QUOTES by Rhiannon Giddens
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
Anybody who thinks the lute just came out of a vacuum doesn't know the history.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
People think art comes out of strife. No, art comes out of love, and it comes out of freedom, and it comes out of feeling safe, and it comes out of feeling embraced by the vibe and by the energy. That's when you can make your best stuff.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I stood on people's shoulders, so I want to be there for somebody else to take it even further.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
Well, you know, the original banjos were all handmade instruments. Gourd - it would be made with gourds and whatever, you know, materials would have been around. And, you know, first hundred years of its existence, the banjo's known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument, you know?
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
My dad's white, my mom's black, and I've struggled with being mixed race.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
People seem ready for a more in-depth idea of folk music, culture and history.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
Black women have historically had the most to lose and have therefore been the fiercest fighters for justice.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
For me the bare feet are grounding. I'm connected to the Earth in a way that I cannot be any other way.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
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.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I love being on the road and I love my band, but also need to be with my kids more and I need to be creating more.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
In the commercial music world, the folk world, we sell records and concert tickets - this is the way I make a living. You go out, you make your art and hopefully people will put their money down for it. But it's getting hard. I have to be on the road so much to keep the lights on.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
There is music out there that is commercially driven, whether you like it or not. That's a peculiarly American innovation. We innovated the commercial music business.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
When you are a commercial music artist, your music depends on your popularity.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I'm discovering so much about how invisible, othered and dismissed the Islamic world is, in terms of the massive effects it had on European music and culture.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
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.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I have to continue to work, and I have to be touring, because that's how I earn a living.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
People who put Europe in the center of the universe, they're very fragile.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
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.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I've always liked women singers and appreciate a good story being told. That's what country music used to do on the radio.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
When I got into college, I got into operatic vocalists, like Leontyne Price.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
It's kind of remarkable, everything that's happened to me. It's been such a whirlwind, but in a good way.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I grew up listening to country music. I got into traditional stuff later, but I listened to the commercial stuff of the '90s, especially the women who were so strong, like Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kathy Mattea. It's a great art form.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I don't consider myself at the kind of stature of somebody who can play five cities on a tour, and that's it. I go where I'm wanted, and I've always had the rural areas of the country. We've always gone there, since the Carolina Chocolate Drops. There's a fan base that's there, and if I can afford to do it, I do it.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I don't have a genre because I play lots of different music that people would say are different genres.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
To learn the history of the banjo is to recover the actual history of America.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
There are people who have incredible stories that we don't talk about. People who did amazing things, men and women who faced incredible odds, and there's nothing wrong with them being heroes for once, you know?
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
It's really funny how I've come round to classical music around the back door with my banjo in my hand, and I love it.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
Ibn Said's autobiography is an extraordinary work, and his story is one that's absolutely crucial to tell.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I kind of have found my identity through the music, through the roots music of North Carolina, and kind of realized that that's my identity as a North Carolinian.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
The truth, the real history, is way more interesting and representative of what America actually is.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
The best part of a MacArthur is having some pressure taken off from touring relentlessly.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
I would be thrilled with anybody who cites my work as something that inspired them.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
The question is not how do we get diversity into bluegrass, but how do we get diversity back into bluegrass?
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
What's really interesting to me is to have a connection to what was going on in the past, but to make it a living thing.
Quote by -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.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens
We have to talk about the negativity, but we have to enjoy the beauty of what this country, culturally, has done.
Quote by -Rhiannon Giddens