Rhiannon Giddens on Biscuits and Banjos, Her New Album, and How Beyoncé Helped Spotlight Black Country Artists

For more than two decades, Rhiannon Giddens has been on a mission to shift how America views the banjo. With deep roots in North Carolina and a career that fuses music, history and education, the GRAMMY and Pulitzer Prize-winning artist has long worked to reclaim the banjo’s origins as a diasporic African instrument, challenging the erasure of Black voices in old-time and country music.

Now, she’s building on that legacy with a new endeavor: Biscuits and Banjos, a cultural festival in Durham that explores the intersections of music, food, and community through a distinctly Black Southern lens.

As mainstream platforms begin to grapple with country music’s racial and cultural history, the Greensboro, NC native remains steadfast in her approach—quietly doing the work. Her career has bridged the gap between academic research and artistic practice, from her foundational work with the Carolina Chocolate Drops to her solo projects that often pay homage to elders like Joe Thompson and Etta Baker. At Biscuits and Banjos, that lineage continues.

The festival is part celebration, part corrective—a place where Black artists, culinary historians and musicians can connect with each other and with audiences, free from commercial constraints. It’s also a continuation of the momentum sparked by Dreamville Fest, further amplifying the growing live entertainment sector in North Carolina.

The festival arrives at a timely moment for Giddens, who just released a new album titled What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow?, a meditative project recorded at the homes of Thompson and Baker. Anchored by traditional fiddle and banjo arrangements, the project is a love letter to North Carolina and a reminder that place, memory and history shape sound in profound ways. “These people lived a life on this land,” Giddens told EBONY. “And all of that goes into the music.”

Her work comes on the heels of another high-profile moment: a banjo feature on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter’s “Texas Hold ‘Em”, which followed Giddens’ Billboard interview where she expressed mixed feelings about the corporate machinery behind the project. “I feel like I had to make a compromise in order for a greater good,” the banjo player said in her Billboard interview.

While Giddens confirmed her full support for Beyoncé’s right to engage with the genre to EBONY, she also emphasized that visibility is only part of the equation. “These things are blips,” she said. “If there’s nothing set up before and after, they just remain blips.” With Biscuits and Banjos, Giddens is trying to build infrastructure—something rooted, sustainable, and driven by community.

In her chat with EBONY Giddens opens up about the ethos behind Biscuits and Banjos, her early music influences, and the spiritual weight of returning to ancestral spaces to record her latest album.

EBONY: There’s this growing awareness that country music has space for everyone, especially for Black artists who haven’t always felt welcomed. What’s your perspective on that shift?

Rhiannon Giddens: That’s been the whole point of my career. I’ve been doing the work, along with so many others, to reclaim this space in a holistic way. That’s part of why Biscuits and Banjos also includes food [vendors]. It’s all part of a larger cultural story. Artists like Taj Mahal have been talking about the banjo for decades. And even before him, elders were preserving this music through a period when it was being erased from public memory.

There was this fast transition where people forgot that Black folks played this music. I don’t blame anyone; I learned where the banjo came from in my twenties. This is a systemic issue, and change takes time. But I’m really encouraged by what feels like a critical mass now.

With that kind of momentum comes visibility—and sometimes commercialization. That can water down the meaning behind the music. As someone rooted in the music, what do you want to see preserved is the genre grows?

The history. People say country music is for everyone—and it is—but we also need to understand that Black people are part of the DNA of country music. There’s a restoration happening, a correction to the narrative, and that needs to stay front and center. The idea that any one group owns a genre, or ties it to nationalism or racial purity, stems from historical ignorance.

Country music has always been commercial. The moment music became recorded, it became a product rather than just an experience. We act like Spotify changed everything, but the record player did that first. Once the music is removed from the person, you can change its meaning.

I play old-time music, the kind that got absorbed into what we now call country. I learned from Joe Thompson, a traditional fiddler. This music comes from a deep cultural exchange—Black, white, brown, poor, working-class communities. We’re just restoring our part in it. Ultimately, it’s about class as much as race. Race was used to enforce class.

I love that you brought up the food connection. There’s been this historical pattern where anything Black people use to build themselves up gets reframed into something shameful. Watermelon, fried chicken—those were survival tools. So when someone’s just starting to reconnect with these histories, like the banjo, where should they begin? 

Great question. I’ve wanted to create a central resource for this for a while. I did a 10-part course on the banjo for Great Courses where I brought in experts I’ve learned from. That’s a solid starting point. This isn’t a quick thing. You can’t just learn one song and say you understand the tradition. It’s a lifestyle. 

Absolutely. And that ties to Biscuits and Banjos being “a space for exchanging ideas,” according to the description on the festival’s website. What are you hoping people leave with? 

