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.
Article comments
1 - CatbirdHeart
There is a slight inaccuracy in your article. This type of music did not originate in the Western parts of NC and VA. Earliest references to the fiddle and banjo being played together are on plantations, almost all of which were in the Piedmont/Coastal Plain/Tidewater/Lowcountry of the South. As these areas were settled first and the mountains subsequently, the music most likely spread from the more settled areas to the least settled regions, ie the mountains.
2 - Lou Novacheck
Please point me to a reference that supports your statements. I'd like to get this straight for myself, as much as for the article. My reading supports what I put in the article, but if it's not correct, I want to correct the article.
Thanks.
3 - CatbirdHeart
The best resource would be Africa Banjo Echoes in Appalachia by Cece Conway. There is an accompanying CD called Black Songster of NC and VA put out by Smithstonian folkways. Also read go the WPA Slave narrative websites and do a search for "fiddle" and/or "banjo". Old Time music as we know it today held on longer in the mountains than other places in the South (even this is not agreed upon) but that should not be confused with its point of origin.