Giri is 11 years old; Uma 9.
Nashville, Tennessee musicians Giri Peters, 11, and his sister Uma Peters, 9, who are Indian Americans, are being considered as musical prodigies in Bluegrass and old-time music.
At 9 and 11, Uma — who plays fiddle and clawhammer banjo — and her older brother Giri, a fiddle and mandolin player, are too young to get to gigs without their mom, Sarika Peters, driving them, including to Raleigh, N.C., to perform at the Bluegrass Ramble in September, reported The Tennessean.
“But they are talented beyond their years, and both kids, who are Indian-American, are already making a splash in bluegrass and old-time music,” the report said.
The duo have drawn the attention of several professional musicians, including acclaimed bluegrass artist Alan Bibey, banjo luminaries Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, and Rhiannon Giddens, whose group the Carolina Chocolate Drops builds upon the musical traditions of North Carolina’s Piedmont region and African-American string bands.
“If I see young folks of color playing the banjo, of course I’m going to check it out,” Giddens said.
When she was in town to film her scenes for the upcoming season of “Nashville,” Giddens went to the Peterses’ home to meet Giri and Uma and show them some tips she learned from her own mentor, the late Joe Thompson. “I hung out with the kids, played some tunes, and it was great,” she said. “I’m hoping to do it again. … Uma is a really, really good player. That was what struck me more than anything. … I wanted to encourage it.”
Giri and Uma’s musical journey began a little over three years ago, when the Peters family watched The Goat Rodeo Sessions, a genre-melding collaboration between mandolin player Chris Thile, renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, fiddler and banjo player Stuart Duncan and bassist Edgar Meyer. Giri, who was learning classical violin at the time, was captivated immediately. “I saw the mandolin for the first time and said, ‘I want one of those.’ ”
“I had no idea what a mandolin was,” said Sarika Peters, a Houston native who works in Vanderbilt’s pediatrics department, reported The Tennessean. “We Googled it.” Soon, Giri was learning how to play bluegrass mandolin and had traded classical violin instruction for fiddle lessons. Uma picked up the banjo after she saw a documentary that featured the Carolina.
Giri released his first bluegrass album, “Just Whittlin’ Around,” this year, and Uma appears on two tracks. The record includes two original songs that Giri wrote. One, “Zoey’s Reel,” was written for the family dog, who likes to lie on the couch and listen to the kids practice. Uma, who prefers the clawhammer style of banjo favored in the old-time world to rapid-fire, fingerpicked bluegrass banjo, just composed her first song as well.
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