Tag: Justin Robinson

Celebrating Black History Month: Mavis Staples, Chapel Hart, Charley Pride, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

To celebrate Black History Month – and the vital contributions of Black, Afro-, and African American artists and musicians to American roots music – BGS, Good Country, and our friends at Real Roots Radio in Southwestern Ohio have partnered once again. This time, we’ve brought you weekly collections of a variety of Black roots musicians who have been featured on Real Roots Radio’s airwaves. You can listen to Real Roots Radio online 24/7 or via their FREE app for smartphones or tablets. If you’re based in Ohio, tune in via 100.3 (Xenia, Dayton, Springfield), 106.7 (Wilmington), or 105.5 (Eaton).

American roots music – in any of its many forms – wouldn’t exist today without the culture, stories, skills, and experiences of Black folks. Each week throughout February, we’ve been spotlighting this simple yet profound fact by diving into the catalogs and careers of some of the most important figures in our genres. For week four of our celebration, RRR host Daniel Mullins shares songs and stories of Charley Pride, Mavis Staples, Chapel Hart, Carolina Chocolate Drops, and Philip Paul. Be sure to check out week 1, week 2, and week 3 of the series, too.

Today is February 28, so sadly this will be the final installment of our Black History Month celebrations this year. But, as always, we’re committed to bringing you even more music celebrating Black History – and the songs and sounds we all hold dear – not just in February, but year-round.

Plus, you can find a full playlist with more than 100 songs below from dozens and dozens of seminal artists, performers, songwriters, and instrumentalists from every corner of folk, country, bluegrass, old-time, blues, and beyond.

Black history is American roots music history; the two are inseparable. As we celebrate Black History Month and its legacy throughout the year, we hope you’ll join us in holding up and appreciating the artists who make country, bluegrass, blues, folk, and Americana the incredible and impactful genres that they are today.

Chapel Hart (est. 2014)

If you haven’t heard of Chapel Hart yet, it’s time to change that! This powerhouse trio – Danica, Devynn, and Trea – are taking the country music world by storm with their soulful harmonies, fiery energy, and a whole lot of heart. Hailing from Poplarville, Mississippi, these ladies bring a fresh and fearless sound to country music with their family harmonies; Danica and Devynn are sisters, while Trea is their cousin.

The group first began their musical journey by busking on the streets of New Orleans. In 2021 they were among CMT’s Next Women of Country, before making their way to America’s Got Talent in 2022. Their unforgettable run on the hit music competition television show is where the nation first heard their breakout hit, “You Can Have Him, Jolene,” an answer song to the Dolly Parton classic.

Since their time on the competition, Chapel Hart have released “Welcome to Fist City” as well, in response to Loretta Lynn’s fiery “Fist City” per Loretta’s request. They have been frequent performers on the Grand Ole Opry, and have recorded collaborations with Darius Rucker, Vince Gill, The Isaacs and more. Chapel Hart are proving that country music is alive and well – and full of girl power!

Suggested Listening:
“American Pride”
“Welcome to Fist City”

Mavis Staples (b. 1939)

You know Mavis Staples as the gospel and soul legend, but did you know she’s got deep country connections as well? That’s right, her powerful voice and storytelling fit right into the heart of country music.

Mavis grew up singing gospel with the Staples Singers, even marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, before finding success in R&B and beyond. However, her musical influences also include listening to Hank Williams and the Grand Ole Opry. She once said, “Country music is just another way of telling the truth” – and if anyone knows about truth in music, it’s Mavis Staples.

Over the years, her stellar career has included forays into country that include collaborations with George Jones (“Will The Circle Be Unbroken”), Willie Nelson (“Grandma’s Hands”), and Dolly Parton (“Why”). Staples’ recording of “Touch My Heart” for the 2004 tribute to Johnny Paycheck is a masterpiece. She and Marty Stuart are dear friends and mutual admirers of one another’s music. Together, they have recorded wonderful renditions of “Uncloudy Day,” “Move Along Train,” and “The Weight.”

Staples and Stuart were part of a show-stopping performance on the CMA Awards a few years ago alongside Chris & Morgane Stapleton and Maren Morris, tackling Stapleton’s “Friendship” and the Staple Singers’ classic, “I’ll Take You There” in an awards show mash-up.

Mavis Staples is a member of the Gospel, Blues, and Rock & Roll Halls of Fame. Whether it’s gospel, soul, or country, her voice carries a message of love, hope, and resilience.

Suggested Listening:
“Uncloudy Day” with Marty Stuart
“Touch My Heart”
“Grandma’s Hands” with Willie Nelson

Carolina Chocolate Drops (active 2005-2016)

Let’s shine a spotlight on a group that revolutionized old-time string music – Carolina Chocolate Drops. Formed in 2005 by young twenty-somethings Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, and Justin Robinson after attending the first Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina, they revived the nearly forgotten Black string band tradition.

Inspired by the legendary Black North Carolinian fiddler Joe Thompson, Carolina Chocolate Drops brought energy, authenticity, and a fresh perspective to Appalachian folk music and were a powerhouse on stage. The first African American string band to perform at the historic Grand Ole Opry, their GRAMMY-winning 2010 album Genuine Negro Jig fused tradition with innovation, blending deep-rooted folk with modern influences and proving that history and rhythm go hand in hand.

Carolina Chocolate Drops didn’t just perform, they educated, too, sparking a renewed appreciation for African American contributions to folk and traditional music. Over the years they would open for Taj Mahal and Bob Dylan, perform at events like MerleFest and ROMP, appear on Prairie Home Companion and BBC Radio, and even contributed to the soundtrack of The Hunger Games. Though they’ve since been on a hiatus for the last decade plus, their impact on American roots music is undeniable. Look for a reunion at Biscuits & Banjos festival in downtown Durham, North Carolina, in April.

Suggested Listening:
“Trouble In Your Mind”
“Pretty Bird”
“Day of Liberty”

Charley Pride (1934-2020)

He broke barriers and made history. Charley Pride, the son of sharecroppers, a Negro league baseball player, and the Pride of Sledge, Mississippi, became a country music legend.

In the 1960s, when country music was overwhelmingly white, Pride’s rich baritone and heartfelt songs won over audiences. At the urging of Red Sovine and Red Foley, Pride pursued a career as a country recording artist. Cowboy Jack Clement brought some of Charley’s demos to Chet Atkins and he was signed to RCA Records. His first big hit, “Just Between You and Me,” earned him a GRAMMY nomination and soon he was topping the charts with classics like “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.” His popularity was undeniable, outselling all of his RCA labelmates except Elvis Presley during his peak.

With over 50 Top-Ten hits and more than 30 Number Ones, Pride became country’s first Black superstar – earning the CMA’s Entertainer of the Year award in 1971. His nationwide popularity was such that in 1974 he became the first recording artist to perform the National Anthem at the Super Bowl.

“Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” “Mississippi Cotton Picking Delta Town,” “All I Have to Offer You (Is Me),” “Roll On Mississippi,” “You’re So Good When You’re Bad,” and dozens of others are essential country listening. Pride would be only the second African American made a member of the Grand Ole Opry and the first Black artist inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. His music broke racial barriers, his talent captivated millions, and his legacy? It still inspires artists today.

Charley Pride wasn’t just a country star – he was a pioneer.

