Rhiannon Giddens Performs “Brown Baby”

Rhiannon Giddens is a celebrated singer, banjo player, and violinist, and the founding member of the African American country band Carolina Chocolate Drops. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, six Grammy nominations, a MacArthur “Genius Grant”, and the Steve Martin Prize for banjo and bluegrass.

Giddens was raised in North Carolina by a bluegrass-playing white father and a black mother. She studied opera singing at Oberlin College in Ohio, but retained her interest in Gaelic and American folk music. In 2005, she founded the old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops to explore the African American roots of folk and country music. Their third record, Genuine Negro Jig (2011), won a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk album. The group stopped playing together in 2014.

Gidden released her Grammy-nominated solo debut Tomorrow Is My Turn in 2015 and continues to perform and record in a range of traditional musical styles, including jazz, Celtic, and bluegrass.