Rhiannon Giddens, virtuoso banjo player, singer-songwriter, Grammy winner, MacArthur "Genius" Grant recipient and keeper of the flame of African-American roots music, will be among the featured performers at this year's Ojai Music Festival, coming Sept. 16-19, under the musical direction of John Adams.
We talked with Giddens from her home in Dublin, where she and her partner, Francesco Turrissi, now live. It will be her first trip to Ojai, though she's inadvertently hit on an Ojai theme with her popular "Aria Code" podcast, in which she contrasts an aria from Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" with Vivian Liberto Cash's imagined lament at the absence of her husband, Johnny Cash, while she holds down the fort in Casitas Springs. Giddens will perform a mix of her own music, as well as modernist masterpieces by Adams and Mozart.
Giddens, who will be featured on the cover of the Fall 2021 issue of Ojai Quarterly, first came to prominence with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, reviving the once-ubiquitous and now nearly forgotten Black string band, as well as for her acting chops on "Nashville." She holds an important place in the folk music scene as a chronicler and interpreter of the vital tradition of roots music. For more information, check out the 2021 Ojai Music Festival program or read the fascinating article by John Jeremiah Sullivan in the May 13, 2019 issue of the New Yorker.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/rhiannon-giddens-and-what-folk-music-means
https://www.ojaifestival.org/2021-festival-schedule/
