Bringing The World Home To You

© 2023 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations

Carolina Chocolate Drops: Hooked On Old-Time Sounds

Carolina Chocolate Drops' new album is <em>Leaving Eden</em>.
Crackerfarm
Carolina Chocolate Drops' new album is Leaving Eden.

Carolina Chocolate Drops breathed new life into old-time music with the 2010 album Genuine Negro Jig, which put a contemporary spin on Southern string tools from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That collection went on to win a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album.

"I really didn't hear old-time music until I got into the contra dance community," says Rhiannon Giddens, singer and founding member of Carolina Chocolate Drops. "I just fell in love with the banjos, played claw-hammer style. I'd never really heard a whole lot of that, and that was it. I was completely hooked."

Giddens was trained in opera at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music — an unlikely start for her current career, but one she says has come in handy.

"The breathing that you'll learn, being able to sing through colds, being able to hold notes, that really does come from training," she says. "I'm really happy about that."

Here, Giddens and fellow band member Dom Flemons speak with NPR's Scott Simon about the group's new album, Leaving Eden.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags
More Stories