Customer Reviews

Genuine Negro Jig

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

...old-tyme stringband music is a weird field these days. It is experiencing a renaissance, for sure, but it often holds itself hostage by clinging to ridiculous, academic-bordering-on-religious notions of purity and authenticity. Whenever an inventive band like Uncle Earl or Old Crow Medicine Show starts to bend the rules a bit in the name of personal expression, there is a howling chorus self-appointed old-tyme police officers, complaining about how that's not how Gid Tanner/Joe Thompson/whoever would have done it.

This brave, swaggering disk shows that the Chocolate Drops are actually better when they play their own game. It's easily their most assured record yet -- their prior projects were pretty rough around the edges, even for stringband music. They don't have a towering instrumental virtuoso in the band, like the Freighthoppers' David Bass, Uncle Earl's Rayna Gellert, or the pervasive Dirk Powell -- their strengths lie in their adventurous spirit, intelligent use of space and texture, and infectious charisma. On this disk, they really make the most of careful arrangements, like on the haunting title track, which is just percussion and fiddle and yet feels genuinely evocative and full.

Producer Joe Henry wisely walks a fine line between documentary clarity and studio richness, giving the band a deep warm sound with lots of space and a cool stereo picture that still feels natural. This is really their first great album, and I only give it four stars because I think they are capable of even greater things in the future. I'm sure much will be made of the Blu Cantrell cover, but it's hard NOT to talk about...I saw them do it live a while back, and it set the place buzzing, brilliantly drawing a line from the ancient past to the present and into the future. I'd love to see them do more stuff like it...but at the same time, their old-tyme stuff like "Trouble in Your Mind" and "Cindy Gal" have never sounded better.

The world is ready for a band like the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I hope they continue to stay true to themselves and don't get lost in the old-tyme minefield of arbitrary rules and regulations. This record is a big step out of that minefield, and I really can't wait to hear what they do next.

It's an odd time for the music business. Big acts are making more via Rock Band and Guitar Hero than they ever made in album sales. Apple wants you to own Digital Rights Managed versions of anything you buy--and they compress it to boot. You can buy compressed versions above, for instant gratification, as long as you buy the CD as well. Well. If you care about audio clarity. ;-)

Simultaneously, it's a great time for music lovers. You see, unless you are trapped in Radioland via ClearChannel Communications and their versions of what ought to be heard by the public--we are seeing and hearing Indy Label Stuff that rises to the top in ways it couldn't have in the past fifty years. The Carolina Chocolate Drops are one such sweet reminder of greatness as it rises above the fray. (And man, do they!) As much as reviewers are going to want to put them in a pigeon hole? (They are Countrified OR Folk OR Roots-Music Or Bluegrass Or Whatever.) They can't and won't be able to...as no matter where the origination of of style comes from--this band makes it unique. They OWN. They are their own. And with that mix of tradition and their outstanding talents--they surpass labels and are going to end up with the cross-over label from everyone. Which just means that they sell everywhere and are played as popular music. Deeply popular. That their musical talents (and this album in particular) are magnificent is an understatement. These three folks are destined for greatness (ideally together and for a long time.)

This particular set of tunes has had me immediately slam them on the home network, run out for a drive so that I could hear them in the car, get home and curl up on the couch with a great set of can-style headphones and a headphone amp (only to immediately jump up and turn on the audio equipment--subwoofers included and turn them up loud on both so I could feel and hear the music in a wider way...all while trying to Cakewalk around the living room.) In short, I want to hear it, feel it, and enjoy it in every way possible simultaneously. Man. I'd eat it if I could. And as such, this CD is now on my list of very few albums that have hit permanent rotation for the rest of my life. No tune is better than the others. They all flow in unexpected ways from one to the next. There isn't a single lick or simple-yet-astonishing audio trick missing to make this acoustic experience less powerful than the most electric and amped-up music I own.

Yes, stylistically there are great nods to lots of artists--but these three FULLY OWN their destiny/direction/dynamism and have cemented it with this single incredible album.

Buy it. Then buy it and gift it to everyone you think could have the ears and the heart and soul to appreciate it. (As you are fiscally able and as often as able.) There are very few albums that cross into the land where one feels that without it you are less. This one has.... Immediately I knew that without it, I'd be a poorer human and music would be a more desolate world.

It left me wanting more. I am saddened by the fact that with nearly eighty minutes on a Compact Disc, I get about half of that time. But that's OK. Maybe they are saving it for the next album and it is already recorded and ready to roll while they tour.
I want it at a higher bit-rate. No matter how good my audio equipment, I feel like 16-bit Redbook Audio isn't quite eeking out their range. Grin. Maybe T-Bone Burnett could be talked into remastering it via his 'Code' so we can have it on DVD as well. I suspect I'll be without this album multiple times, as I hand it off to someone, tell them to keep it--and order another via Amazon Prime (and give them their extra fiscal bump for Next Day delivery.)

Snowden's Jig (Genuine Negro Jig) seems more than appropriate as the cover cut as it is probably written by the black man who wrote "Dixie." That song ended up in minstral shows, and was satirized to the point where it became the Unofficial Confederate Anthem. It was later copyrighted by a white fellah named D.D. Emmet, who remained rather confused about Dixie's provenience. But we can be sure that Ben Snowden and the Snowden Family Band performed THIS jig. Kudos to the Carolina Chocolate Drops for giving the man his due, and just possibly gently slapping down some of the horrible musical theft that has been our heritage. Snowden's Jig (Yep. A Genuine Negro Jig) is not better than the other tunes on the album--it just fits--like everything about this CD.
The Universe lurched in a subtle and happy way when this album became a hit in Europe and has now zigged and jigged again when it released here.
More please?

Together since 2005, the North Carolina band has just released their new album "Genuine Negro Jig".
It's impossible to pigeon hole, and equally impossible to dislike, the Carolina Chocolate Drops are first and foremost musicians. Trained in all manner of styles, from opera to folk and most things in-between, the young black trio - Dom Flemons (guitar), Rhiannon Giddens (banjo and fiddle) and Justin Robinson (fiddle and banjo) - refuse to be tied to any one genre, are reviving and reinterpreting the African-American string-band tradition for the 21st century.
Given their base, in their repertoire, traditional jazz, folk and blues dominate. But then just when you think you've got the measure of them, Giddens blasts out a R&B number backed by Robinson's beatboxing, or jumps up to perform a Charleston.
Switching effortlessly between instruments, Giddens and fellow band members - trained by Joe Thompson, now in his nineties, who remembers the string-band heyday, and their aim is to keep the tradition developing - play fiddle, banjo, guitar, autoharp, kazoo and jug, with all three also doing a mean line in vocals.
Although they all sing, the guys, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson, leave most of the vocals to the opera-trained Rhiannon Giddens.
The group mix traditional songs with original compositions and a couple of surprising covers, allowing them to honour the past, then subtly nudge it forward linking it to the modern music they grew up with.
Band member Justin Robinson's own composition "Kissin' And Cussin" is a real standout, with its ominous ringing autoharp and drumbeats enhancing its sense of bluesy doom.
Classics such as "Cornbread and Butterbeans" and "Snowden's Jig" sit alongside their version of Tom Waits's "Trampled Rose": they turn the latter into syncopated country blues adding yet another layer of poignancy to an already heart-wrenching number.
The old English ballad "Reynadine" is sung by Rhiannon, as an acappella solo.
The big surprise, though, is the pickin', fiddlin' and slappin' version of Blu Cantrell's "Hit 'em Up Style", which totally countrifies an urban classic to create a tune that would be just as at home in hoedown as any blinging city nightclub.
In fact, one of the aces in this threesome's pack is their ability to transform songs you may now think of as genre classics back into their original milieu and invest them with that first-time-round freshness on each successive performance.
The album is extremely original, exciting and pleasant: much of its 38 minutes is just making all the connections between the different musics that would form an inter-continental melting-pot and criss-cross the seas.
enjoy!
Dona Got a Ramblin Mind

Over the years, I have been "turned on" to an enormous amount of incredibly fantastic music, music that has in some cases completely blown me away. A couple artists and their albums that have accomplished the feat of "blowing me away" are artists that eventually became household names. Artists such as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's "De Ja Vu", Joni Mitchell's,"Court and Spark" and many others to numerous to name. Most of these artists came out of the late 60's and early 70's. There was an unusually large amount of phenomenally great music that came out of this period.

