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Rhiannon Giddens on Thursday's World Cafe

Rhiannon Giddens
Credit John Peets/Courtesy of the artist
Rhiannon Giddens

In 2017, Rhiannon Giddens  stopped by the World Cafe with her album, Freedom Highway.  On that record, she went straight to the darkest parts of history, speaking for those whose voices have often being silenced – from slaves, to the people of the civil rights movement, to contemporary victims of racism. We revisit that session again, on the next World Cafe.  

Copyright 2020 WRUR

I was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, and grew up mostly in and around the Rochester area. I got my radio start at WBKT at Brockport High school as a sophomore, and was its station manager in my senior year in high school. I had caught the radio & TV bug. While in high school, I started working for the local commercial station in town (WWBK/WJBT). While attending SUNY Brockport, I helped build WBSU-FM, and started as an intern for WXXI-TV. I started working for WXXI in the broadcast operations area, and eventually became an online television editor. In 1985, I took a position at WHYY in Philadelphia in their engineering department, working primarily as a video editor, but also provided audio support for TV productions and for some radio productions, including NPR's Fresh Air.