Rhiannon Giddens to get Americana award

Grammy-winning folk singer and musician Rhiannon Giddens and pioneering composer Francis “Frank” Johnson will be the first recipients of the inaugural Legacy of Americana Award.
The Americana Music Association announced the new award yesterday in partnership with the National Museum of African American Music. It will be presented to Giddens during the Americana Honors & Awards show on Sept. 11 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Giddens, from North Carolina, won a Grammy Award in 2011 for best traditional folk album with the string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. She has spent her career exploring the history of African roots music.
She was named a fellow in 2017 by the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation and received one of its “genius” grants to pursue her creative work. Giddens is also a nominee at the Americana Awards for artist of the year and duo/group of the year for her band Our Native Daughters.

Clinton impeachment is FX’s next ‘American Crime Story’

The next chapter of FX’s “American Crime Story” will dramatize Bill Clinton’s impeachment with a focus on Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp and other women central to the scandal.
The miniseries will air within weeks of the 2020 presidential election.
Lewinsky, who was a White House intern when she had an affair with Clinton, will be a producer on the project, FX Networks CEO John Landgraf said in announcing the project at a Television Critics Association meeting Tuesday. Clinton initially denied the affair before admitting to it in 1998.
The series is scheduled to air on Sept. 27, 2020, about five weeks before the Nov. 3 election. Landgraf, asked whether the proximity gave the network pause, defended the timing and cautioned those who might judge the project sight unseen.
“I believe very, very strongly in what we’re making. I’ve read it [the script], I think it’s great. I don’t believe it’s going to determine who’s the next president of the United States. I think that’s a little hysterical,” he said.