Genuine Negro Jig

No, the title of this post doesn't refer to Harry Reid's painfully back-handed "compliment" of Barack Obama. It's the cleverly provocative title of the newest album from the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an all black string band from North Carolina. The album blends a delicious stew of old-time string music, blues stomps, and Celtic arrangements with an acappella ballad, a Tom Waits cover, and a reworking of Blue Cantrell's R&B hit "Hit 'Em Up Style" thrown in for good measure. The album relies heavily on fiddle and banjo, but also incorporates beat-boxing, jug-blowing, mouth harps, and, I suspect a washboard or two among the beautifully varied vocal styles. While the album harkens back to the era of Harry Reid's birth (1939) and before, these musicians are decidedly of the Obama generation. Unlike the Obama Administration, however, the Chocolate Drops have the courage of their convictions and exude an authentic love of their source material. In short, while Obama seems only to pay lip service to his base these days, the Chocolate Drops play directly to theirs.


So, who is the base for the Chocolate Drops? At first glance, the North Carolina musicians seem like unlikely torchbearers for a music all too often associated with a culture stereotyped as bearing torches for horrific purposes. I play banjo and spend a lot of time on an online banjo forum. Recently, one member of the forum, who is white, spoke about bringing his banjo to work. He was disturbed to hear an African American colleague joke about banjo music being "lynching music." And, even the mention of a banjo can quickly elicit "squeal like a pig" quips. Lastly, the banjo, and stringband music, in general, were staples of the racist minstrel shows hugely popular with white audiences in the earlier parts of last century. Why would a group of young black musicians choose to play a music so largely associated with an unflattering white sterotype that also has a painful legacy with respect to race? Well, they love the music and also know the real story behind it. The Chocolate Drops are here to set the record straight and reclaim a history much more rich, diverse, and complicated than cheap Hollywood portrayals. Their "base" is people like themselves who simply love good music, regardless of the origins. Or maybe, in this case, also because of the origins, which can be surprising for those who only associate fiddles and banjos with Jed Clampett and Ned Beatty.

Thanks in part to Bela Fleck's recent documentary, Throw Down Your Heart, more and more people realize that the banjo's origins come from Africa. What seems less known is how much American banjo and string music has its origins in African American culture dating back many generations. The Drops' banjoist and guitarist, Dom Flemons (who actually hailed from Arizona before moving to North Carolina), points out, "A lot of times white and black players in those old string bands sound the same... You find more regional and geographical differences than you do racial lines." An early inspiration and mentor for the Chocolate Drops was a black fiddle player named Joe Thompson from North Carolina's Piedmont region, which has a fascinating history of multi-racial, multi-ethnic musical interactions. The band also adopted its name in honor of the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, a stringband popular in the 1930's comprised of three black brothers. These anecdotes help illustrate that stringband music was never as Anglo-centric as it might seem today. Its roots run just as deep in the history of African Americans as it does for any other group. Like most of America's greatest artistic creations (jazz being the best example), it is precisely the co-mingling of African and European traditions that spawned a beautiful, vibrant new creation. For whatever reason, however, stringband music and the instruments associated with it fell out of popularity with African Americans throughout the 20th century. Certainly those minstrel shows, which lampooned black culture in a racist fashion, might have had much to do with the decline.

Again, the Drops are fully aware of this legacy. In a recent NPR interview, Flemons explains, "When you dig your hands into the soil of American culture, you're going to get dirty. Just like when you're gardening. If you don't get your hands dirty, you're not going to get anything accomplished." Make no mistake, however. The band is not simply trying to find some interesting niche to fill, exploiting an interesting fluke of musical history. While they are keenly aware of the history and social implications of the music they play, the band formed organically out of a shared love and respect for the music itself. That's why their music is so damn good, and also why it pushes the art form in interesting directions. As band member Rhiannon Giddens explains in the same NPR interview, "We are able to do this because of what our parents went through and our grandparents went through. We are able to look back without some of the pain of actually having gone through some of those things. And so, we are able to say, 'Well, let's look back and see what joy we can find from these times.'"




Genuine Negro Jig is delightfully varied but still maintains a sophisticated cohesiveness. The voice of multi-instrumentalist Giddens is sometimes achingly haunting, as on the bluesy ballad Why Don't You Do Right. At other times, her backing vocals melt into the buttery sauce of Dom's animated jug band romps, like in Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine. The third member of the group, Justin Robinson, is a classically trained violinist who also puts in time on the banjo, autoharp, jug, and supplies the beatbox when needed. While all three musicians could probably sustain successful solo careers, the whole is still greater than the sum of the parts. And the same could be said for the continuing history of stringband music as a whole. The problem is that many of the parts seem to have been forgotten in the rich and varied history of the art form. The Chocolate Drops, as a byproduct of their love for their musical heritage, might be changing that. For the record, Senator Reid, this band's "Negro" dialect is part of a broad, amalgamated American dialect.

(p.s. The band is even better in person. I saw them a few months ago, and, if you get the chance, their live show should not be missed! Here's a list of tour dates.)