Suggested Listening:
“The Snakes Crawl At Night”
“Roll On Mississippi”

Philip Paul (1925-2022)

Philip Paul was a legendary drummer who made history in Cincinnati for decades, making major contributions to classic recordings in rock, blues, country, jazz, bluegrass, and more. Born in Harlem in New York City, he moved to Cincinnati at the urging of jazz legend of Tiny Bradshaw, to join Tony’s band. Post-WWII, Cincinnati became a hub of various music – including bluegrass – thanks to an influx of people migrating to the area for factory work. While playing in jazz clubs in the Queen City, Paul met Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame member Syd Nathan. For a dozen years, Philip Paul was a member of the house band at Syd Nathan’s King Records, where he appeared on countless classic recordings by Cowboy Copas, Hank Ballard, Freddie King, The Stanley Brothers, and more – over 350 records.

Paul is playing on drums on such American classics recorded in Cincinnati as “Fever” (Little Willie John), “Soft” (Tiny Bradshaw), “Alabam’” (Cowboy Copas), “Please Come Home For Christmas” (Charles Brown), and so many more – including the bulk of Freddie King’s catalog. He is also responsible for laying down the rhythm on the original recording of “The Twist” for Hank Ballard & The Midnighters before it was covered by Chubby Checker. In addition he performed on Hank Ballard’s “Finger Poppin’ Time” and added percussion on the overdubbed version by King recording artists, The Stanley Brothers.

For the ensuing decades, Paul would consistently perform at various jazz nightclubs around the Cincinnati area. He received Ohio Heritage Fellowship honors in 2009, the same year he was recognized for his remarkable career during a special presentation at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. The museum’s president at the time, Terry Stewart, had this to say: “If someone were to try to isolate the single heartbeat of the early days of rock and roll, as it transitions from ‘race music’ to ‘rhythm & blues’ to whatever you want to call what early rock and roll is, that heartbeat is Philip. [He is] the thread that runs through so much of the important music of that period.”

Philip Paul even contributed to the 2021 IBMA Album of the Year, Industrial Strength Bluegrass: Southwestern Ohio’s Musical Legacy, playing drums on “Mountain Strings” (Sierra Hull), “Readin’ ‘Rightin’ Route 23” (Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers), and “Are You Missing Me” (Dailey & Vincent). These would be the final recordings of Philip Pauls’ remarkable career in American music. He passed away in January 2022 at the age of 96. Phil Paul played drums on some of the most famous recordings in American history, and he did it all at Cincinnati’s King Records!

Suggested Listening:
“Fever,” Little Willie John
“Hide Away,” Freddie King
“Mountain Strings,” Sierra Hull

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Photo Credit: Mavis Staples by Daniel Jackson for BGS; Chapel Hart courtesy of SRO PR; Charley Pride courtesy of CharleyPride.com.

Celebrating Black History Month: Rhiannon Giddens, Linda Martell, Miko Marks, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

To celebrate Black History Month – and the vital contributions of Black, Afro-, and African American artists and musicians to American roots music – BGS, Good Country, and our friends at Real Roots Radio in Southwestern Ohio have partnered once again. This time, we’ll be bringing you weekly collections of a variety of Black roots musicians who have been featured on Real Roots Radio’s airwaves. You can listen to Real Roots Radio online 24/7 or via their FREE app for smartphones or tablets. If you’re based in Ohio, tune in via 100.3 (Xenia, Dayton, Springfield), 106.7 (Wilmington), or 105.5 (Eaton).

American roots music – in any of its many forms – wouldn’t exist today without the culture, stories, skills, and experiences of Black folks. Each week throughout February, we’ll spotlight this simple yet profound fact by diving into the catalogs and careers of some of the most important figures in our genres. For week three of our celebration, RRR host Daniel Mullins shares songs and stories of Linda Martell, B.B. King, Miko Marks, Darius Rucker, and Rhiannon Giddens. Be sure to check out the first week and second week of the series, too.

We’ll return for one last edition next Friday to bring you even more music celebrating Black History and the songs and sounds we all hold dear. Plus, you can find a full playlist with more than 100 songs below from dozens and dozens of seminal artists, performers, songwriters, and instrumentalists from every corner of folk, country, bluegrass, old-time, blues, and beyond.

Black history is American roots music history; the two are inseparable. As we celebrate Black History Month and its legacy, we hope you’ll join us in holding up and appreciating the artists who make country, bluegrass, blues, folk, and Americana the incredible and impactful genres that they are today.

Linda Martell (b. 1941) 

She was a trailblazer, a pioneer, and a voice that country music wasn’t ready for – but she made sure they heard her anyway!

Linda Martell, the first commercially successful Black female country artist, broke barriers in the late 1960s with her soulful voice and undeniable talent. In 1969, she made history with her hit song “Color Him Father,” reaching the Top 25 on the country charts before the release of her debut album – Color Me Country on Plantation Records — resulting in two more charting singles. She became the first Black woman to perform on the Grand Ole Opry, making a dozen appearances on the historic radio program and appearing as a special guest on television programs like Hee Haw, proving country music is for everyone.

Despite her success, the industry wasn’t kind. Racism and label conflicts cut her career short, leaving her influence overlooked for decades. She would spend many of those decades settling into domestic life, working a variety jobs including as a school bus driver. Still, her legacy lives on, inspiring a new generation of Black country artists. She is an influence on many African American country artists today, including Mickey Guyton. When Rissi Palmer began her program on Apple Music Radio, it was intentionally named “Color Me Country” after Martell’s historic album. As she puts it, she was “paying homage to the foundation on which my house is built, and that is Linda Martell.”

In 2021, Martell was recognized with CMT’s Equal Play Award and has had an even greater spotlight shone on her groundbreaking work after she made guest appearances on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album, resulting in Martell’s first GRAMMY nomination at age 83. Thankfully, Linda Martell is finally getting the recognition she deserves. Her story is one of resilience, talent, and breaking down barriers—one song at a time.

Suggested Listening:
“Color Him Father”
“Before the Next Teardrop Falls”

B.B. King (1925 – 2015)

Let’s talk about a blues icon who found inspiration in country music – B.B. King! Born on a Mississippi plantation in 1925, B.B. grew up listening to blues. But did you know he also had a love for country music? As a young man, he was inspired by the guitar playing of country stars and tried to emulate the sound of a crying steel in his bluesy pickin’ style with his guitar, Lucille. He would frequently collaborate with country music stars both on stage and in the recording studio, including on his album, Deuces Wild, which featured appearances from Willie Nelson and Marty Stuart.

He performed at Willie’s FarmAid, on the GRAMMYs with Keith Urban, and even appeared on the popular That Nashville Music TV Show with Jerry Reed. In the ’90s, the hit all-star album Rhythm, Country & Blues closed with a legendary collaboration between B.B. King and George Jones on the old story song, “Patches.”

B.B. King proved that great music knows no boundaries. Blues, country, rock and roll – it’s all about storytelling from the soul and letting the good times roll! B.B. King was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He passed away in 2015 at the age of 89.

Suggested Listening:
“Patches” (featuring George Jones)
“Let the Good Times Roll” (featuring Brad Paisley)

Miko Marks (b. 1973)

She’s breaking barriers, blending genres, and bringing a fresh voice to country – meet Miko Marks. Born in Flint, Michigan, Marks has been redefining country since the early 2000s. She was named Best New Country Artist in 2006 by New Music Weekly and won several awards at the Independent Music Awards in the early aughts as well. With a voice that’s equal parts soul, blues, and traditional country, she has a compelling sound full of power and conviction.

After years of industry struggles, Marks focused on her role as a mother for the next decade-plus. She mounted a powerful comeback with her 2021 album, Our Country, earning critical acclaim and recognition from Rolling Stone and NPR. The equally impressive follow-up, Feel Like Going Home, was released in 2022. She was named one of CMT’s Next Women of Country that same year.

