The Carolina Chocolate Drops | |
---|---|
Background information | |
Origin | Durham, North Carolina, U.S. |
Genres | Old-time, Americana, skiffle |
Years active | 2005–2014 (dormant) |
Labels | Nonesuch/Elektra Records Dixiefrog Music Maker |
Members | Rhiannon Giddens Rowan Corbett Malcolm Parson |
Past members | Justin Robinson Adam Matta Dom Flemons Leyla McCalla Súle Greg Wilson Hubby Jenkins |
Website | https://rhiannongiddens.com/carolina-chocolate-drops |
The Carolina Chocolate Drops were an old-time string band from Durham, North Carolina. Their 2010 album, Genuine Negro Jig, won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, [1] and was number 9 in fRoots magazine's top 10 albums of 2010. [2]
Formed in November 2005, following the members' attendance at the first Black Banjo Gathering, held in Boone, North Carolina, in April 2005, the group grew out of the success of Sankofa Strings, an ensemble that featured Dom Flemons on bones, jug, guitar, and four-string banjo, Rhiannon Giddens on banjo and fiddle and Súle Greg Wilson on bodhrán, brushes, washboard, bones, tambourine, banjo, banjolin, and ukulele, with Justin Robinson as an occasional guest artist. All shared vocals. The purpose of Sankofa Strings was to present a gamut of African American musics: country and classic blues, early jazz and "hot music", string band numbers, African and Caribbean songs, and spoken word pieces. [3] The Chocolate Drops' original three members: Giddens, Flemons, and Robinson, were all in their twenties when the group formed after Flemons' move from Phoenix (where he and Wilson lived), to North Carolina, home of Giddens and Robinson. Wilson, nearly a generation older than the other Drops, was occasionally featured with the group into 2010, including contributions to the recordings, Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind, CCD and Joe Thompson, Heritage (with songs culled from Sankofa Strings' independently-released CD, Colored Aristocracy) and nearly half of Genuine Negro Jig . All of the musicians sing and trade instruments including banjo, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, snare drum, bones, jug, and kazoo. The group learned much of their repertoire, which is based on the traditional music of the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina, [4] from the eminent African American old-time fiddler Joe Thompson, although they also perform old-time versions of some modern songs such as Blu Cantrell's R&B hit "Hit 'em Up Style (Oops!)."
The Carolina Chocolate Drops have released five CDs and one EP and have opened for Taj Mahal and, in 2011, Bob Dylan. [5] They have performed on Mountain Stage , [6] MerleFest, and at the Mount Airy Fiddlers Convention. Additionally they have performed on A Prairie Home Companion , Fresh Air , and BBC Radio in early 2010, and at the 2010 Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, [7] and at the 2011 Romp, [8] in Owensboro, Kentucky. On January 17, 2012, they appeared live on BBC Radio 3. [9] They have performed on the Grand Ole Opry several times. They have also performed on the UK's BBC Television program, Later... with Jools Holland . [10]
On February 7, 2011, the band announced that beatboxer Adam Matta and multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins would be joining the band, while Justin Robinson was departing. [11] In early 2012, they announced that the New Orleans–based cellist Leyla McCalla was joining the band on its next tour. [12] CCD contributed a track, "Political World," to the Bob Dylan tribute compilation, Chimes of Freedom (album) released in January 2012. Their next album, Leaving Eden , followed soon afterward in February 2012. In an interview, Jenkins said,
"Leaving Eden was an interesting album because [fiddler] Justin [Robinson] had just left the group, and they had already decided to record with Buddy Miller, and had even picked the recording dates. It was an interesting time to be coming in, because they were ready to do different things with the new members. So it was a trial-by-fire period." [13]
They toured with Josh Ritter & the Royal City Band in 2012. [14] Later in 2012, the Drops were nominated for numerous awards by the Chicago Black Theater Alliance for their work in Keep a Song in Your Soul: The Roots of Black Vaudeville. [15] Staged by the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, written by Lalenja Harrington (Rhiannon Giddens's older sister) and Súle Greg Wilson, and featuring veteran hoofer Reggio MacLaughlin, and ragtime pianist and MacArthur Fellow Reginald R. Robinson, the program examined the hopes and realities, music, and dances of the Great Migration. [16]
Also in 2012, the Drops contributed a song, "Daughter's Lament", to The Hunger Games soundtrack.
In 2013, they were nominated for a Blues Music Award for 'Acoustic Artist'. [17]
Also in 2013, the Drops contributed a song, "Day of Liberty", to the two-CD album ' Divided & United .
On November 12, 2013, the Chocolate Drops announced that Dom Flemons would be leaving to embark on his own solo career, [18] and introduced two new members: cellist Malcolm Parson and multi-instrumentalist Rowan Corbett. [19]
In 2014 the Chocolate Drops worked with choreographer Twyla Tharp and dancers Robert Fairchild and Tiler Peck to create Cornbread Duet. [20]
In 2014, the group stopped regularly performing together, and members have pursued solo work and other projects since. [21] Hubby Jenkins left the band in 2016. [22] Rhiannon Giddens has released a number of solo recordings and was recently named as the artistic director of the Silk Road Project. [23]
Title | Album details | Peak chart positions | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
US | US Grass | US Folk | US Heat | ||
Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind |
| — | — | — | — |
The Great Debaters Soundtrack (with Alvin Youngblood Hart, Sharon Jones and Teenie Hodges) |
| — | — | — | — |
Heritage |
| — | — | — | — |
Carolina Chocolate Drops & Joe Thompson (recorded live at MerleFest, April 25, 2008) |
| — | — | — | — |
Genuine Negro Jig |
| 150 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
Carolina Chocolate Drops/Luminescent Orchestrii EP |
| — | 3 | 11 | 32 |
Leaving Eden |
| 123 | 1 | 6 | 2 |
"—" denotes releases that did not chart |
Year | Video | Director |
---|---|---|
2012 | "Country Girl" [24] | Thomas Ciaburri |
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, contra dance, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering on a combination of fiddle and plucked string instruments, most often the banjo, guitar, and mandolin. Together, they form an ensemble called the string band, which along with the simple banjo-fiddle duet have historically been the most common configurations to play old-time music. The genre is considered a precursor to modern country music.
Sankofa is a word in the Twi language of Ghana meaning “to retrieve" and also refers to the Bono Adinkra symbol represented either with a stylized heart shape or by a bird with its head turned backwards while its feet face forward carrying a precious egg in its mouth. Sankofa is often associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi," which translates as: "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten."
Eden and John's East River String Band are an American, New York City-based duo, who play country blues from the 1920s and 1930s. The members are John Heneghan and Eden Brower. The duo often have other musicians sit in with them, including Dom Flemons, Pat Conte and Robert Crumb.
Behold the Earth is a feature-length musical documentary film that inquires into America's estrangement from nature, built out of conversations with leading biologists and evangelical Christians, and directed by David Conover. The film made its debut at the 2017 DC Environmental Film Festival.
Genuine Negro Jig is the third studio album of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, one of the few African-American string bands playing today. Its label debut was released on February 16, 2010, while its vinyl version, which included the album on 140-gram vinyl and CD, was released on July 13. This is the first album the band has recorded for Nonesuch Records. It was highly successful, reaching the top ten on the Billboard Folk chart and the top of the Bluegrass chart. It was also the last CCD recording to include collaborator and Sankofa Strings co-founder, Sule Greg Wilson.
The Grammy Award for Best Folk Album is an award presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists for releasing albums in the folk genre. Honors in several categories are presented at the ceremony annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to "honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position".
Old timefiddle is the style of American fiddling found in old-time music. Old time fiddle tunes are derived from European folk dance forms such as the jig, reel, breakdown, schottische, waltz, two-step, and polka. When the fiddle is accompanied by banjo, guitar, mandolin, or other string instruments, the configuration is called a string band. The types of tunes found in old-time fiddling are called "fiddle tunes", even when played by instruments other than a fiddle.
