Rhiannon Giddens has in in the last decade become one of the country’s most highly regarded bluegrass musicians, picking up a Grammy Award and an International Folk Music Award along the way. From her conservatory training at Oberlin as an opera singer through her co-founding of the band Carolina Chocolate Drops and her more recent solo career and numerous eclectic collaborations, Rhiannon has also remained at heart a historian. Deeply steeped in the history of the African-American string band tradition, particularly from the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she grew up, she delights in reminding her audience of her musical lineage and of the too-often-overlooked musical giants, the black men and women, who helped shape a truly American sound.

It is this combined passion for music and history that led the MacArthur Foundation to award her a “genius” grant in 2017, stating, “Giddens’s drive to understand and convey the nuances, complexities, and interrelationships between musical traditions is enhancing our musical present with a wealth of sounds and textures from the past.”

In this interview, she candidly discusses several difficult lessons she learned on her path to leadership as she learned to trust her instincts and her commitment to the art form.