You're listening to song-explanter where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

Rianna Giddens is one of those people where I feel like they have to start inventing new awards because she's already won all of them. She's got multiple Grammys.

She won the Pulitzer Prize for an opera she co-wrote called Omar. She's a MacArthur genius.

And the new Beyoncé song, Texas Holdom, that features the banjo.

That's Rian and Giddens playing the banjo.

I guess that's not technically an award, but it feels like one to me.

Rian and Giddens has released five solo albums since 2015, and before that that she was a member of the

Grammy-winning band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. She is now also the artistic

director of the Silk Road Ensemble, the musical supergroup that Yo Yo Ma founded.

In 2023, Rianen released an album called You're the One, and I talked to her about a song

she wrote for it called E. Louisiana Man, which was nominated for a Grammy for Best American

Roots Performance.

I never knew that things were going to get so far.

I never knew it.

I never knew that you were going to break my heart view.

New Louisiana man.

My name is Rianna Giddens. I was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in the central part of the state.

And what was your life like in terms of music? Did you play a lot of music when you were growing up?

You know, I was surrounded by a lot of music.

I picked up a few guitar chords from my dad.

He was a guitar player, but that was kind of it until I was like my senior year in high school

that's when I kind of decided I wanted to be a singer so I started auditioning for schools

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