Miko’s music speaks of resilience, hope, and inclusivity, carving a space for new voices in country. Her release Race Records features her take on country classics from The Carter Family, Willie Nelson, and more. From performing at the Grand Ole Opry to rocking major festivals, Miko Marks is a name you need to know. If you haven’t heard her yet, now’s the time!

Suggested Listening:
“Tennessee Waltz”
“Freeway Bound”

Darius Rucker (b. 1966)

From Hootie & the Blowfish to country superstardom, Darius Rucker has done it all. This GRAMMY-winning artist first made waves in the ’90s by leading popular alt-rock band Hootie & The Blowfish, which he helped found while attending the University of South Carolina. They scored half a dozen Top 40 hits, including “Hold My Hand,” “Let Her Cry,” and “Only Wanna Be With You.” There were seeds even then of his future country success, especially with the band’s bluegrass-flavored “Desert Mountain Showdown” from their Musical Chairs album.

Rucker began pursuing a country career in 2008. His debut country single, “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It,” made history as he became the first Black artist in over 25 years to top the country charts. He was named CMA’s New Artist of The Year in 2009, making him only the second African American artist to win a CMA award – the first being Charley Pride. He would join the Grand Ole Opry in 2012 as only the third Black member of country music’s oldest institution.

He has continued to release many country hits, including nine chart-toppers. In 2013, he released the biggest song of his career, his take on an Old Crow Medicine Show song, “Wagon Wheel.” This number one hit is only the fourth country song to be RIAA-certified Diamond (for 10 million units) and earned Darius Rucker a GRAMMY Award for Best Country Solo Vocal Performance, making him only the third Black artist to win a country vocal performance GRAMMY. With his distinctive voice, heartfelt lyrics, and undeniable charm, Darius Rucker continues to break barriers and bring fans together. Whether it’s rock, country, or beyond, one thing’s for sure – this guy’s got soul.

Suggested Listening:
“Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It”
“If I Told You”

Rhiannon Giddens (b. 1977)

From the rolling hills of North Carolina to the world stage, Rhiannon Giddens is a musical force re-centering American roots music. A singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and historian, Giddens brings the forgotten voices of history back to life one song at a time. After leading the GRAMMY-winning old-time band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, she has focused on her solo career for now more than a decade.

Rhiannon blends folk, blues, gospel, country, Celtic influences, and more into her dazzling brand of American roots music, all while shining a light on Black contributions to the American musical landscape. Her voice? Soulful. Her banjo? Revolutionary, as she is a recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. Giddens has also earned MacArthur Genius honors, collaborated with folks like Elvis Costello, Eric Church, and Gillian Welch, written ballet music, and even composed a Pulitzer Prize-winning opera! (She did study opera at Ohio’s Oberlin College after all.) She has even written several children’s books based off some of her original songs.

Recently, Giddens has partnered with fellow Carolina Chocolate Drops co-founder Justin Robinson to shine a light on fiddle & banjo music from North Carolina. Whatever she sets her sights on, Rhiannon Giddens tackles it head on, inspiring us all in the process.

Suggested Listening:
“Julie”
“Don’t Let it Trouble Your Mind”
“Hook and Line”

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Photo Credit: Rhiannon Giddens by Ebru Yildiz; Linda Martell courtesy of the artist; Miko Marks by Karen Santos.

Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson Announce Duo Album with “Hook and Line” Video

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Two of the world’s preeminent experts on folk, old-time, and string band traditions (and on Black folks’ seminal contributions to these art forms), Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson have announced they are reuniting on a brand new album, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow (set for release April 18 on Nonesuch Records). The project will feature 18 traditional North Carolina fiddle and banjo tunes tracked live and in remarkably simple settings, captured entirely outdoors and accompanied only by the wind, the rustle of the foliage, and the singing of nearby birds.

With the announcement, the pair have released a live performance video of “Hook and Line” (watch above) that was recorded at the home of Joe Thompson, their late mentor and a vital roots music forebear in the Black string band tradition’s modern iteration. What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow was tracked in meaningful locations such as this, tying this body of music directly back to the land, the locales, and the people that birthed it.

Giddens, a MacArthur “Genius” and two-time GRAMMY Award winner and 11-time nominee, and Robinson, a fellow GRAMMY winner, thought leader, botanist, and ethnomusicologist, were both founding members of the incredibly important supergroup the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The string band would end up defining the early 2000s era of old-time music, making a huge mark in Americana circles and spawning multiple generations of Black roots-and-folk musicians after them.

What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, even from just this first glimpse, promises to be a natural extension of the many ways Giddens & Robinson continue to expand our roots music discourses, broaden our understandings of the people and places that birthed these sounds, and will do so in a format that’s charming, passionate, warm, and ultimately endlessly danceable.

Catch Giddens & Robinson on tour with Dirk Powell and more beginning in April 2025 and continuing through the summer. And, don’t miss Giddens’ inaugural Biscuits & Banjos festival to be held in Durham, North Carolina, at the end of April.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the artists.

Artist of the Month: Leyla McCalla

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Since her solo debut in 2014, Vari-Colored Songs: a Tribute to Langston Hughes, multi-instrumentalist, composer, songwriter, and thought leader Leyla McCalla has routinely and consistently expanded her own sonic universe. But these have not been gratuitous or ambitious artistic reinventions. Instead, the cellist and multi-instrumentalist intentionally and organically brings in new and exciting textures, influences, stories, cultural touch points, and text paintings into her work. On April 12, she’ll continue in a similar vein, once again broadening her own endless musical horizons with a brand new record, Sun Without the Heat, available via ANTI-.

After Vari-Colored Songs, a collection of thoughtful, dense, and engaging adapted Hughes poems, Haitian folk, and originals, the critically acclaimed and “fan favorite” collection, A day for the hunter, a day for the prey (2016), brought in still more French, Haitian Creole, and bilingual material, underpinned by string band sounds that recalled her days performing and recording with the Carolina Chocolate Drops – but with many iconoclastic wrinkles and touches uniquely her own. At no point has there seemed to be any floundering or self doubt, musically and otherwise, in McCalla’s releases, but still their progression points to a growing confidence, an indelible sense of self, and an unwavering commitment to telling often untold stories. Time and again, she plumbs the depths of her own soul, her family, her lineage to discover and honor narratives regularly left in the shadows.

Sun Without the Heat certainly finds McCalla – who is based in New Orleans – covering exciting, tantalizing new ground that  neither feels entirely new or, again, like any sort of attempt at frivolous reinvention. Instead, this album is a re-distillation of the personal journey – whether inward or outward – that McCalla has invited us to join her on since Vari-Colored Songs. Over 10 tracks, Sun Without the Heat is fiery while inviting, with limitless sparks and an intractable gravity. Building on her Haitian roots, which remained front-and-center in 2019’s incredible The Capitalist Blues and also anchored her theatrical sort-of-concept album, Breaking the Thermometer (2022), on Sun Without the Heat McCalla again subverts antiquated ideas around “world music” and global folk by grounding Afrobeat, Ethiopian music theory, Brazilian Tropicalismo, and more in her American folk and string band expertise.

The result, like on The Capitalist Blues and Breaking the Thermometer, is as charming as it is dense, crave-able and nutritious, entirely one-of-a-kind while obviously interconnected with so many constituent musical traditions. There are clearly lessons learned and perspectives gained from her time collaborating with supergroup Our Native Daughters – with Amythyst Kiah, Allison Russell, and Rhiannon Giddens – here, too. On the new album, with her arm-length resumé at her disposal, McCalla remains the industrial-strength adhesive holding together all of these seemingly disparate parts. Sun Without the Heat’s current singles, “Scaled to Survive” (listen above), “Tree,” and “Love We Had” are a perfect aural triptych to demonstrate McCalla’s deft combination of inputs to create a singular output.

