Rhiannon Giddens traces the banjo from her ancestors to Beyoncé

This is Ira Glass. On this American life, we tell stories about when things change. Like for this guy David, whose entire life took a sharp, unexpected, and very unpleasant turn. And it did take me a while to realize that it's basically because the monkey pressed the button. That's right.

Because the monkey pressed the button. Surprising stories every week, wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. There are many ways you may know my guest, singer, banjo player, fiddler, and songwriter Rhiannon Giddens.

Early in her career, she co-founded the Carolina Chocolate Drops, which played music from the black string band tradition dating back to slave times. She since recorded several solo albums. On one of them, she recorded and wrote several songs based on the based on slave narratives, and one song based on an ad from a slaveholder looking to sell a young enslaved woman, offering the buyer the option of buying the woman's nine month old baby. Giddens studied opera singing in college and won a Pulitzer Prize for co-writing the opera Omar about a Muslim scholar from Senegal who was sold into slavery in the US.

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