Best quotes by Rhiannon Giddens on Music

Checkout quotes by Rhiannon Giddens on Music

• ‟ People seem ready for a more in-depth idea of folk music, culture and history.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ 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
  

• ‟ There is a black folk music audience. They're just very small.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ The banjo is my chosen instrument - it's what I write my music on.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ We're not here as a black band playing white string band music. You know, we play stuff in the Appalachians, we play stuff in the white community, but we really highlight the black community's music.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ That was the special thing about the Carolina Chocolate Drops. We didn't want to do music full-time. We weren't looking to get rich, which is good, because we didn't. But we went further than we thought we would go. We started that band to celebrate Joe Thompson and the black string band music. That's not really a recipe for commercial success.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ When I first got into string-band music I felt like such an interloper. It was like I was sneaking into this music that wasn't my own... I constantly felt the awkwardness of being the raisin in the oatmeal.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ Getting into the banjo and discovering that it was an African-American instrument, it totally turned on its head my idea of American music - and then, through that, American history.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ I decided to study music my last year in high school.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ I really got into Gaelic music and the whole sound of it, and I got to go to Scotland.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ When I do Gaelic music, I've learned about Gaelic culture; I've tried to learn the language. Whenever I do mouth music and there's Gaelic speakers in the audience, and they come up and go, 'Good job,' I'm always like, 'Phew.'

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ You know, I really feel a responsibility to the music, and I teach workshops in music sometimes. And folks do come to me and they go, 'How do I make this blues song my own? How do I feel like I'm not an impostor doing this?' And I'm like, 'That's an excellent question.' That's where you should start, where you go, 'How does this speak to me?'

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ It's not about me, it's about the music. I don't do this because I want to be a star. I don't do this because I want to make a lot of money.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ I'm so interested in the feminism of women in American music. These ladies, going out on the road, way before the opportunities and advantages that I have - it was absolutely rough out there. The fact that they were still able to get their art out there and do what they're doing is really impressive to me.

  - Rhiannon Giddens
  

• ‟ In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.

  - Rhiannon Giddens