The Carolina Chocolate Drops
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The Carolina Chocolate Drops
The Carolina Chocolate Drops were an old-time string band from Durham, North Carolina. Their 2010 album, ''Genuine Negro Jig,'' won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, and was number 9 in ''fRoots'' magazine's top 10 albums of 2010. Career Formed in November 2005, following the members' attendance at the first Black Banjo Gathering, held in Boone, North Carolina, in April 2005, the group grew out of the success of Sankofa Strings, an ensemble that featured Dom Flemons on bones, jug, guitar, and four-string banjo, Rhiannon Giddens on banjo and fiddle and Súle Greg Wilson on bodhrán, brushes, washboard, bones, tambourine, banjo, banjolin, and ukulele, with Justin Robinson as an occasional guest artist. All shared vocals. The purpose of Sankofa Strings was to present a gamut of African American musics: country and classic blues, early jazz and "hot music", string band numbers, African and Caribbean songs, and spoken word pieces. T ...
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Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% from the 2020 Census, making it Alabama's third-most populous city after Huntsville and Montgomery. The broader Birmingham metropolitan area had a 2020 population of 1,115,289, and is the largest metropolitan area in Alabama as well as the 50th-most populous in the United States. Birmingham serves as an important regional hub and is associated with the Deep South, Piedmont, and Appalachian regions of the nation. Birmingham was founded in 1871, during the post- Civil War Reconstruction period, through the merger of three pre-existing farm towns, notably, Elyton. It grew from there, annexing many more of its smaller neighbors, into an industrial and railroad transportation center with a focus on mining, the iron and steel industry, ...
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FRoots
''fRoots'' (pronounced "eff-Roots", originally ''Folk Roots'') was a specialist music magazine published in the UK between 1979 and 2019. It specialised in folk and world music, and featured regular compilation downloadable albums, with occasional specials. In 2006, the circulation of the magazine was 12,000 worldwide. (the year is matched from th"fRoots Advertising Information"that provides the same "readership of 40,000" data for their "2006 readership survey" as the main "around 12,000 worldwide (giving a readership of around 40,000)" claim). The magazine was also involved in live music production, as well as the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music and the Europe in Union concert series. Overview In 1979, ''Southern Rag'' was founded by folk musician Ian A. Anderson with Caroline Hurrell and Lawrence Heath. It was renamed as ''Folk Roots'' in 1985, and in 1998 it became ''fRoots''. The headquarters was initially in Farnham, Surrey and later moved to Bristol. Anderson re ...
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Jug (musical Instrument)
The jug used as a musical instrument is an empty jug (usually made of glass or stoneware) played with buzzed lips to produce a trombone-like tone. The characteristic sound of the jug is low and hoarse, below the higher pitch of the fiddle, harmonica, and the other instruments in the band.smithsonianfolkways: The Jug Bands
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With an embouchure like that used for a , t ...
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Bones (instrument)
The bones, also known as rhythm bones, are a folk instrument that, in their original form, consists of a pair of animal bones, but may also be played on pieces of wood or similar material. Sections of large rib bones and lower leg bones are the most commonly used bones, although wooden sticks shaped like true bones are now more often used. Metal spoons may be used instead, as is common in the United States, known as " playing the spoons". The technique probably arrived in the U.S. via Irish and other European immigrants, and has a history stretching back to ancient China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. They have contributed to many music genres, including 19th century minstrel shows, traditional Irish and Scottish music, the blues, bluegrass, zydeco, French-Canadian music, and music from Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. The clacking of the loose rib bones produces a much sharper sound than the zydeco washboard or frottoir, which mimics rattling a bone up and down a fixed ribcage. D ...
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Snare Drum
The snare (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used in orchestras, concert bands, marching bands, parades, drumlines, drum corps, and more. It is one of the central pieces in a drum set, a collection of percussion instruments designed to be played by a seated drummer and used in many genres of music. Snare drums are usually played with drum sticks, but other beaters such as the brush or the rute can be used to achieve different tones. The snare drum is a versatile and expressive percussion instrument due to its sensitivity and responsiveness. The sensitivity of the snare drum allows it to respond audibly to the softest strokes, even with a wire brush. It can be used for complex rhythmic patterns and engaging solos at moderate volumes. Its high dynamic range allows the player to produce po ...