It’s nearly impossible to overstate the impact the Carolina Chocolate Drops and its now legendary alumni have had on American roots music and global folk. Giddens, Dom Flemons, Rowan Corbett, Justin Robinson, and more each continue to increase their audiences’ scope of understanding well after their time in the Grammy Award-winning group. But the niche McCalla has carved out and built a home for herself within since branching out from the band is truly her own.

Sun Without the Heat is timeless while Afrofuturist, essential but never essentialist. This is folk music crafted in the spirit of folk musician activists the world over since time immemorial. When you listen to McCalla, whether Sun Without the Heat or Capitalist Blues, or any of her five studio albums, you can rest assured what you’re hearing is truly idiosyncratic, while she never lets her listeners mistakenly assume she and she alone is the sole arbiter of these sounds, genres, and traditions. It’s a deft balancing act that perhaps only she can execute with such ease and such entrancing music.

All month long, we’ll be celebrating Sun Without the Heat and Leyla McCalla as our Artist of the Month. Enjoy our Essential Leyla McCalla Playlist below and stay tuned for our AOTM interview to come later in April.

Photo Credit: Chris Scheurich

This Fort Worth Music Festival Has a Niche Mission but Expansive Sounds

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A small, enthusiastic audience of first arrivals chat in excited, hushed tones as they listen to Hubby Jenkins soundcheck into a pair of Ear Trumpet Labs microphones in the ballroom at Fort Worth, Texas’s Southside Preservation Hall. It’s an unseasonably cool Saturday afternoon in March, with crystal blue skies and wispy clouds backgrounding the historic Fairmount-Southside district. Over the next nine hours, ten musical acts will grace the stage. Many of them are already in the room, contributing to the light buzz and chatter; this already feels like a generative space. 

In its third year, the Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival (known lovingly as FWAAMFest) has a very specific vision within the Americana/folk/old-time/bluegrass festival space: to highlight the depth and breadth of contemporary African American roots music and, by doing so, underscore the seminal, vital contributions of Black folks to every single roots genre in this country. Presented by Fort Worth-based non-profit Decolonizing the Music Room (who BGS has collaborated with on multiple occasions), the event carries forward the organization’s mission, explained artfully and succinctly by DTMR founder Brandi Waller-Pace as she kicks off the day introducing Hubby Jenkins: “To center Black, brown, Indigenous, and Asian voices in music and related fields.” 

“There are so many eyes and ears on culture and the arts in Fort Worth,” she continues. “And I want Fort Worth to be at the forefront of the conversation…” 

Hubby Jenkins began the day’s many conversations with a couple of banjo tunes, because, he admitted, “I’m a little nervous and [banjo tunes] make me feel cozy.” It was indeed a lovely, cozy easing into the day’s marathon lineup of music and presentations. During his set Jenkins picked guitar, banjo, bottleneck slide guitar, and played bones. And, he plays the festival’s first of many gospel numbers, “Jonah in the Wilderness,” inviting the audience to sing along, grounding his performance in the history of the Southside Preservation Hall space and these rootsy genres’ origins. 

Kicking off the day with a gospel-filled set in a historic former church made so much sense, calling each of us as listeners to be active participants in the day’s festivities and also in its mission: to recenter these community-based musics on the folks who gave rise to each of them, reminding us we each have a role to play in telling a fuller, more just history of these musics. 

Next up on the lineup is Justin Golden, who jokes that he and Hubby run into each other on gigs constantly and have the same repertoire, but from the outset his similar-seeming act couldn’t have felt more different. Working within the same vernacular and with such broad overlap, Golden and Jenkins are each still so distinct and unique – and illustrate the wide variety intrinsic to Black and African American roots musics, even within one form. Golden’s first number is an original, “I Hate When She Calls.” 

He peppers older, classic Texas blues numbers – though he admits this is his first time in Texas – throughout heartfelt, poetic, and direct originals. His music’s foundation is fingerstyle blues, but with modern crispness, timeless touches, and a crystalline, focused singing voice. 

Festival-runner and founder Brandi Waller-Pace stepped back on stage, this time as performer, for the next set of the day with songwriter, composer, and banjoist Kaïa Kater as the debut performance of their duo, Sable Sisters. They swap out banjos and guitars and a bass, singing folks songs and originals with nearly familial harmonies. A double clawhammer banjo cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Happier Than the Morning Sun” is their set’s highlight, with the legendary Justin Robinson’s guest appearance to play a set of old-time tunes ranking an honorable mention. Other festivals would be wise to consider booking Sable Sisters; if duo supergroups were a thing, this is one. Superduo? You get my meaning. 

Between each set of music, as the stage was changed over, representatives from partner organizations, sponsors, and community leaders spoke to the audience, which slowly grew from a couple dozen into a small-but-mighty one to two hundred attendees. Tables in the lobby featured literature, information, and calls to action for DTMR, FWAAMFest, and these partner orgs – and from the back of the ballroom wafted the tantalizing aromas of Lil Boy Blue BBQ. (If only all music festival barbeque offerings were this legit.)

After Sable Sisters’ set concluded, the next event was a live podcast taping featuring a collaboration between Rissi Palmer, of Color Me Country Radio on Apple Music, and Garrett McQueen of Trilloquy Podcast. The conversation was titled “Redefining ‘Classic’” and featured Palmer, McQueen, and their FWAAMFest lineup-mates Jake Blount, Demeanor, Hubby Jenkins, and Dr. Angela Wellman. Palmer and McQueen took turns prompting their panelists to consider ideas around canon, genre lines, what terms like “classical” really mean, and so much more. 

A theme that emerged throughout the taping was how often there aren’t hard, fast, concrete answers to these big, zoomed out questions about justice, representation, art, creation, space/placemaking, and community building. The panelists and hosts encouraged and challenged each other and themselves, reminding all of us that engaging in these kinds of conversations is part of the process and having the space – like FWAAMFest – to engage, build, and hold community like this is so important. 

It’s not lost on myself or perhaps anyone else in attendance just how much gratitude each of these participants have at being enabled to be in this FWAAMFest space. Each of the performers and speakers, in their own way and in their own words, effortlessly carried the event’s mission with them as they brought themselves to the space, wholly and vulnerably and powerfully. 

The podcast recording gear struck, rapper and banjo player Demeanor took the stage for his first ever full-band set – and it was revolutionary. During the Trilloquy x Color Me Country conversation Demeanor (given name Justin Harrington) stated so eloquently that “Rap is folk music, because hip-hop is an indigenous Black American art form… From the porch to the stoop.” 

He and his band immediately and indelibly illustrated his point with an energized, powerful set based on sometimes spitfire, other times free flowing rap lyrics with poppy, sung verses and choruses. It’s lyrical, content rich, witty and sharp. Demeanor’s writing and production style are full of forward motion, punctuated by arena rock guitar and Wooten-like bass lines. While often centered on banjo, the five-string is not the only way roots music oozes from these songs. Their lyrics and hooks are sharp and the vocals are strong – his singing isn’t an afterthought or simply in service of a hook. Several songs were from an upcoming unreleased album, including one stand-out track said to feature Rhiannon Giddens (his aunt) and Charly Lowry.  

The delight of Demeanor gave way to the delight of dance and musical dialogue, as longtime friends and jaw-dropping collaborators Jake Blount and Nic Gareiss took the stage. Blount began the set solo, accompanied starkly by low, droning synth sounds gently, languidly warbling through half tones as he sang, dirge-like, above the sound bed, commanding silence. Blount brings us back to gospel, again looking backward to look forward, and in just a couple numbers the droning synth gives way to droning fiddle. 