First, I want people to know they’re not alone. I want someone who’s been sitting with their banjo in their room to realize there’s a whole community. I also want artists across disciplines to connect. During the pandemic, I was isolated in Ireland and had to learn how to make biscuits myself. That sparked my journey into food culture. Watching High on the Hog reminded me that so many of us are thinking the same way—we need to recenter ourselves in these narratives. 

Food and music are incredible ways to trace cultural histories. Everyone eats. Everyone loves music. So maybe someone comes to the festival, listens to Toni Tipton-Martin speak, and has a thought that changes how they understand art or culture. That’s the goal. This festival isn’t about profit. It’s about community. I want people doing this work to leave with a renewed sense of energy. 

You’ve also made it clear the festival is for the local community. Why was affordability and accessibility so important? 

That was everything to me. From the beginning, I said this festival has to benefit Durham. It can’t be extractive. I want the city to walk away feeling like this gave them something. 

What do you want people to know about North Carolina as a music destination? 

North Carolina’s unique. Historically, it sat between Virginia and South Carolina—two wealthier states with more plantations. North Carolina was poorer, more rural, more mixed. That mix gave birth to a lot of great music—from Nina Simone and Thelonious Monk to Eric Church. 

There’s also a huge indie scene. And I think people forget that grassroots music scenes need support. If we don’t invest in live music now, in 20 years we’ll just have AI songs on Spotify. That’s where we’re headed unless we shift course. 

The Carolina Chocolate Drops reunion is a big moment. What does that mean to you? 

We formed with pure intent, and that’s guided my career. Meeting Joe Thompson, and then Dom [Flemons] and Justin [Robinson], changed my life. We became the people we didn’t get to see growing up. People tell me they picked up a banjo because they saw us. That’s everything. Now we each have our own work, but this reunion is a way of saying “thank you” to ourselves, to each other, to the fans. We did a thing. And now we’re coming together to celebrate that. 

And you’re doing it while also releasing a new album, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow?. What was that like? 

It was intense. I realized if something happened to me, a lot of this music would disappear. So, I wanted to document it. Justin and I went back to Joe Thompson and Etta Baker’s homes. We recorded outdoors, surrounded by the sounds of North Carolina—birds, bugs, wind. It was about reconnecting the music to place. Not just the notes, but the environment, the people, the stories. It was incredibly emotional. 

At Etta’s house, her hat was still hanging up. The energy was so present. At Joe’s place, we had a spread of food and played by the forest. Even the plantation where we recorded some tunes carried an energy. We didn’t record in the house—just on the porch, by the river. There was a line we didn’t want to cross. The land remembers. 

You talked in Billboard about Cowboy Carter. From your perspective, why do you think that album was the one to finally break through and win Album of the Year? 

Look, I’ve said for years—if anybody can get Black people to care about the banjo, it’s Beyoncé. I’m on record saying that. She had the exposure, the power, the buy-in from the Black community. She’s kind of the only one who could really do it this way. So, I’ll fight to the death for Beyoncé’s right to put out whatever music she wants—country or otherwise. I’ll write whatever Guardian op-ed to defend any Black person’s right to engage with the genre in a way that’s respectful and thoughtful. I’ll fight to the death for that. As for the GRAMMYs.

… I’m probably the wrong person to ask. The whole thing is hard for me. 

I think the idea of trophies for art is hard for me—even while I understand the GRAMMYs does a lot of great work. I was there representing a label run by a woman, with a song written by a Black woman about a lynching. I was also there to put a vision to the banjo, to say: this is the banjo, this is the history. I use every chance I get to educate and share the facts. That’s how I see the GRAMMYs. As for the politics—I don’t really engage with that. 

So—if there’s an opportunity on the Cowboy Carter tour where collaborators join Beyoncé onstage, is that something you’d participate in? 

That world’s so different from mine, but I never say no. If it’s for the right reasons, I’m there. Always for the mission. 

And that’s exactly what you said at the start of this conversation. So, tying it back to Biscuits and Banjos—if someone’s on the fence about coming, what’s the one thing you’d tell them? 

Just come be happy with us. You can show up, check things out, and leave if it’s not for you. But if something draws you in, stay. Follow the artists—not because they’re celebrities, but because of what they do. That’s what Biscuits and Banjos is here for. 

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Black Banjo Gathering at App State, which he [Tony Thomas] started with CC Conway. Tony created a listserv for Black banjo players after getting flamed on the mainstream banjo forum for just talking about Black people playing the banjo. That was 20 years ago—it was a different time. 

CC Conway also wrote African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia, a major entry point for a lot of people. That gathering is where I met Dom and Justin. It’s not the beginning of everything, but it was a key moment. This festival is, in part, an homage to that. I just wanted to name Tony Thomas and CC Conway because without them, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It’s important to connect to the people and work that came before us.