For instance, The Pointer Sister's 1973 inaugural self titled album, "The Pointer Sisters", followed by Blue Thumb's release of "That's a Plenty", took us on a journey of the jazz music that had to have influenced them in their musically formative years and were both, in my opinion, their best work. In fact, I don't believe they ever got close to either of these records ever again.

This brings me to the subject of the day. Carolina Chocolate Drop's latest release, "Genuine Negro Jig" (Nonesuch Records) is one of those records that completely blew me away. Yes, I can use phraseology such as "instant classic", "innovative", "and absolutely astounding". This record definitely falls under any one or all of those phrases or words.

"Genuine Negro Jig" is easily one of the best albums I have heard in thirty some odd years. The vocals are as smooth as any I have EVER heard, and if that were not enough, each member trades off duties on banjo, fiddle, jug, kazoo, and beat-box and does so with an incredible amount of proficiency. I literally cannot stop listening to this record.

As the Pointer Sisters did in the early 70's with their jazz roots records mentioned earlier, before straying so far off track and, in my opinion, diving off the edge of the world only to be swallowed up by the pop and disco insanity of the late 70's and early 80's. Carolina Chocolate Drops take us on a journey of the "jug and string band" music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of their ancestors, and they do it with flair. From the looks of things, I do not believe there is any danger of this trio abandoning what they do. You can tell by watching them they do this with the main ingredient, a heaping spoonful of Heart and a bunch of Soul.

They stay very traditional, yet add elements of modern music to these very traditional arrangements. The talent this trio possesses is incredible. Their proficiency on the banjo, fiddle, and traditional percussion instruments of the era such as the spoons along with other traditional rhythm instruments, work into the arrangements in such away that it nearly feels as if these instruments were new. There is no loss of the freshness of this music, even when Rhiannon Giddens blows her kazoo. I never thought I'd say it, but she makes the kazoo actually sound "cool". When you add the element of "beat-boxing" (which I would not have known had I not seen it with my own eyes), the listener receives a dose of modernization within these otherwise, very traditional arrangements.

Each song creates an atmosphere of dimly kerosene lamp lit rooms with dusty wood-planked floors. The feet stomping on the floor to the beat of this powerful music creates little dust clouds around the listeners stomping feet. Close your eyes while listening to this amazing compilation of songs and see if similar images don't creep into your mind as well.

On most tracks, there is a focus on the trio's silky smooth vocalizations. Rhiannon Giddens is astounding on "Hit `em Up Style", and it doesn't get any smoother than Justin Robinson's voice when he sings "Kissin' and Cussin". On other tracks like the traditional "Sandy Boys", the emphasis is on both the vocals and the instruments.

As mentioned earlier, Rhiannon Gidden's voice is amazing. Her voice is profoundly featured in a simple traditional a Capella tune called "Reynadine". If there really are angels, this is precisely what they would sound like when they sing.

Carolina Chocolate Drops will appeal to just about anyone. One might hear them in Harlem, Nashville, Austin, or Hollywood. However, currently they have a very strong following in the UK where this record was released earlier. The point is, this band will fit in and be welcome where ever they choose to play.

With "Genuine Negro Gig", they walk us through a period of American history that was shockingly detestable to any respectable American citizen. Not one American can deny this horrific past. However, that isn't the goal of this recording.

This collection of songs serve as sort of a history lesson and graphically illustrates how music can help to get us through incredibly tough adversities. Carolina Chocolate Drops, I believe, are not only paying homage to their ancestors who sang and played their way through some incredibly harsh conditions, but are also attempting to resurrect an entire genre of music not just lost amongst African-Americans but all Americans. If I am correct, and this is in fact their mission, then mission accomplished. This truly could be a resurrection in the world of music we haven't seen since Caucasians discovered Little Richard five decades or so ago.