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Harmonica
The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica include diatonic, chromatic, tremolo, octave, orchestral, and bass versions. A harmonica is played by using the mouth (lips and tongue) to direct air into or out of one (or more) holes along a mouthpiece. Behind each hole is a chamber containing at least one reed. The most common is the diatonic Richter-tuned with ten air passages and twenty reeds, often called the blues harp. A harmonica reed is a flat, elongated spring typically made of brass, stainless steel, or bronze, which is secured at one end over a slot that serves as an airway. When the free end is made to vibrate by the player's air, it alternately blocks and unblocks the airway to produce sound. Reeds are tuned to individual pitches. Tuning may involve changing a reed’s length ...
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Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A plectrum or individual finger picks may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant chamber on the instrument, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteenth century in the United States; nylon strings came in the 1940s. The guitar's ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four- course Renaissance guitar, and the ...
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Fiddle
A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, the style of the music played may determine specific construction differences between fiddles and classical violins. For example, fiddles may optionally be set up with a bridge with a flatter arch to reduce the range of bow-arm motion needed for techniques such as the double shuffle, a form of bariolage involving rapid alternation between pairs of adjacent strings. To produce a "brighter" tone than the deep tones of gut or synthetic core strings, fiddlers often use steel strings. The fiddle is part of many traditional (folk) styles, which are typically aural traditions—taught " by ear" rather than via written music. Fiddling is the act of playing the fiddle, and fiddlers are musicians that play it. Among musical styles, fiddling tends to p ...
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Banjo
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans in the United States. The banjo is frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, and has also been used in some rock, pop and hip-hop. Several rock bands, such as the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead, have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as bluegrass and old-time music. It is also very frequently used in Dixieland jazz, as well as in Caribbean genres like biguine, calypso and mento. Histo ...
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Genuine Negro Jig
''Genuine Negro Jig'' is the third studio album of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, one of the few African-American string bands playing today. Its label debut was released on February 16, 2010, while its vinyl version, which included the album on 140-gram vinyl and CD, was released on July 13. This is the first album the band has recorded for Nonesuch Records. It was highly successful, reaching the top ten on the Billboard Folk chart and the top of the Bluegrass chart. ''Genuine Negro Jig'' on the Billboard Bluegrass chart/ref> It was also the last CCD recording to include collaborator and Sankofa Strings co-founder, Sule Greg Wilson. Like most of the Carolina Chocolate Drops' work, the album, a mixture of traditional folk songs, early 20th "Race" music, and recent pieces, is part of the Chocolate Drops' effort to celebrate the string band music of the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina, and the influence of African-Americans on this music. On NPR, band member Rhiann ...
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Washboard (musical Instrument)
The washboard and frottoir (from Cajun French "frotter", to rub) are used as a percussion instrument, employing the ribbed metal surface of the cleaning device as a rhythm instrument. As traditionally used in jazz, zydeco, skiffle, jug band, and old-time music, the washboard remained in its wooden frame and is played primarily by tapping, but also scraping the washboard with thimbles. Often the washboard has additional traps, such as a wood block, a cowbell, and even small cymbals. Conversely, the frottoir (zydeco rubboard) dispenses with the frame and consists simply of the metal ribbing hung around the neck. It is played primarily with spoon handles or bottle openers in a combination of strumming, scratching, tapping and rolling. The frottoir or ''vest frottoir'' is played as a stroked percussion instrument, often in a band with a drummer, while the washboard generally is a replacement for drums. In Zydeco bands, the frottoir is usually played with bottle openers, to make a l ...
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Bodhrán
The bodhrán (, ; plural ''bodhráin'' or ''bodhráns'') is a frame drum used in Irish music ranging from in diameter, with most drums measuring . The sides of the drum are deep. A goatskin head is tacked to one side (synthetic heads or other animal skins are sometimes used). The other side is open-ended for one hand to be placed against the inside of the drum head to control the pitch and timbre. One or two crossbars, sometimes removable, may be inside the frame, but this is increasingly rare on modern instruments. Some professional modern bodhráns integrate mechanical tuning systems similar to those used on drums found in drum kits. It is usually with a hex key that the bodhrán skins are tightened or loosened depending on the atmospheric conditions. History Seán Ó Riada declared the bodhrán to be the native drum of the ancient Celts (as did bodhrán maker Paraic McNeela), suggesting that it was possibly used originally for winnowing or wool dying, with a musical hist ...
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