RHIANNON GIDDENS

PAST WINS best traditional folk album (Genuine Negro Jig, 2011), best folk album (They’re Calling Me Home, 2022)

NOMINATED THIS YEAR best Americana album (You’re the One), best American roots performance (“You Louisiana Man”)

Winning is amazing because, for the rest of your career, you’re like, “I have a Grammy, and I’m grateful to have won.” I am always holding a banner for what I’m representing, so if you win, it’s like, “We get another chance to talk about [fiddler] Joe Thompson’s music.”

Awards for art are very complicated, and I know I’m not the only one that has complicated feelings about them. On one hand, how do you give awards for something that’s so subjective? [Singer-songwriter] Allison Russell, she’s always clear-minded about the idea of what the Recording Academy is: Ideally, it’s a group of your peers. The Recording Academy has been aggressive in making internal changes that mean more of the diversity that has already existed in our country for a long time is represented in the Grammys. I see all the good work that’s being done while also acknowledging that the whole system is problematic. But it’s the system we have, and people are trying to make it as fair as possible. Saying all of that, it feels good to be regarded by your peers as someone worthy of notice. They are saying, “We see what you’re doing, and we want you to keep doing it.”

It’s hard to say if [my Grammy wins and nominations directly created opportunities for me]. There hasn’t been any kind of “I saw you were nominated or won a Grammy and we’ll give you this.” That almost never happens. I think it’s more of an accumulative effect. In [the] folk and Americana categories, it’s still more back to the basics of who’s coming to see you — not the song that they heard on TikTok.