Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Nonesuch debut, Genuine Negro Jig, is more revelation than revival.  The old-time music that this trio of African-American musicians has been exploring for the last four years—with banjo, fiddle, guitar, snare, kazoo, jugs, and bones—offers pleasures both immediate and deep. “Trouble In Your Mind” and live-show favorite “Cornbread and Butterbeans” insist upon foot-tapping, if not a whirl around the closest dance floor, while others, like the brooding “Kissin’ and Cussin’” and the more sensual “Why Don’t You Do Right?,” invite comfortably seated rumination. But these generations-old songs, performed with both faithfulness and modernity, also represent a significant yet near-forgotten part of American musical history.

Behind its grooves, Genuine Negro Jig harbors extraordinary tales about the role of largely unsung black musicians who, from the pre-civil war south to the mid-20th Century, composed, performed, and passed on songs such as these, from parent to child, neighbor to neighbor. The Carolina Chocolate Drops focus on the sound of the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, the foothills where both black and white families settled and where musicians from both sides of the color line shared and swapped tunes. At the heart of the Piedmont sound, as lead melodic instrument, is the banjo, which evolved from its African roots as a close relation to the Malian ngoni and the Gambian akonting (which Drops banjo player and singer Rhiannon Giddens learned to play on an educational exchange to Gambia). The fiddle, which often serves as lead in Appalachian music, follows along with the banjo. The spare but often propulsive sound is embellished by a variety of percussive instrumentation—“the insanity factor,” as singer and multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons calls it—the jugs and bones and in the case of The Carolina Chocolate Drops, even the human beat-boxing of vocalist-fiddle player Justin Robinson.

 “Snowden’s Jig (Genuine Negro Jig)” for example, originated in a repertoire attributed to a famous family of black musicians from Knox County, Ohio, and was preserved (and titled) on paper by Dan Emmett, a white musician-folklorist best known as the composer of “Dixie,” who also was a member of the Virginia Minstrels. A controversy still rages in musicological circles as to whether Emmett, a fellow Knox County resident, actually wrote “Dixie” or appropriated it from the Snowdens.

“We’re first and foremost entertainers and musicians,” Giddens emphasizes. “The other stuff enriches, deepens the experience. If you can’t enjoy the music on the surface, we aren’t doing our job. That’s been the problem with some historical-based music. Sometimes it feels like a lesson injected rather than just something to be enjoyed. We’re just pleased that we have the platform and that we can make a living playing this music. In this day and age, that’s no mean feat. Everything has fallen into place so nicely. We’re incredibly blessed; there is no other word for it.”

Each band member, too, has a remarkable history to recount. It’s not hyperbole to call the Carolina Chocolate Drops virtuosic; their relationship to music is so wide-ranging and well-articulated, their backgrounds so strikingly different from this old-time sound they’ve come to embrace. The North Carolina-raised Giddens, an Oberlin Conservatory-trained opera singer, assuaged the strains of the classical music life by learning to become a caller, or leader, of contra dances and that newfound skill brought her to old-time music. Robinson, also from North Carolina, was raised in a family of classical musicians, including an opera-singing mother, but rebelled against his youthful violin training by giving up the instrument during his teenage years.  When he returned to the instrument at age 19, he says, “I didn’t want to play classical anymore—I wanted to play the fiddle.” Unlike his fellow Drops, Flemons doesn’t hail from the classical world; the Arizona native started out as a guitarist and singer-songwriter, with a parallel interest in slam poetry, and he now likes to think of himself as a modern-day “songster” a la Mike Seeger of the New Lost City Ramblers or the early 20th Century country blues singer Henry Thomas (“Fishin’ Blues”)—a wandering minstrel who seeks out, learns, and personalizes a wide range of acoustic material, from blues and folk, to country and jazz.
 
Says Giddens: “I started delving into the history, found out that the banjo is from Africa, and got really interested in it. I love classical music and I always will, and I hope I always will continue to perform it, but there is something about what I’m doing with the Drops that really feeds my soul. I’m really happy that we found each other.”

It was November 2005 when the three of them, all in their 20s, found each other at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina—a meeting of scholars and musicians eager to examine in-depth the African-American role in, and the African roots of, old-time music. For each of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, it was a way to find like-minded players and fellow travelers, to discover, as Flemons says, “the bigger picture.” As Justin recalls, “It was a really powerful event. I was just there for one day out of four, but it was still amazing. Just being there together was recognition that we were kindred spirits.”

From there, the soon-to-be band mates were introduced to elderly North Carolinian musician Joe Thompson, regarded as the last black string-band player. He agreed to tutor them and it is his mentoring that helped to shape the Carolina Chocolate Drops, his knowledge preserved in each of their songs. As Robinson puts it, “It’s something you can’t get any other way than by learning at the feet of somebody who’s been doing it for a very, very long time, who’s been completely immersed in something.”

Prior to forming the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Giddens and Flemons put together Sankofa Strings with an older singer-picker named Sule Greg Wilson. (“Sankofa” is a West African word that means “to look back and retrieve.”) Like Flemons, Wilson, although originally from Washington, DC, was living in Arizona and had a family there, so he couldn’t devote all his time to being in the southeast with the others. Robinson was a frequent guest of the group, which he soon joined when Wilson departed, and they adopted their new name. (Wilson has remained a good friend, and he occasionally sits in with the Drops; he he provides percussion on a few Genuine Negro Jig pieces.) The new trio quickly built a following via folk festivals, rigorous touring, standing ovation-worthy appearances at the Grand Ole Opry, and spots on such Public Radio programs as Mountain Stage and A Prairie Home Companion. Actor turned filmmaker Denzel Washington chose them to appear in, and perform on, the soundtrack of his 2007 directorial effort, The Great Debaters. The Drops released two independent albums, Dona Got A Ramblin Mind (2006) and Heritage (2008), before signing with Nonesuch.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops came equipped with a formidable, road-tested repertoire when they joined producer Joe Henry at his Garfield Studio in Pasadena. Says Flemons, “The thing I worried about the most when we were getting this album together was someone trying to change the music and take the fire out of it. I wanted us to be able to catch lightning in a bottle. Joe is very good at using the studio technology but not allowing it to hinder the music. My favorite track is ‘Cindy Gal,’ which Joe taught us. We knocked that one out. That was one that we had not performed live. We started playing it in the studio and it really came together well. Also, Tom Waits’ ‘Trampled Rose.’ I had been toying with that song since his Real Gone album came out. I half had it together and Joe helped to work out how to perform the s