Genuine Negro Jig and the Recovery of Black String Band History: Carolina Chocolate Drops in 2010

The Carolina Chocolate Drops released Genuine Negro Jig in February 2010, and it became one of the most important albums in the recent history of American roots music. The album won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album, but more significantly, it forced a long-overdue conversation about the racial history of old-time string band music and the banjo.

The band, formed in 2005 in Durham, North Carolina, consisted of Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, and Laleh Pourhashem (also known as Leyla McCalla joined later), and their project was explicitly historical: they had connected with elder musician Joe Thompson, one of the last practitioners of the Black string band tradition in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, and they were learning and reviving a tradition that had been nearly extinguished through the combined effects of commercialization, racial segregation in the music industry, and the genre's twentieth-century whitewashing.

The History the Band Recovered

String band music and old-time fiddling in America had African American origins and practitioners that were systematically overlooked in the twentieth-century folk revival. The banjo itself was an African-derived instrument, brought to the Americas by enslaved people and first widely documented in Black performance contexts. Nineteenth-century documentation of American string music included substantial Black participation that the commercial folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s largely erased through its selective recovery of a supposedly white mountain tradition.

According to scholarly work by researchers including Cecelia Conway and the documentation of the Folklorist Archive at the Library of Congress, the Black string band tradition in the Piedmont and various Southern regions was a living tradition through the mid-twentieth century that had practitioners and its own performance contexts entirely separate from the whiteified "mountain music" narrative that dominated the folk revival.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops' work with Joe Thompson was an attempt to document and extend this living tradition before it was entirely lost, and their recordings demonstrated that the music itself was vital, complex, and genuinely moving when performed by musicians who had learned it from its practitioners.

Rhiannon Giddens and the Long Arc

Genuine Negro Jig introduced Rhiannon Giddens to a national audience that would grow substantially over the following decade. Her subsequent career, including her Grammy-winning solo records and her presidency of the Silkroad Ensemble, would make her one of the most important and influential figures in American roots music. But in 2010, she was primarily known as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and a fiddle and banjo player of extraordinary ability.

Her voice on Genuine Negro Jig was already remarkable: technically accomplished, emotionally immediate, and capable of inhabiting a range of traditional material from field hollers to parlor songs to dance music with equal conviction. The album demonstrated that the Black string band tradition was not simply a historical curiosity but a living form with modern relevance.

Critical and Industry Reception

Genuine Negro Jig received extensive critical praise and the Grammy win brought it to a mainstream music industry audience. According to Grammy records and reviews in NPR Music, the New York Times, and Roots Music Report, the album was recognized as both a musicological achievement and a genuinely pleasurable listening experience, which was not a given: albums with explicit historical recovery missions could be worthy without being engaging.

The combination of historical seriousness and musical vitality was what made the album matter. It was not primarily a documentary or an argument; it was music, and the music was excellent. The historical point was made through the quality and joy of the performances rather than through academic apparatus.

Influence on the Old-Time Revival

The Carolina Chocolate Drops' success influenced the ongoing old-time revival by diversifying its understanding of the tradition's racial history and by bringing Black practitioners and audiences into a conversation that had been disproportionately white. This was not an immediate transformation of the revival's demographics, but it created awareness that the old-time tradition's heritage was Black American as much as Appalachian white.

For younger musicians entering the old-time world after 2010, the band's work provided a more complete historical picture and, through Giddens's continued advocacy, an explicit argument for diversity and historical honesty within the tradition.

---

FAQ

What is the historical claim the Carolina Chocolate Drops made about old-time music? That string band music and banjo playing had significant African American origins and practitioners that were systematically overlooked in the twentieth-century folk revival. The banjo was an African-derived instrument, and the Piedmont Black string band tradition was a living form through the mid-twentieth century.

Who was Joe Thompson and why was he important? Joe Thompson was an elder Black musician from Mebane, North Carolina, who was one of the last practitioners of the Piedmont Black string band tradition. The Carolina Chocolate Drops learned from him directly, documenting and extending a tradition that might otherwise have been lost.

What Grammy did Genuine Negro Jig win? Best Traditional Folk Album at the 2011 Grammy Awards.

What happened to Rhiannon Giddens after this album? Giddens went on to a significant solo career, winning Grammy Awards for her own records and becoming one of the most important advocates for diversity and historical honesty in American roots music.

How did the album affect the old-time revival community? It provided a more complete racial history of the tradition and brought Black practitioners and perspectives into a conversation that had been disproportionately white, creating awareness that changed how the revival understood its own heritage.