Leaving Eden is the fourth studio album by the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
Rhiannon Giddens is an American musician known for her eclectic folk music. She is a founding member of the country, blues, and old-time music band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, where she was the lead singer, fiddle player, and banjo player.
Jug Band Hokum is a 2015 feature-length documentary film by Jack Norton that stars Brooklynd Turner and Anne Baggenstoss. It follows the eccentric lives of band members competing in the annual Minneapolis Battle of the Jug Bands.
Tomorrow Is My Turn is the first studio album by Rhiannon Giddens. Nonesuch Records released the album on February 10, 2015. She worked with T Bone Burnett in the production of this album. The album was nominated for Best Folk Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards. The title song is Nina Simone's English version of Charles Aznavour's 1962 hit "L'Amour, c'est comme un jour".
Carolina Chocolate Drops/Luminescent Orchestrii is a collaborative EP by Durham, North Carolina-based string band Carolina Chocolate Drops and experimental music band Luminescent Orchestrii. It was released on January 25, 2011 on Nonesuch Records.
Joseph Aquiler Thompson was an American old-time fiddle player, and one of the last musicians to carry on the black string band tradition. Accompanied by his cousin Odell, Thompson was recognized with several honors for performances of the old-time style, particularly when the genre was repopularized in the 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s, he recorded his first studio albums, consisting of a repertoire rooted in the authentic string band approach.
Freedom Highway is the second solo studio album of Folk/Americana musician and Carolina Chocolate Drops front woman Rhiannon Giddens. It was released via Nonesuch Records on February 24, 2017. Freedom Highway was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2017 Americana Music Honors & Awards. The title track "Freedom Highway" is a 1965 civil rights protest song written by Roebuck Staples and title track of The Staple Singers' album of the same name.
Dominique Flemons is an American old-time music, Piedmont blues, and neotraditional country multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter. He is a proficient player of the banjo, fife, guitar, harmonica, percussion, quills, and rhythm bones. He is known as "The American Songster" as his repertoire of music spans nearly a century of American folklore, ballads, and tunes. He has performed with Mike Seeger, Joe Thompson, Martin Simpson, Boo Hanks, Taj Mahal, Old Crow Medicine Show, Guy Davis, and The Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band.
Affrilachia is a term that focuses on the cultural contributions of African-American artists, writers, and musicians in the Appalachian region of the United States. The term "Affrilachia" is attributed to Kentucky-based writer Frank X Walker, who began using it in the 1990s as a way to negate the stereotype of Appalachian culture, which portrays Appalachians as predominantly white and living in small mountain communities. Walker could be said to have made this word global. The term Affrilachian stands for an African American who is a native or resident in the Appalachian region. Affrilachia is also the title of Walker's 2000 book of poetry, published by Old Cove Press.
Songs of Our Native Daughters is the debut Americana/folk album by four North American singer-songwriters collaborating as Our Native Daughters. The group includes Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell. The album was released on the Smithsonian Folkways label in early 2019.
Frank Johnson was an American popular fiddle player and brass band leader based in North Carolina, near Wilmington, United States, for most of the nineteenth century. Although largely forgotten by history books and often confused with composer Francis "Frank" Johnson, he helped define the sound of African-American fiddle and brass-band music in the mid-19th century.
Hubby Jenkins is an American multi-instrumentalist who studies and performs old-time American music. He is a former member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the Rhiannon Giddens band, and has been nominated for Grammy and Americana awards.
The Tennessee Chocolate Drops were an African-American string band trio, that started recording in 1930 during the Knoxville sessions. The trio consisted of brothers from Dayton, Tennessee, Howard Armstrong (fiddle) and Roland Armstrong (guitar), as well as Carl Martin (bass) of Big Stone Gap, Virginia.
The group eventually wound down its shows in 2014 and the members went their separate ways after nearly ten years, thousands of shows, millions of miles and their original goal achieved: the near-singlehanded revival of the black string band tradition in American consciousness. With it, they'd played a small part in the righting of history.