Carolina Chocolate Drops merge music and history

From staff reports
Published: June 13, 2008

The Carolina Chocolate Drops will take a musical trek back in time later this month in concert at the North Theatre.

The Durham, N.C.-based group celebrates the old-time musical traditions of the Piedmont, with such depth and finesse that critics feel transported back to the days before African-American musical traditions evolved into the blues.

“You start seeing sepia tones and even though the music’s being played right in front of you, you expect to hear crackles and hisses as if the sounds were being torn from a salvaged 78,” wrote one critic after seeing the group perform.

Featuring Justin Robinson (fiddle, banjo, voice), Rhiannon Guddens (banjo, fiddle, voice) and Don Flemons (guitar, banjo, harmonica, jug, snare and voice), the group will celebrate the evolution of music through a collection of songs born at the foot of the Appalachians.

“It’s fascinating to watch how old-time connects to nearly every other genre in America,” said Flemons in an online interview with World Music Central. “Nearly every style of music takes it rhythm from the banjo. In studying the older blues, I can tell that everybody knew a banjo player or they were a banjo player.”
Blues guitar legend Taj Mahal called the group “electrifying,” and Jeff Tamarkin of the All Music Guide said the group’s music “belonged to an era when music was not something to be sold but something from the soul.”

For band members, the group’s repertoire gives voice to America’s music from its earliest roots, sharing a soundtrack that ultimately reflects the nation’s rich, varied history.
“I always thought America had a beautiful vocabulary of music, a wonderful lexicon, so I’ve always made it a point to play as much music, listen to as much music as I can,” Flemons said.

But by celebrating a black string band tradition, the group merges both music and history lesson, sharing a musical style as lost as the time when it was born.
“It’s not a well-known thing that there is a black string band tradition,” Flemons said in the World
Music Central interview. “The blues overshadowed the string band; it wasn’t preserved well at all.” Too, there were historical connotations to the music that led people on a quest for something different.

“People were looking for a new thing,” Flemons said. “I think it was the evolution of the black community around the turn of the century, into the ’20s and ’30s. There was a big transition in the black culture. I think that’s what really put string band music into the ground. Those were slave instruments and that was plantation music.”
But still, the music remains vital, and as the group breathes new life into those old traditions, they are earning a solid place in the contemporary pages of music history.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops will perform at 7:30 p.m. June 20 at the North Theatre, 629 North Main St.

Tickets are $20 and are available in advance at Bronx Boy Bagels, Yene and the Brown Bean or by calling (434) 792-2700.