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"Hope Is the Thing with Feathers": Rhiannon Giddens on New Album, AI, Ed Sheeran, Macklemore & Trump

democracynow.org · 12h · first reportShare

“If we don’t connect those dots between the struggles, we’re never going to get anywhere,” says Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens. “That’s what music is for. … We have to make music with people from different backgrounds because then we have that conversation.” Giddens has had a wide-spanning career, including her time with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an old-time Black string band, and her work as a musical consultant on Ryan Coogler’s landmark film Sinners . She won a Pulitzer Prize for music in 2023 for her opera Omar about Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar in Africa who was sold into slavery in the 1800s. Her new album, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers , comes out on Friday.