Gareiss and his singular approach to percussive dance and traditional step-dancing injects energy and joy into the crowd, who’ve been listening and engaging for almost six hours now. Audience members are on their feet, often with phones out, disbelieving the stunning musicality of Blount and Gareiss together, sixteenth notes perfectly, bafflingly in sync.

Nic dancing to Jake’s fiddle recalls the interconnectedness of Irish step dance and Black percussive dance traditions. Where cultures, practices, and folkways overlapped at the lowest of classes in America’s urban centers, dance flourished and Irish step dance cross pollinated with Black movement traditions and Appalachian and southern steps. Over the past century and more, movement and roots music have often been compartmentalized, privatized, and sequestered from each other. Bringing them back together in this intentional way is not just a radical act given the identities represented – in this duo and in this day of programming – but simply by existing together, with intention, Blount’s and Gareiss’s talents underline what these musics were initially created to do, say, and be. 

The vibe in the Southside Preservation Hall ballroom at this point was reaching “full blown party,” and when the first of the festival’s headliners, Tray Wellington Band, took the stage the energetic momentum was raised further still. For all intents and purposes a straight-ahead bluegrass band, Tray Wellington’s four-piece group demonstrated this IBMA Award winner has found his voice. His critically-acclaimed album Black Banjo certainly feels mature and fully-realized, but this was the first this writer had caught Wellington’s band since long before that record was released. The growth they’ve sustained, musically and as a unit, in the interim is remarkable. They execute chamber music level virtuosity, but with bluegrass bones. With Katelynn Bohn (bass), Josiah Nelson (mandolin), and Nick Fallon Weitzenfeld (guitar), Tray references Dawg, Béla, New Grass Revival and many more, but with an underpinning that feels as bluegrass as Appalachia – say Johnson City, TN, where he’s from.

They play a Kid Cudi cover, which is promised to be on an upcoming release, and the audience descends into mayhem as the melodic hook is slowly recognized in ripples throughout the crowd. Whether covering hip-hop or playing an old-time tune, these pickers demonstrate amazing soloing: modern, in-the-moment musical ideas without ego or self-absorption. And with Tray’s right hand anchoring all of the above, it reminds of Earl Scruggs in his Revue days – solidly bluegrass, but intimating musical ideas that come from so far afield, way beyond what we consider bluegrass territory.

Chambergrass, or whatever you want to call it, is seen as more “high-brow” or “intellectual” given its adjacency to conservatories and storied music schools, but this style of virtuosic playing is so well placed within the musical vocabularies of people from the region that birthed string band traditions. And in this context it can be executed with equal ease, aplomb, and athleticism, and with a much more grounded approach. 

A quiet, slightly exhausted euphoria tingles through the stalwarts of the crowd who remain for Jackie Venson’s no-holds-barred FWAAMFest finale. Waller-Pace returns to the stage one final time to introduce the night’s last headliner, with her daughter Sparrow (who waits patiently to get her Jackie t-shirt signed at the end of the night.) 

Venson is accompanied only by drummer Rodney Hydner – and her signature DJ sampler that allows her to play along with tracks, sound beds, background vocals, and play solos over loops. Even with just a two-person act, her trademark joy immediately washes over the entire room and re-energizes the crowd. Venson’s songs are soaring, anthemic, and huge, matched only by her broad grin as she smirks and laughs at herself and her own playing like it’s an inside joke. 

Perhaps the best guitarist of her generation, certainly the best rock-blues guitarist of the past thirty years, the internet is in a four to six week feedback loop of discovering and rediscovering Venson’s playing at the moment, with her Tweets and TikToks seemingly going wildly viral about once a month. She’s been retweeted and signal boosted by a who’s who of Twitter personalities and musicians, and it’s all because hers is a singular voice, perspective, and skill. 

Watching her improvise over each song recalls Nic Gareiss’s dancing from earlier in the evening. When you’re watching something so visceral and in the moment, you can’t help but inhabit that moment with them. And many of us do inhabit these moments with Venson by moving, standing, dancing, reveling in the ever-present joy of her music. 

Venson’s brand of modern blues is unconcerned with divorcing itself from the blues of the past (and of the present) that some feel is stoic, stuffy or dusty, and out of step with modernity. Her brand of blues, no matter how distant it has traveled from its roots, still honors the sounds of old-time and ragtime and down home blues, because it knows where it came from and to what it’s connected. Venson’s connections to Texas and Austin further reinforce this point – and help place Venson and her style of playing squarely within “guitar culture,” too.

At one point during her performance Venson marveled at how the FWAAMFest gathering was, in her words, “Pretty legendary!! You’re going to be talking about this in 10 years, telling people you saw everybody on this lineup here today.”

It was a feeling that began creeping up much earlier in the festival, that what we were present for wasn’t just a community music festival, it was so much more.

Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and Disabled folks – artists and creators and movers and musicians – continue to offer and model ways to hold the past within ourselves while looking ahead to the future, a duality that modernity and westernism struggles to acknowledge or inhabit. What’s striking about this conglomeration of creators and musicmakers on this lineup at this festival is that they make it look easy. It seems effortless to understand, uplift, and uphold a mission like FWAAMFest’s. Partly because the participants all are stakeholders in that mission to begin with! With their music, their insights, and their storytelling these musicians and thinkers demonstrate the past is the future and the future is the past. Roots music – the kinds that center the experiences, stories, and seminal contributions of Black, Brown, and Indigenous folks – can spotlight and move through this dichotomy better than so many art forms, while remaining grounded firmly in the present. 

FWAAMFest’s success wasn’t simply because it’s a festival with a novel, substantive mission. It was a soaring, generative, forward-looking success because it focuses on what “the mainstream” perceives as a niche within a niche within a niche – African American roots music – and shows all of the possibilities, all of the many universes of artistic expression endemic to such a niche. The specificity here is not prohibitive or exclusive, it’s unfailingly, infinitely expansive. In sound, genre, content, tradition, and beyond.

As Jackie Venson said, we all will still be talking about 2023’s Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival for many years into the future. 

Editor’s note: Follow Decolonizing the Music Room on social media to catch footage from FWAAMFest 2023 as it’s released and make sure to DONATE to support their mission and future FWAAMFests!

Photos by Ben Noey Jr.

Through the Lens of American Music, Rhiannon Giddens Tells Her Story

Posted on by Editor

Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia once said that the goal was not to be the best at what you do, but the only one who does what you do. In a way, that applies to Rhiannon Giddens’ high-profile career — except what she does is pretty much everything.

It can be more than a little dizzying to try and keep up with Giddens’ far-flung doings across multiple platforms as musician, actor, songwriter, composer, activist, musicologist and more. Her work draws from a range of classical as well as folk traditions, drawing accolades including the 2016 Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, a 2017 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” fellowship and a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for They’re Calling Me Home.

2022 found Giddens touring and collaborating with various ensembles — the classically inclind Silkroad collective, the Nashville Ballet, the Black female Americana supergroup Our Native Daughters and with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi — while the Spoleto Festival debuted her first-ever opera, Omar. Somehow she also finds time to do the Aria Code podcast for the Metropolitan Opera, too.

Whew.

As for future endeavors, Giddens has multiple projects percolating, including hosting the 2023 PBS series My Music with Rhiannon Giddens. In the meantime, she hits bookshelves for the first time this fall with Build a House, the first of her four children’s books to be published by Candlewick Press.

BGS: Thanks for taking the time. Where are you calling from?

