About The Drops

“Tradition is a guide, not a jailer. We play in an older tradition but we are modern musicians.”

—Justin Robinson

In the summer and fall of 2005, three young black musicians, Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson, made the commitment to travel to Mebane, N.C., every Thursday night to sit in the home of old-time fiddler Joe Thompson for a musical jam session. Joe was in his 80’s, a black fiddler with a short bowing style that he inherited from generations of family musicians. He had learned to play a wide ranging set of tunes sitting on the back porch with other players after a day of field work. Now he was passing those same lessons on to a new generation.

When the three students decided to form a band, they didn’t have big plans. It was mostly a tribute to Joe, a chance to bring his music back out of the house again and into dance halls and public places. They called themselves The Chocolate Drops as a tip of the hat to the Tennessee Chocolate Drops,  three black brothers Howard, Martin and Bogan Armstrong, who lit up the music scene in the 1930’s. Honing and experimenting with Joe’s repertoire, the band often coaxed their teacher out of the house to join them on stage. Joe’s charisma and charm regularly stole the show.

Being young and living in the 21st century, the Chocolate Drops first hooked up through a yahoo group,  Black Banjo: Then and Now (BBT&N) hosted by Tony Thomas and Sule Greg Wilson. Dom was still living in Arizona, but in April 2005, when the web-chat spawned the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, N.C., he flew east and ended moving to the Piedmont where he could get at the music first hand. Joe Thompson’s house was the proof in the pudding.

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Band Member Biographies

	Dom Flemons You don't have to be born in the Piedmont to feel the music in your blood. Read Full Bio
	Rhiannon Giddens It's hard to contain the energy and enthusiasm of Rhiannon Giddens. Read Full Bio
	Hubby Jenkins Hubby Jenkins is a New York City multi-instrumental musician and songwriter. Read Full Bio

The Carolina Chocolate Drops and String Band History

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are the newest and youngest players in a long lineage of Black String Bands. The tradition traces its roots to musicians from Africa who came to the Americas in the holds of slave ships. The anchor instruments were made of gourds with a neck and a variety of string combinations. The same basic gourd banjo, called the ekontone, is played today in Gambia. Alongside the banjo gourd, musicians devised a number of fiddles, American-born relatives of the African ritti or one-stringed fiddle. Eventually, perhaps under the influence or orders of masters who wanted Irish jigs played in their parlors, black fiddle-players picked up the European violin, taking that instrument back to their cabins, adding classical-style fiddle to banjo and percussion; so the blurring of boundaries began.

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