The music had become sort of a defense mechanism to help African-Americans in the early twentieth century to get through some terrible hardships. Some survived this horrific era and some did not. The survivors came out of the ordeal stronger, wiser, and smarter, if not a bit on the justifiably cynical side. However, for having gone through it, they were ultimately better equipped for the next era, the era that ushered in Civil Rights and changed our great Nation, as we know it, for the better.

This music has been passed down through the ages. It is extremely obvious a lot of research and study went into the conception of Carolina Chocolate Drops' music, and especially this record. However, most importantly, and as mentioned earlier, my two favorite and arguably the two most important ingredients to anything of substance, the Heart and the Soul prevailed in the conception of this artistically historic masterpiece.

Carolina Chocolate Drops are Rhiannon Giddens, Justin Robinson, and Dom Flemons, and are and will be for a long time, a powerful force in the world of roots music. This is roots music at its rootsiest and it must be heard.

`Rebel' Rod says you had better do what ever it takes to get this record in your collection. I promise, you will not regret it.

I purchased this on an impulse and every aspect of this disc is outstanding including the quality of the recording itself. This is a breakthrough especially for those interested in the growth and evolution of popular music. If you are on the fence here about whether to try the Carolina Chocolate Drops you will be pleased. I am brilliantly happy!

I go to the BBC website every week and play Mike Harding's Radio 2 show. That's how I keep up to date with what's going on in the Folk/Roots/Acoustic scene. And it was on that program that I heard the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and so bought the CD. If you are in any way a Folkie, you should listen to Mike Harding's show.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops bring us a revival of a black string-band tradition that originated in the Piedmont region of the Carolinas in the nineteenth century. This tradition was a strong influence in popular music both in America and Britain in the early part of the last century but has now fallen into neglect.

Not one of the 12 tracks on this album is a miss. It gets off to a lively start with an ideal scene-setting instrumental, Peace Behind the Bridge, with fiddle, banjo and bones. The title track is actually renamed Snowden's Jig on the album, in honor of the Snowden family, from whom the tune was probably originally collected, back in the 1800s. It is another instrumental - syncopated, slow and haunting.

Reynadine is the track closest to the older English ballad tradition that forms an important part of this music's heritage. Fragmentary and mysterious, it may date back not much earlier than 1800, and exists in several versions. It is here sung a cappella by Rhiannon Giddens, and very beautiful it is, too. It showcases her wonderful voice better than any other track, and it's no surprise to learn that she was opera trained.

Hit 'em Up Style and Trampled Rose add contemporary influences into the mix, so that the collection comes across as a revived but continuing, living tradition.
[PeterReeve]

I stumbled across CCD on an episode of Joules Holland and I was instantly hooked. These three have some genuine talent and love for music if you ever get a chance to see them live they are a must see. Anyway if you like blues/bluegrass/roots music this and their other discs are must haves.

Genuine Negro Jig is another outstanding offering from The Carolina Chocolate Drops. Very much impressed with their use of genuine, tradition instruments and genuine, traditional tunes. This group is performing an invaluable service by recovering these songs.

These are perfectly phrased pieces by first-rate musicians with impeccable taste.
I wouldn't have thought that there was anyone out there who could glide from 1850 to 2000 without missing a beat--literally-- but here it is.

I know that there are old-time purists out there who will have harsh things to say about the cuts that depart from the tradition. Pah! They are absolutely respectful of and true to the tradition but these are also contemporary souls who even though they are divining the ancestors also have to be true to themselves: they are showing us the very trajectory of the soul itself.

So if I find myself waiting for Mudbone Cooper (of Rubber Band fame) to jump in on a cut like 'Kissin' and Cussin' I know it's all good--whether it's Chocolate Drops or chocolate stars.

I first heard of this group on a PBS radio broadcast and decided then that I would dig a little deeper into their background.These guys are great musicians and thier musical interpretations are pure and honest. I am a music lover. If you are too you won't be sorry if you give these guys(and gal) a good listen.