Carolina Chocolate Drops: Reviving the Black String Band Tradition

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Imagine, for just a second, that you are standing under the impossibly bright lights of the Staples Center. It is 2011
You are on the stage at the Grammy Awards, looking out at the sea of the biggest pop stars, rock legends, and industry executives in the world.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:17)
Yeah, the absolute pinnacle of the modern music industry.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:20)
Exactly. You are there to accept one of the highest honors in music. But here's the catch, the instruments that actually got you onto that stage, the tools you used to win this prestigious golden trophy include a clay jug, a kazoo, and like actual physical animal bones.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:36)
It's just a complete collision of worlds, right? I mean, the ultimate modern music industry accolade being handed to artists wielding the most elemental ancient instruments imaginable.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:46)
Yeah, and that was the reality for the Carolina Chocolate Drops. So welcome to today's Deep Dive. We are going to look at how a group of 20-somethings essentially resurrected the nearly extinct African-American string band tradition, pulling it from the margins of history and putting it directly into the 21st century mainstream.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:04)
It really is an incredible journey.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:05)
It is. Reading through their biography, it feels a lot like someone stumbling upon a dusty forgotten time capsule in the backyard. You expect to open it and find frail artifacts, but instead, you discover a high-voltage battery that is fully charged and ready to power a modern city.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:22)
Right. Finding that power source required bypassing the modern music industry entirely.
Because to figure out how they captured the modern ear, we really have to look at the specific moment they connected with the past.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:33)
Oh, definitely.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:35)
That takes us to April 2005 in Boone, North Carolina at an event called the Black Banjo Gathering.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:42)
But you don't just wake up one day and decide to form a historically accurate black string band, right? There had to be some sort of catalyst to bring them to Boone in the first place.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:52)
Well, the catalyst was actually the instrument itself and the heavily misunderstood history surrounding it. For decades, I mean, the mainstream cultural image of the banjo was heavily, almost exclusively associated with white Appalachian bluegrass music.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:06)
Right. Think of movies like Deliverance or like the soundtrack to a rustic car commercial.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:10)
Exactly. But the banjo actually has deep African roots. It evolved from gourd instruments brought over to the Americas and the Caribbean by enslaved people.
So the Black Banjo Gathering was created as this dedicated space for musicians and historians to explore and reclaim that specific black musical heritage.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:31)
So this gathering acts as a magnet. It pulls together our core trio, Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, and Justin Robinson, and they were all in their 20s at the time. Flemons had actually relocated all the way from Phoenix, Arizona to North Carolina just to pursue this specific musical thread.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:48)
Yeah, North Carolina was where Giddens and Robinson were based. But it's important to note, they didn't just meet at a workshop and instantly become the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:55)
No, they initially evolved out of a different ensemble called Sankofa Strings. And the dynamic of Sankofa Strings is critical because it included Sewell Greg Wilson, a musician who was nearly a whole generation older than Giddens, Flemons, and Robinson.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:08)
Right, Wilson was a master percussionist who played on their early recordings and really brought a deep foundational understanding of traditional rhythm to the table. He played the bodhran, the washboard, the tambourine, and the bones.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:21)
Which we should probably pause and explain the bones because if you've only ever listened to contemporary pop or rock, you might think that's a metaphor.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:27)
Oh, it is definitely not a metaphor.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:29)
Not at all. Playing the bones literally involves taking two curved animal ribs, often cow or sheep, holding them between your fingers and using a very specific flick of the wrist to click them together. It creates this rapid-fire, castanet-like rhythm and it requires immense dexterity.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:46)
It really does and it provides a sharp, percussive drive without needing a massive drum kit taking up space.
Sankofa Strings use all these traditional tools because their initial ambition was just massive. They wanted to present the absolute full gamut of African American musical history.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:04)
So we're talking country blues, early classic jazz, spoken word pieces, Caribbean rhythms, and string band numbers. Cast a wide net, see what catches, you know.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:13)
Exactly. They were utilizing fiddles, banjos, harmonicas, and snare drums. But eventually they realized they needed to refine their sound, and they narrowed their focus heavily onto the traditional music of the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina.