Rhiannon Giddens
3/28/2023 | 1m 42sVideo has Closed Captions
The Grammy Award-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens hails from Greensboro.
Rhiannon Giddens is from Greensboro and attended the NC School of Science and Math. She is a world-renowned singer and musician who helped found the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops.
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The Uncommon Story: Notable North Carolinians is a local public television program presented by PBS NC
This series was produced with support from the NC Department of Natural & Cultural Resources.
Rhiannon Giddens
3/28/2023 | 1m 42sVideo has Closed Captions
Rhiannon Giddens is from Greensboro and attended the NC School of Science and Math. She is a world-renowned singer and musician who helped found the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship[upbeat music] - Rhiannon Giddens may live in Limerick, Ireland but the Greensboro native and graduate of the School of Science and Math in Durham is very connected to her home state.
She was going to be an opera singer, but after graduating from the conservatory at Oberlin University, she returned to North Carolina and met Joe Thompson, an old-time fiddle playing octogenarian from Mebane and it opened up another world.
With a banjo and fiddle in hand, Giddens co-founded the Grammy winning blacks string band, Carolina Chocolate Drops and then launched an equally successful solo career.
In the process, she shined a light on underrepresented voices and overhauled our understanding of American music history.
[blues singing] While Rhiannon's voice and musical talents have taken her to Carnegie Hall, Bonnaroo, and Austin City Limits, it's her keen sense of the creolization of music and the historic importance of storytelling that helped earn her a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Whether it's opera, country, blues, folk or world music, the historically informed artist sings with a knowledge of the past and a message for future generations.
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The Uncommon Story: Notable North Carolinians is a local public television program presented by PBS NC
This series was produced with support from the NC Department of Natural & Cultural Resources.