Old-timey musicians bring soul and spirit to Oakland

Carolina…Carolina Chocolate Drops Performing with Rachel Eddy Carnegie Lecture Hall 4400 Forbes Ave. Feb. 16, 7:30 p.m. $18 (students advanced) / $35 (door) (412) 361-1915

With a fiddle, a banjo and a jug, Carolina Chocolate Drops is reclaiming a musical heritage, playing in the tradition of black string music from the foothills of North Carolina.

Known as Carolina Piedmont, the genre is rooted in the old-time tradition with more emphasis on rhythm and the banjo and less on soloing than bluegrass.

For Dom Flemons of the Chocolate Drops, there is an importance to playing in an old-time string band with two other young, black musicians.

“Being a black string band was definitely an afterthought,” Flemons said in a recent phone interview with The Pitt News. “But we’ve all had an awakening to the fact, and that [made us] want to take part in and emphasize [that tradition].”

Flemons met his band mates in spring 2005 at the Black Banjo Gathering in North Carolina. By September, he had moved to North Carolina from Arizona to join natives Justin Robinson, the band’s primary fiddler, and Rhiannon Giddens, who usually takes up the banjo for the Chocolate Drops.

Flemons, for the most part, blows into the jug, but the members all switch around on instruments and share vocals.

With its awaking, the Chocolate Drops sought out Joe Thompson, who, according to Flemons, is one of the last black string musicians in the Carolina tradition of old-time music. Flemons has since considered the Chocolate Drops under the tutelage of the legendary North Carolina banjoist.

Flemons soon put out an album with Giddens and banjoist Sule Greg Wilson under the name Sankofa Strings. This was quickly followed with the release of the Chocolate Drops’ Dona Got a Ramblin’ Mind in September 2006 after a line-up and name change.

Since then the trio has been touring the country, heading what they hope will become the black string music revival movement.

Flemons realizes that people have taken interest in his band for a number of different reasons, from the idea of seeing young black musicians doing something outside of the mainstream to people who’ve sought out old-time music since the Coen brother’s 2000 “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

“I think what really keeps people interested in us is a solid music performance,” Flemons said.

Attempting to revive a tradition of playing traditional music could complicate Flemons’ desire to create a unique sound. Performing songs that have been played over and over by many musicians in the past may appear to limit one’s musical palette, but ultimately, he sees the restrictions as a way to open new outlets of creativity.

“We are traditional in some ways but not in others,” he said. “Though we do a lot of traditional music, we don’t have any firm ideas on what being traditional means.”

Later, Flemons expounded on the idea, pointing to old-time music’s emphasis on performance.

“We may not write all of our own songs, but we do [every song] in our own way. There is always something that says that’s a Carolina Chocolate Drops song.”

This brought Flemons to what he considered an important aspect of being a revivalist of black string band music.

“There is a different aesthetic going on [with old-time music],” Flemons said.

For him, folk music made a huge fork with other old time traditions with Bob Dylan in the ’60s. He explained that folk music had always been about traditional music and, at the heart of folk, was the enjoyment of a good performance.

“Before Dylan, folk singers rarely made it big as singer-songwriters,” he added. “Nowadays, it seems you can’t break into the folk scene unless you’re singer-songwriter.”

Flemons sees this as a big loss to the art of traditional folk.

“[Now,] 40 years down the road [musicians] are so disconnected from what it means to be a good performer.”

That fact though, is that this is something Dylan understood. His first record was made up almost entirely of traditional covers. When you look at all the different acts of folk musicians around today who stress the importance of their original songs – even if they can’t sing or play their instrument – it’s hard to miss Flemons’ point.

So not only does Flemons see the Chocolate Drops as reviving part of a black heritage, he’s also attempting to revive that connection between traditional performers and solid acts.

By concentrating on its instruments and performances, the Chocolate Drops is doing something refreshing – ensuring its performances and renditions are the foundations on which everything it does is built.

If you feel like seeing some old songs performed by some young musicians who’ve gotten where they are by proving their chops on stage, Carolina Chocolate Drops is playing the Carnegie Lecture Hall in Oakland this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with banjoist Rachel Eddy opening the show.

The show is part of Calliope’s 2007-08 concert series of folk, blues and traditional roots music.