Quotes from Rhiannon Giddens

If I want to support my family and my crew, we have to be on the road, and that's really tiring.

I think that we definitely want to experiment, and if there's a hip-hop song that we like, we'll cover it. We don't want to be one of those bands that's like, you know, you know - Carolina Chocolate Drops does hip-hop. I mean, just know - you know, if it naturally works itself in, you know, cool.

I'm not gonna force something or fake something to try to get more black people at my shows. I'm not gonna do some big hip-hop crossover.

Black women have historically had the most to lose and have therefore been the fiercest fighters for justice.

I don't watch 'Game of Thrones.' I don't watch TV. I don't watch Hulu.

I play a replica of a banjo from the 1950s. It was the first commercial-style banjo in the United States so it's the first one that white people played.

The truth, the real history, is way more interesting and representative of what America actually is.

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

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.

The best part of a MacArthur is having some pressure taken off from touring relentlessly.

I have to continue to work, and I have to be touring, because that's how I earn a living.

I wouldn't be out here touring constantly if I didn't hope that my music was going to do something to somebody.

At some point you have to take responsibility for who you are and where you are and being able to listen to other points of view, whichever side of the tracks you're on.

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.

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

I've always liked women singers and appreciate a good story being told. That's what country music used to do on the radio.

When you sit at the feet of an elder, it changes you.

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.

So my mom's folks are from one side of Greensboro - and, you know, outside of Greensboro. And my dad's folks, the white side, is from another very small town outside of Greensboro. So both sides are coming from the country.

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.

I hate genres. I think they're just marketing labels.

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.

The first band I was in out of college was a Celtic band, and I had to learn to sing with a microphone, because I'd never done that before. At Oberlin, I never used a mic for any kind of singing.

American music is always best when it comes from a mixture of things.