhile subordinate of The Carolina Chocolate Drops. The ensuing people supergroup is Our Native Daughters, whose medium Songs of Our Native Daughters was described by NPR arsenic a “crucial, updated model for Americana”. Their medium is packed with descriptive, communicative penning and literate allusions; for instance, Giddens has explained that“Barbados” was inspired by the enactment of a poem by William Cowper. Her lyrics instrumentality that sentiment into our ain modern times with chilling parallels. In “Better Git Yer Learnin,” Giddens rewrites lyrics from a minstrel songbook, utilizing the opus to research Black empowerment done literacy.

Cover of Build A House by Rhiannon Giddens

And aboriginal literacy is intelligibly important to Giddens arsenic well. In 2022, she signed a four-book publishing woody with Candlewick Press, the well-respected children’s publisher. Based connected Giddens’s lyrics, the archetypal book, 2022’s Build A House, is simply a beautifully resonant solemnisation of Black past and perseverance. We Could Fly volition beryllium published successful October 2023 and is based connected her opus of the aforesaid sanction from Freedom Highway. This summer, Giddens is speaking astatine the American Library Association’s 2023 Conference.

Cover of We Could Fly by Rhiannon Giddens

Given however important these Black-centering stories are and however eloquently she tells them, I anticipation we person galore much of her books, songs, ballets, and arias to look guardant to. I didn’t interaction connected each of Giddens’s work, conscionable the book-adjacent projects. Recently she announced her archetypal solo medium merchandise successful implicit 5 years, titled “You’re the One,” which features all-original songs. Her unsocial position is 1 that uplifts forgotten voices and celebrates Black history, and that is thing we crucially need.

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