Rhiannon Giddens

Rhiannon Giddens (born February 21, 1977) is an American musician, actress, and author known for her eclectic folk music. She is a founding member of the group Carolina Chocolate Drops, where she was the lead singer and played fiddle and banjo.

Giddens is from Greensboro, North Carolina. In addition to her work with the Grammy-winning Chocolate Drops, Giddens has released seven solo albums including: Tomorrow Is My Turn (2015) and Freedom Highway (2017); 2021's There Is No Other and They're Calling Me Home (both collaborations with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi); You're the One (2023). She appears in the Smithsonian Folkways collection documenting Mike Seeger's final trip through Appalachia in 2009, Just Around The Bend: Survival and Revival in Southern Banjo Styles – Mike Seeger's Last Documentary (2019).

In 2014, Giddens participated in the T Bone Burnett-produced project The New Basement Tapes, along with several other musicians, which set a series of recently discovered Bob Dylan lyrics to newly composed music. The resulting album, Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, was in the Billboard top 40. She worked on the song "Mountain Hymn" for the popular video game Red Dead Redemption 2.

In 2023, the opera Omar, co-written by Giddens and Michael Abels, won a Pulitzer Prize for Music.