One day not long ago, the Carolina Chocolate Drops formed out of the ether. Well … not really. But the ether is where two of the three hung out, so to speak, chatting on a listserv with other Black Banjo enthusiasts.

Over the course of the next few months, Dom Flemons and Rhiannon Giddens of the string band Sankofa Strings met up with Justin Robinson, then Joe Thompson, followed quickly by Etta Baker and Algia Mae Hinton. Flemons, Giddens and Robinson eventually became the Carolina Chocolate Drops, while Thompson, Baker and Hinton influenced and furthered the already-substantial musical education of the three. There’s a distinct difference between learning the music formally, or by “transmission,” growing up with it. Transmission is more of an osmotic process than an educational process, and that’s what the frequent visits by the CCD to their adopted mentors hope to achieve.

The name Carolina Chocolate Drops is an homage to the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, a 1920s band led by a somewhat well-known fiddle and mandolin player of the time who went by the name of Louie Bluie, and whose brothers joined him in the band. Since two of the three CCD members are from North Carolina, the name choice became rather obvious.

The two hours mentioned above is a bit of literary license, referring to CCD’s onstage appearances. When CCD are onstage and going through their repertoire, they’re also educating the audience by throwing out bits of information between the selections. They explain the difference between old time Piedmont string music and old time Appalachian music, making the learning experience a real joy.

When the trio were at a banjo conference at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, they met Joe Thompson, one of the last surviving authentic Piedmont old time string players. Joe, who was in his eighties, learned music from his father, who learned it from his father, making it authentically handed-down folk music, although current vernacular calls it mountain music or old-time music. This type of music originated in the western parts of the Carolinas and Virginia, and was formed during the early settlement of those Appalachian areas, mainly by Europeans who had come to work the forests in those areas. These immigrants had brought their own music with them, the abundant forests at the time gave them the raw material. Over the course of the next hundred or so years, the music now being revived became the end product of an isolated environment that steered the path of the music with very minor “outside” influence.

Until the late 1800s and early 1900s, the roads in this part of the country were more paths or tracks than roads. This, paired with the mountainous terrain, made any visitor a curiosity. The music later made a split with its spread into the Piedmont area, which lays between the mountains of the west and the Atlantic coast. The banjo takes on a more prominent role in Piedmont style, alternating with the fiddle as the lead instrument, weaving in an out of the lead.