Rhiannon Giddens takes DC on folk music journey
Gary Jared
The celebrated artist and her Old-Time Revue are dedicated to authentically presenting traditional music
“I need way more fiddle than that,” Rhiannon Giddens exclaimed to loud cheers as she began “Old Corn Liquor.” It was the Grammy-winner’s second attempt to start her song with fiddler Justin Robinson, which both recorded for the hit 2025 film Sinners. During the first attempt, she broke a banjo string. She embraced the issue, picked up another of the myriad banjos on stage and rolled with it. The crowd cheered as she got it into tuning (more on that later.)
Such was the laidback vibe as Giddens and her Old Time Revue brought a vibrant evening of folk music steeped in tradition to DC’s Anthem on Sunday night (May 11th).
Giddens, a Pulitzer-Prize winner and MacArthur “Genius” grant has made a name and career bringing authentic folk music from a variety of cultures to the masses. And the program in DC was no different.
Giddens and her Old Time Revue took the crowd to New Orleans with an authentic Creole party tune called “Quoi Fare.” She began the night with songs from her native North Carolina, including covers of Elizabeth Cotten and Ola Bella Reed.
This musical journey expanded as far as Nigeria. Justin Robinson, Giddens’ former Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate, played fiddle and sang a song in Urdu about pursuing one’s passion for success. He used the song to weave a musical tapestry with direct threads to American fiddle-and-banjo music.
Returning to American country music, Giddens’ guitarist Amelia Powell delivered a beautifully sung “Somewhere Between” by Merle Haggard.
It was here that the “Old Corn Liquor” string-break happened. As Giddens was tuning her replacement banjo, she explained something as important to the music as its melody. Every song, she said, is being played in the original tuning rather than the modern-day standard tuning of instruments to one universal key. “We try to make it as authentic as possible,” Giddens told the appreciative crowd.
She followed up the Joe Thompson-penned tune with one of her own. It’s a blues number written and performed on a banjo replicated from an 1858 model. The instrument gave “At the Purchaser’s Option” a unique tone that made it the standout of the evening.
For Giddens, folk music stands on its own as a political statement. One she’s unafraid to stand side-by-side with. Originally planned for the Kennedy Center, she switched venues after President Trump became the president of the organization. “
It’s the music of poor people just trying to live,” Giddens said. Or maybe her devotion to this musical style is best summed up by her favorite piece of merch she sells, “The Banjo: Woke since the 1600s.”