Rhiannon Giddens in Conversation with Professor Anthony Kelley

This event is free and open to the public. Free tickets may be reserved at https://tickets.duke.edu. Please note this is a conversation with Ms. Giddens about her music and career, not a performance.

A MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient, Rhiannon Giddens co-founded the Grammy Award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops. She most recently won a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for They're Calling Me Home, which she made with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Giddens is now a two-time winner and eight-time Grammy nominee for her work as a soloist and collaborator.

Giddens' lifelong mission is to lift up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been erased, and to work toward a more accurate understanding of the country's musical origins. Pitchfork has said of her work, "few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration," and Smithsonian Magazine calls her "an electrifying artist who brings alive the memories of forgotten predecessors, white and black."

Giddens has performed for the Obamas at the White House and received an inaugural Legacy of Americana Award from Nashville's National Museum of African American History in partnership with the Americana Music Association. Her critical acclaim includes in-depth profiles by CBS Sunday Morning, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and NPR's Fresh Air, among many others. She was featured in Ken Burns's Country Music series, which aired on PBS, where she spoke about the African American origins of country music. She is also a member of the band Our Native Daughters with three other black female banjo players, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, and Amythyst Kiah, and co-produced their debut album Songs of Our Native Daughters (2019), which tells stories of historic black womanhood and survival.

"Lucy Negro Redux," the ballet Giddens wrote the music for, had its premiere at the Nashville Ballet (premiered in 2019 and toured in 2022), and the libretto and music for Giddens' original opera, "Omar," based on the autobiography of the enslaved man Omar Ibn Said, premiered at the Spoleto USA Festival in May. Giddens is also curating a four-concert Perspectives series as part of Carnegie Hall's 2022-2023 season. Named Artistic Director of Silkroad Ensemble in 2020, she is developing a number of new programs for that ensemble.

Part of the Humanities Unbounded Lab, Black Music and the Soul of America.