Not long ago, Rhiannon Giddens knew every Black string musician. The dedicated few were largely collaborators and colleagues, many of whom met a generation ago at the landmark Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, N.C.
Giddens, the folk musician and recipient of all the accolades (Grammys, a Pulitzer, a MacArthur), no longer knows everyone who followed her path. That expansion, she figured, was reason to celebrate.
She did so the last weekend of April at her inaugural Biscuits & Banjos Festival in Durham, N.C., a jamboree featuring twangy banjos, groovy basses, clickety bones and, yes, the devouring of many flaky, buttery biscuits.
The festival culminated in a reunion by the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Black string band led by Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson. The group met at the Boone gathering, taking apprenticeship under the old-time fiddle player Joe Thompson.
The Grammy-winning band resuscitated styles like Piedmont string music, presenting them to a broader audience.
“It was just time to come back together and to say, ‘Hey, we did a thing,’” Giddens said. “Let’s celebrate being a part of a chain, because when we came out, there was a lot of weight on us.”
She added: “Now we’re a link in the chain. We’re not the end of the chain.”
The idea for the festival’s titular pairing came during the pandemic. Giddens was locked down at home in Ireland, where she has lived since 2018. She did not have easy access to comfort food like when she made her routine trips back to the United States. She studied cooking, watching series like “High on the Hog.”
“That was so instrumental in breaking open the idea of what soul food is and what Southern food is, and how integral the African American experience is to it,” Giddens said. “It felt very similar to the work that I was doing with the banjo and country music and old-time music — this idea of culture being expressed through something that people do every day.”
Several local restaurants submitted entries for the festival’s golden biscuit award. Melanie Wilkerson, the executive chef at the Counting House Restaurant, won with her “angel” biscuit, consisting of a yeast and brioche base.
She learned how to make them from her grandmother.
“Biscuits are understated, but understood depending on where you come from,” said Wilkerson, a Durham native.
The festival’s lineup was cross-generational. The influential blues singer Taj Mahal, an octogenarian, performed with Leyla McCalla, a former cellist for the Chocolate Drops.
“It’s nice to see the children of blues,” Mahal said.
“It’s nice to be called a child still,” answered McCalla, who’s 39.
“When you get to be this age, 65 or 70 is a child,” Mahal retorted.
The bassist Christian McBride performed with the North Carolina Central University Jazz Ensemble 1.
“For the lineup to be so melanated, it feels groundbreaking,” said Lillian Werbin, the co-owner of Lansing’s Elderly Instruments, who traveled to Durham with her staff and about 20 banjos for sale. “She’s saying that she’s the middle of the link, but this is a starting point. This is like the beginning of what could be even bigger and more established and it can go for generations.”
“I’ve never seen that many Black people on the stage together playing this music, and it’s just really exciting to see this music, the resurgence, the renewal, the rebirth of it,” said Dr. Angela M. Wellman, the founder of the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music in California, after she finished watching the reunion concert.
Giddens has gone on to other projects post-Chocolate Drops. In just the past year or so, she was featured on Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ’Em,” the lead single from “Cowboy Carter,” and on the soundtrack to Ryan Coogler’s movie “Sinners.” She recently moved her show away from the Kennedy Center in May because of the new administration’s upheaval.
“I feel like the most important thing to get out of that is that we need to support each other as long as you think about what you’re doing and you have an intentionality,” she said.
Giddens was omnipresent throughout the weekend. She was a judge in the biscuit competition. She played banjo during a Friday night square dance, packed with people with wide smiles, before hopping off the stage, barefoot, to participate in the line dance.
“This is the idea of cultural renaissance,” Giddens said. “This is cultural excavation. It just happens some people are doing it with music. Some people with food. Some people are doing it in literature. It’s a way so that we could all kind of draw strength from each other.”
