Rhiannon Giddens is a flame-keeper. At any given moment, she is keeping history alive. Music alive. Stories alive. Authenticity alive. But she does all this in a way that bridges academic prestige with pop culture sensibilities. After all, she earned a Pulitzer Prize and has been featured prominently on Beyoncé songs. Who does that?
VICE caught up with the Grammy Award-winning musician to learn about the instrument she loves: the banjo. And to get a little bit of background on Giddens’ inaugural Biscuits & Banjos festival, set for April 25-27 in Durham, North Carolina. But never one to stick to just one goal, Giddens also has a new album set for release this year.
That new record, What Did The Blackbird Say to the Crow, is a collaborative effort with artist Justin Robinson set to drop on April 18. Originally released in 1939 by western North Carolina string band The Carolina Playboys, Giddens and Robinson’s version of the work was recorded at the historic former plantation Mill Prong House & Preservation in Red Springs, NC.
VICE: What was it about the banjo that first spoke to you? What made you want to learn all you could about this instrument?
RHIANNON GIDDENS: Well, I just originally loved the sound of it… I heard the banjo as a bluegrass instrument and it never really spoke to me. I liked it. My uncle’s in a bluegrass band. But it was when I heard the older style –– the claw hammer style, old time style –– that’s when I really fell in love with it. It was the sound first, the sound and the rhythm that drew me in.
VICE: I’m sure you could write a book on this, but what role does the banjo play in both American and global history?
RG: The banjo, I think, is a great reminder of the beauty that comes out of adversity because it is an instrument created by the African Diaspora while in bondage in the Caribbean. So, it’s during the time of the Atlantic slave trade and these people were experiencing horrific conditions in the Caribbean and it was a way for disparate African peoples to draw together because people were coming from all over and they may not have had a shared language or shared religious system or shared culture, although I’m sure there were threads that they did share. And that’s why the banjo became something to draw around.
It came out of these—there were these different instruments from West Africa that would have been used, and this instrument is kind of a descendant of those. It was originally like a ceremonial, very deeply spiritual, very deeply cultural instrument, as Kristina Gaddy shows in her book Well of Souls. So, it was a very important piece of African-American, or should I say Afro-Atlantic culture, because you have African descended cultures in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, and in North America.
So, it really represents, as it travels into the North part of the continent, into the United States, and then becomes shifted with the European sort of ingenuity and interest, and then also back to the African-American community at this point, and then it continues to evolve, sort of bouncing in between cultures––it really shows how American culture came to be. And it’s one of the clearest examples of that, which is why the suppression of its true history has been so important to confront.
VICE: When you found out you’d won a Pulitzer Prize, what did you do next?
RG: I saw it on Twitter and was shocked and I called my co-composer, Michael Ables, and we screamed a bit and got really excited because not just for having a Pulitzer, although thank you for that, but really for a couple of things: one, it meant that Omar Ibn Said’s story was going to kind of be immortalized within that body forever, and that it gave us another chance to talk about his incredible life and writings, and of course the opera itself. And then also for me, I love the fact that it’s the first composition award given to co-composers. I just think that that’s the direction I like us to go in recognizing how collaborative these art forms can be.
VICE: When you found out you’d be working with Beyoncé on her now Grammy-winning album, what did you do next?
RG: I was excited for the banjo to have the opportunity to reach a larger audience that I can get it to and particularly a Black audience, because for various reasons because of the history of the music, because of the way it’s been told, I haven’t really had much ability to get in front of large Black audiences. So that’s why I did it. And I’m really glad that it got there and I’m very happy for that.
VICE: How did all this inspire your new festival, Biscuits and Banjos?
RG: Biscuits & Banjos was inspired by all of the people who’ve been doing this incredible work. I’m part of many cultural excavations in music, in foodways, in literature, and it was kind of my opportunity to say: I see you, I love what you’re doing, let’s all have a party together.
VICE: The fest is in North Carolina, a region that seems to mean a lot to you. Can you
explain the significance of the state to your life and career?
RG: North Carolina is a huge piece of who I am. Like, it is who I am. I was born and raised there. I left at 18 to go to college in Ohio. I came back at 22 and stayed until I got married and left for Ireland. I am a product of North Carolina public schooling from primary school to specialty schools like the School of Science and Mathematics to summer schools like Governor’s School, all which were free. And also the Piedmont. In particular, Greensboro being a place where working class people of all races lived together. I’m not gonna say in beautiful harmony or anything. I mean, it is the South, but I saw people of all colors, all the time, and my classes were mixed. I think that really is a huge part of my foundation.
VICE: You’re the center of a collective of artists who seem to prize tradition when it comes to the music you make. People like Adia Victoria, Jake Blout, and Alison Russell. What do these folks mean to you today?
RG: They’re my colleagues and my comrades. We’re all kind of doing our thing, and there’s many more of us, and that’s the reason why I continue to work with them and bring them back into my orbit as much as I can, because I think we all draw strength from each other. I’m very proud of what they’re all doing. And hopefully we can just keep doing that and being a movement rather than individual musicians looking for a career, which I know they all feel that way, is that without the movement, we have nothing. So it’s important to support each other.
VICE: How do you hope music, and more specifically your music, helps to shape the world as we proceed into an increasingly strange future?
RG: Music’s going to do what it’s always done. I think our job now is to keep it from being hijacked by the technology companies and to keep it in our hands. I think music needs to be––we need to make music. However, you know, whether that’s with an instrument or with a voice or with, you know, Pro Tools or with whatever the thing that my nephew uses when he does his rap songs. The tool itself doesn’t matter to me. It’s the intention behind it. And so, you know, musicians using technology to make music, I have no problem with, it’s when the technology is used to make the music by the people who own the technology, that’s when I have an issue so we need to make sure we remember that it needs to come from us.
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