Giddens: Ireland. I’m mostly here when I’m not on the road because it’s where the kids are. It’s hard. I have them half the year, so I have to fit a year’s worth of work into the other half because the bills don’t just pay themselves. It would be different and easier if I were still with their dad, but we’re not together anymore and I’m on my own when I’m with them. So I’m a single mom, working full-time to cram all the work into as little time as I can. It’s difficult not to feel pulled in a lot of different directions, while constantly feeling jet-lagged.

I haven’t been able to have much of a balance, to be honest. I’m doing everything I can to fit three lives into one and something’s got to give because I don’t want it to affect my kids. I’ve said it many times, but I just have to start making space on my calendar. In my working life, a bunch of projects got pushed into this year because of the pandemic, which has been insane. I am fortunate to have a lot of work, because a lot of people don’t. But it’s sometimes hard to enjoy what’s happening.

Your first children’s book is coming out, Build a House, illustrated by Monica Mikai. How did that start out?

It began as lyrics, and that one was kind of always a song. Sometimes I write poems that turn into songs, but this one was always lyrics. It goes back to the pandemic, when Ireland had a hard lockdown. That was going on when the protests over George Floyd started in 2020, which was super-frustrating to watch. I was over here feeling useless and sitting at my kitchen table thinking, “Forget Covid, I’d be on the front lines in the States right now.” I was trying to explain to my children why I was crying at odd times.

At times like that, I often write about it. “Cry No More,” that one was after the Charleston church massacre. Emotions will pour out: “What the hell do you people want? You brought us over here to build your frickin’ country, now what?” That became, “You brought me here to build your house,” and it went from there. Yo-Yo Ma reached out to ask if I wanted to do something for Juneteenth, and this song was perfect for that. So I recorded and filmed my part and we put it out on Juneteenth 2020 to an amazing response. That made me feel a little better.

At what point did it go from song to book?

It was actually on Twitter, where somebody said, “Hey, this should be a kids book!” And that got me thinking, huh, yeah, cool idea. I’ve been wanting to write a book about American music history, and my book agent Laura Nolan has been patiently waiting, checking in periodically. So I asked her, “What do you think about a kids book? Here’s an idea.” We set up meetings, Candlewick Press came in with an amazing offer for four books, and this is the first. We struck a deal and they sent us a short list of illustrators — all women of color, I did not even have to ask — and I picked Monica, which was pretty much the beginning and end of it. I’ve never spoken to Monica, which is how it works with kids books. Authors and illustrators communicate through the editor without getting together, each doing their thing. Next thing I knew, I was sent a sketch of the story she got out of the song, which was amazing. I was totally blown away and might have cried a little bit. When I saw her finished work, I could not have imagined it better than this.

That seems so odd, that writers and illustrators work completely separately on kids’ books.

I actually like that it’s separate. She’s an artist and I’m an artist, too, and these are two different forms coming together. She brought her art to bear on my words, so I feel like I did what I’m supposed to do. She got it without having to talk to me, which is the point of the book. It was an amazing experience, and not so different from when I bring another musician into the band and tell them, “Do what you feel like doing, and I’ll tell you if it jibes with what I’m doing.” But I never start with saying, “Do this” – unless it’s telling a bass player, “Don’t do 2-5-1 bluegrass bass-playing in anything I do.” I hire them to bring their expertise, working with them to do their thing.

The next book will be We Could Fly, out next year, based on a song I did with Dirk Powell and illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu. And the rough draft of the third one is done, about Joe’s First Fiddle — riffing on my mentor Joe Thompson. The fourth one will be about the banjo. But I’m really excited about paying tribute to Joe this way because I’ve wanted to write this since he was alive and would tell the story about his first fiddle. What I wrote is not exactly the same as the story he’d tell, but I sent the rough draft to Justin Robinson [her fellow Carolina Chocolate Drops alumnus], and he gave it a thumbs-up.

Tell us more about the book about American music history.

It’s American music through my lens, based on all the speeches and keynotes and lectures I’ve given over the last few years. Mostly it’s about the myths of American music, like the idea of where the banjo came from. That’s the most obvious myth, that it was born in Appalachia and invented by Scotch-Irish immigrants. No they didn’t, even though they played it. The banjo came from Africa. So what are the myths, and whose intentions do they serve? It’s the idea of looking at the culture we have in America through music, the misunderstandings we have and how that hurts us as Americans by obscuring a true understanding of who we are as a country. Basically, I’m talking shit all the time, and I want to put it in book form.

You were just in Tryon, North Carolina, filming for My Music with Rhiannon Giddens at the birthplace of Nina Simone. What can we expect from your show?

It’s me taking over David Holt’s State of Music, starting next year. That filming was really special. I had not been to the Nina Simone house before and it was cool even though I’m not a thing-and-place person, you know what I mean? Maybe I’m just too cerebral in an emotional-deficit way because it seems like those experiences don’t affect me so much. But I love seeing how they affect other people. It was really joyful to see Adia (Victoria) in that space, how she was affected by it with prickles all over her back, and my sister was blown away when she visited. For me, what’s important about Nina Simone is captured in her songs and performances. The rest, I’m not sure standing in her childhood house does anything for me. I live so much in the ether, the material aspects of life don’t hit as hard for me. But that’s okay, and others feel differently.

After studying opera in college and then going on to folk music, you performed on an operatic stage for the first time in almost two decades this year – Porgy & Bess in your hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. What’s it been like to return to opera after so long?

It had been 18 years and it’s been really interesting to log back into that and realize how much I had missed it. I loved the Chocolate Drops and everything I’ve done since then, but a lot of it was more of a calling than pure joy because of the work I do. There have been a lot of transcendental moments on stage, but I realized I’d been missing a lot. Like standing on stage and just singing, no mic, just you and the orchestra and other singers. A beautiful thing. It was nice to come back to that as a performer, writer and composer.

As an art form, opera has such power. It gets a bum rap, the way it’s been taken over by the elite as a way to differentiate. They go not because they enjoy it but because it’s what they’re supposed to do at a certain level. It’s been great to get back into the art form, engage with it as itself without expectations as a young singer or having to deal with all the European dead white guys. I’ve come into it with a totally different perspective, with this grounding I had years ago.

With everything you’ve got going on, it must be hard to find time for your biggest project of all, composing a Hamilton-esque historical musical about the 1898 massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina. What’s the status of that?

I’m in constant contact with my collaborator, John Jeremiah Sullivan, who is a slow burner himself. The New Yorker interview profile he did on me took five or six years – I went through three different managers! But he takes time because he is extraordinarily thorough, and he keeps finding important things. I keep wanting to be in that space with him, getting together and creating. I think we are close to getting the institutional support we need. I don’t like to force things. Whatever is ready to go, I try to create a space for it and so far things have worked out in a beautiful way. Another project just came onto the burner and it might get going before Wilmington, or it might not. It depends on timing and co-creators, where they are and what they’re doing. But this is an important story and we’re gonna do it.

Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz

Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival Is About Community

Posted on by Editor

To put it simply, the Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival is expanding awareness about the Black roots of old-time music. It’s also about representation, visibility, and perhaps most of all, community.

“We have been there since the beginning of this music, yet there is little to no representation in the large music festivals that cater to this genre,” says founder Brandi Waller-Pace. “We aim to change that.”

Also known as FWAAMFest, the event focuses on the genres of old-time, jug band, early blues and jazz music that is Black-led and showcases Black performers. Produced by Decolonizing the Music Room, FWAAMFest takes place on Saturday, March 19, at Southside Preservation Hall. Headliners include Jake Blount, Kaia Kater, and Justin Robinson.

Leading up to FWAAMFest, Brandi Waller-Pace shares how a sense of community shaped this one-of-a-kind event.

BGS: What led to the idea of launching a festival focused on African American roots music?

