I love singing opera, but the world surrounding it is not me. I want to be barefoot. I want to be in control of my own career. I want to put on a show. In the opera world, you wait for people to call you until you get to a certain level. In the folk world, it’s a lot easier to have control from the beginning. Rhiannon Giddens Read Quote
There was such hostility to the idea of a banjo being a black instrument. It was co-opted by this white supremacist notion that old-time music was the inheritance of white America. Rhiannon Giddens Read Quote
I’m really interested in history and when I looked into the settlers who came to my home state, North Carolina, I found that the largest settlement of Hebridean islanders outside of Scotland was right there in North Carolina. Rhiannon Giddens Read Quote
Anybody who thinks the lute just came out of a vacuum doesn’t know the history. Rhiannon Giddens Read Quote
I have to continue to work, and I have to be touring, because that’s how I earn a living. Rhiannon Giddens Read Quote
If I wasn’t touring, I wasn’t making money. When I got the MacArthur, I could get off that hamster wheel. It meant I didn’t have to do anything. Rhiannon Giddens Read Quote
My life used to be record, tour, record, tour. You can never say no as a freelance musician. I was on the road 200 days a year. Rhiannon Giddens Read Quote