Brandi Waller-Pace: I started playing old-time music myself by finding the banjo not terribly long ago. Maybe five years ago is when I really turned my attention toward the instrument and began to play, and really quickly connected with one of the few people in my community who plays clawhammer. He convinced me to sing and play guitar in a string band with him and another member. So, I got my chops up and learned a lot and gradually learned a lot about the history.

Finding out how deeply embedded Blackness and Black history – the history of my own ancestors – was, in the case of the banjo and the tradition surrounding the music, felt really affirming to me. Before long I began to meet other Black folks who were deeply involved in the community and the history. We started to connect, and those circles grew.

I remember hearing about the Black Banjo Gathering before I had gotten into the music at all, and not really knowing its significance until later. And then I attended another event that Dr. Dena Jennings, at her farm in Orange, Virginia, called the Affrolachian On-Time Music Gathering — or “The Thang.” It was really the first time I was around a significant amount of Black folks who were engaged in roots music, talking about the history and just engaging with one another.

It wasn’t an exclusively Black event, but it was really the first time I was around a significant amount of Black folks who were engaged in roots music, talking about the history and just engaging with one another. It was really beautiful. It planted a seed, I think. As I engaged more in the community, there were discussions about “How do we work on inclusion in existing spaces? When is it time to create new spaces?” I considered, “You know, I could create something new.” I tend to operate that way. I’ll engage in existing spaces and systems but I love the idea of creating something new. And so I said, “I could do a festival.”

You cover multiple old-time music styles at this festival. How did you curate the lineup?

I have to be honest. I’ve just been really fortunate to know so many wonderful musicians, and to become acquainted with some, and to develop deep friendships with others. And so, the lineup came from asking, “What’s the community that I’m finding myself in? And who are the people that I know about that I don’t get to see as often but are amazing musicians?” As this event grows, I hope to engage with people further and further from my close circle while still making sure to have space for those that were so important to starting my journey into this music and learning the history of it.

A festival like this will bring visibility to the Black roots of old-time music. Why is that important to you?

In part, the visibility is connected to my own journey of discovery and finding myself, and what my Blackness means to me. The Black roots of old-time music are such a huge part of US culture. Enslaved Africans materially and economically and physically and culturally built so much of what we define as US culture.

In my work in music education, and in my scholarly work, and in my clinician work, that is what is so important to me – centering narratives that are so very important but are not broadly treated as such. It makes me happy to think of the idea of Black folks on a broader scale looking at these musical forms and seeing Black identity within that and having that engagement. It brings it back full circle to times when these traditions were seen as common in Black spaces.

What is the mission behind your nonprofit, Decolonizing the Music Room?

The mission of Decolonizing the Music Room is to center Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian voices, knowledge, and experiences in music education and related fields. So, we do this with things like FWAAMFest or with presenting to educators and other organizations, or by creating content that puts these narratives out there. We’re engaging with music education and other communities across disciplines to really connect to others and get this work out there as much as possible.

It’s a lot of work to launch a festival, but what have you enjoyed the most about creating this event?

You’re right, it is an immense amount of work to launch a festival, but what has brought me the most joy is doing it with friends. These are not just people I admire, experts in their field, genius performers, scholars, and community activists. They are actual people I know in real life and I still want to pinch myself when I think about the fact that this is actually happening with these people, because I feel like so much of a newbie. Being able to do this has been really amazing.

The second thing has been that it’s been in my community. I taught in public schools here. I taught music, wrote curriculum, and engaged in community advocacy work. I’ve been down here for 13 years now. I feel like I have roots here. I have children who go to school here. I have colleagues that I’ve worked with. I’m an artist in the community. For me personally, I wanted it to be something that feeds diversity into the community where I live, where I’ve taught, and where I’m raising my children. It’s wonderful to be able to do that.

For those music fans coming to check it out, what do you hope will take away from the experience?

I want people to come and understand that this music is Black music. Blackness is all throughout. This music is community music. This music is music that can bring people together, and that one can engage in. One of the things that I love most about learning old-time music is that there’s so much nuance and there are complicated things that you can learn, but also the level of accessibility. It didn’t take me long to be able to engage in a way that felt meaningful for me, even though the way I can play now is light years from the way I could play when I just started.

Seeing all that Blackness represented and understanding the connection. Seeing that it can be participatory and then knowing something like that is in Fort Worth. They’re gonna take away, “I gotta come back to Fort Worth every March because I have to be in this festival.” The folks in the community are gonna say, “You know what? Maybe I want to learn the banjo.” That is something I can do here. We can create more musical community here.

Carolina Calling, Greensboro: the Crossroads of Carolina

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Known as the Gate City, Greensboro, North Carolina is a transitional town: hub of the Piedmont between the mountain high country to the west and coastal Sandhill Plains to the east, and a city defined by the people who have come, gone, and passed through over the years. As a crossroads location, it has long been a way station for many endeavors, including touring musicians – from the likes of the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix at the Greensboro Coliseum, the state’s largest indoor arena, to James Brown and Otis Redding at clubs like the El Rocco on the Chitlin’ Circuit. Throw in the country and string band influences from the textile mill towns in the area, and the regional style of the Piedmont blues, and you’ve got yourself quite the musical melting pot.

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This historical mixture was not lost on one of Greensboro’s own, Rhiannon Giddens – one of modern day Americana’s ultimate crossover artists. A child of black and white parents, she grew up in the area hearing folk and country music, participating in music programs in local public schools, and eventually going on to study opera at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. Once she returned to North Carolina and came under the study of fiddler Joe Thompson and the Black string band tradition, she began playing folk music and forged an artistic identity steeped in classical as well as vernacular music. In this episode of Carolina Calling, we spoke with Giddens about her background in Greensboro and how growing up mixed and immersed in various cultures, in a city so informed by its history of segregation and status as a key civil rights battleground, informed her artistic interests and endeavors, musical styles, and her mission in the music industry.

Subscribe to Carolina Calling on any and all podcast platforms to follow along as we journey across the Old North State, visiting towns like Durham, Wilmington, Shelby, and more.

Music featured in this episode:

Rhiannon Giddens – “Black is the Color”
Andrew Marlin – “Erie Fiddler”
Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Cornbread and Butterbeans”
The Rolling Stones – “Rocks Off”
Count Basie and His Orchestra – “Honeysuckle Rose”
Roy Harvey – “Blue Eyes”
Blind Boy Fuller – “Step It Up and Go”
Rhiannon Giddens, Francesco Turrisi – “Avalon”
Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Snowden’s Jig (Genuine Negro Jig)”
Barbara Lewis -“Hello Stranger”
The O’Kaysions – “Girl Watcher”
Joe and Odell Thompson – “Donna Got a Rambling Mind”
Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Country Girl”
Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Hit ‘Em Up Style”
Our Native Daughters – “Moon Meets the Sun”
Rhiannon Giddens, Francesco Turrisi – “Si Dolce é’l Tormento”

BGS is proud to produce Carolina Calling in partnership with Come Hear NC, a campaign from the North Carolina Department of Natural & Cultural Resources designed to celebrate North Carolinians’ contribution to the canon of American music.

Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz

Enter to win a prize bundle featuring a signed copy of author and Carolina Calling host David Menconi’s ‘Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Music,’ BGS Merch, and surprises from our friends at Come Hear North Carolina.

‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ Created an Instant Audience for Old-Time Music

Posted on by Editor

The O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, which was just starting to pick up momentum twenty years ago this winter, was both a forethought and an afterthought. The Coen Brothers had an idea for a film and even a title borrowed from Preston Sturges’ 1940 comedy, Sullivan’s Travels, but no screenplay. They commissioned T Bone Burnett to assemble a sprawling playlist of old-time music for them to use as writing prompts — original recordings from the first half of the twentieth century as well as new recordings of old songs. He gathered some of the finest vocalists and players, including Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Alison Krauss, and members of Union Station, as well as Norman Blake, Sam Bush, and John Hartford. In various combinations they produced around sixty tracks covering hillbilly plaints, gospel numbers, Protestant hymns, children’s songs, labor songs, even prison songs.

From that pool the Coens selected a handful of tracks that served as the skeleton for their screenplay, which became a Deep South retelling of The Odyssey. As three yokel chain-gang fugitives wander the backwoods and cotton fields and gravel roads of Depression-era Mississippi, they inadvertently become country stars thanks to a hasty version of “Man of Constant Sorrow,” originally recorded in 1917 by Dick Burnett and re-recorded for the film by Dan Tyminski. Along the way they encounter a parade of white-clad Christians singing “Down to the River to Pray,” a blues singer who regales them with a campfire rendition of Skip James’ “Hard Time Killing Floor,” and a KKK klavern performing a Busby Berkley routine in white sheets and hoods.

Whittled down to eighteen tracks, the soundtrack hit stores just a few weeks before the film, and it seemed designed to stand alone as an upscale release. As Luke Lewis, formerly chairman/CEO of Universal Nashville, told Billboard in 2015: “When we were putting it together, a bunch of us said, ‘This is probably going to be a coffee table kind of a CD, where people will leave it around and be proud to have it.’ That turned out to be pretty much true… A lot of people that don’t buy records at all, or buy one a year, bought that record.”

Still, no one figured it would sell any more copies than your typical soundtrack, and certainly no one predicted it would so completely eclipse the film. Its success has been astounding: It has sold nearly 9 million copies, hung around the upper reaches of the Billboard Top 200 for several years, won the Grammy for Album of the Year (beating out Bob Dylan and Outkast, among others), spun off a sequel, inspired a series of tours and live albums, and redefined a massive market for traditional music in America.

Twenty years later, the gulf separating film and soundtrack remains remarkably wide. The former is glib to the point of nihilism, as though every line of dialogue and every camera angle is surrounded by quote marks. The soundtrack, by contrast, is sincere to the point of evangelism, as though these old songs were pieces of secular scripture. The music plays everything straight, while the film can’t keep a straight face. The soundtrack became a phenomenon, while the film sits in the lower tiers of its auteurs’ sprawling catalog.

Both are products of a very particular time: They were released during that short window between two defining events — the hand-wringing spectacle of Y2K and the horrific televised tragedy of 9/11. With the benefit of twenty years’ hindsight, they represent a pop-cultural pivot from the irony that defined the 1990s and much of the Coens’ output to the “New Sincerity” that defined the 2000s.

Why did this niche soundtrack become such a massive hit? Some have credited the popularity of O Brother to fin de siècle jitters and a desire to return to a rosier, more comfortable American past (never mind that the past, especially the 1930s, was never rosy or comfortable). Others have chalked it up to a rejection of the late ’90s pop music excess embodied by Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys.

Perhaps the best reason for its success is also the most obvious: This is a good album, and an accessible one. It’s a well-curated tour through old-time music, a sampler of rural American traditions that serves as a primer on the subject without sounding like a textbook. All of these different styles are presented with an eloquence that is homespun yet modern: a balance that highlights rather than dampens their charms.

Burnett puts such an emphasis on the human voice that even the instrumental tracks sound a cappella. He wants you to hear the exquisite grain in the voices of Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Alison Krauss on “Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby” as well as the weight pressing on Chris Thomas King as he moans through “Hard Time Killing Floor.” Curiously, Dr. Ralph Stanley had to convince the producer to let him sing “Oh Death” without banjo, which was absolutely the right call. His voice is high and keening, a serious a death, shaken by the very subject he’s singing about.

If there’s a breakout song on O Brother — something resembling a hit — it was this very intense performance, which remains one of the finest renditions of this very odd and oft-covered song. Stanley was 73 years old when the album was released, had been playing since 1946, and was already celebrated as one of the fathers of bluegrass, but O Brother gave his career a considerable boost, introducing him to a significantly wider audience. (That said, it always struck me as deeply disrespectful that the Coens have a Klansman lip-synching Stanley’s performance in the film, as though they feared the words might actually mean something.)

Stanley performed the song a cappella at the 2002 Grammys — imagine anything a cappella at such a glitz-bound ceremony — not long before the soundtrack won Album of the Year. It might have been the climax of the soundtrack’s shelf life, but it kept selling and kept selling. It created an instant audience for old-time music, and upstart string-bands found themselves with readymade audiences, many of them shouting “Man of Constant Sorrow” the way they once might have yelled “Free Bird!” Every artist on the album got a boost, especially Alison Krauss & Union Station, who crossed over from bluegrass to pop and launched a series of hit records with the aptly titled New Favorite in August 2001. Similarly, Welch, Harris, and even Stanley enjoyed boosts in album and ticket sales in the wake of O Brother.

As with any sweeping change, there are new opportunities as well as new losses. The alt-country acts of the 1990s had already lost much of their luster, but roots suddenly had no room for punk anymore. Gone were the dark, twangy experiments like Daniel Lanois’s Americana trilogy — Harris’ Wrecking Ball in 1996, followed by Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind the next year and Willie Nelson’s Teatro the year after that. All three proved that roots music could accommodate new sounds, that it could look to the future without completely letting go of the past, and all three stand among the best entries in their artists’ remarkable catalogs.

But O Brother seemed to wipe most of those new avenues away, turning roots music into something largely acoustic, uniform, polite, conservative — beholden to the past and largely dismissive of the present. Watching certain acts riding that wave was like watching Civil War reenactors march on a makeshift battlefield, and ten years later groups like Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers were using roots music to sell arena-size sentiments.

Another aspect of old-time lost in the O Brother wave: politics. Previous folk revivals had a populist bent, extolling the music as the sound of the people and as an expression of a specifically American community. Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger were branded subversives and communists, while Dylan and his early ‘60s cohort found radical possibilities in Harry Smith’s legendary Anthology of American Folk Music. But no one on O Brother is in any danger of being branded a pinko. The film itself nods to issues of race and class, but without really commenting on them in any serious or specific way. The soundtrack, by contrast, foregrounds songs about yearning, about breaking free of turmoil and hardship to find peace and contentment. Often that can be humorous, as on Harry McClintock’s fantastical “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” but more often it’s poignant, as on Krauss and Welch’s “I’ll Fly Away.” It’s a collection more concerned with needs of the spirit than of the flesh, so any earthly implications are largely ignored.

The roots market that sprang up in the soundtrack’s wake was consequently blanched of anything resembling social commentary, despite there being so much to comment on. That wave of bands might have provided a counterpart to the entrenched political conservatism that defined mainstream country music of the early 2000s, but instead it offered merely escapism.

A few artists did manage to question this rosy thinking about the past, in particular the Carolina Chocolate Drops. They traced strains of Black influence, craft, and contribution to old-time music, which is generally considered to be white, and therefore expanded its historical scope and current impact. As players, however, they injected their songs with no small amount of joy, as though taking great delight in what these old forms allowed them to express. The group’s three primary players — Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson — have carried that particular balance into their solo careers.

Any of the soundtrack’s shortcomings weren’t the fault of the musicians, who play and sing these songs much more beautifully and sympathetically than the film ever demanded. Nor is it the fault of the songs themselves, which obviously spoke to people as clearly in 2001 as they did in 1937. And it continues to speak loudly in 2021: The coffee table product wasn’t designed to bear the burden of the market it created, but the songs still inspire subsequent generations well into a new century, with its own tribulations and hardships.