Wednesday, October 1, 2008

It was hoedown night at the Kennedy Center Theater Lab on Monday, but the trio playing the fiddle, banjo, dobro and more ensured that this free event was different from what most would perceive as a standard gig of old-timey, foot-stomping dance music. The Carolina Chocolate Drops are a young African American band whose members met in 2005 at the Black Banjo Gathering, a small yet influential event. After a number of rehearsal sessions with fiddler Joe Thompson, one of the last surviving African American Piedmont-style musicians, the Drops began gigging regularly and recording.

Although they emphasized pre-World War II songs and prefaced many of them with brief historical explanations (including a fascinating one on the black roots of the song "Dixie"), their set was anything but academic. Aided at first by dance instructors who got folks moving with a "flat-footing" lesson, these instrument-swapping residents of Durham, N.C., kept the audience active with speedy strumming, jug-blowing and percussion via carved hand-held bones and foot-banging syncopation.

The Drops reclaimed a number of 20th-century styles. On "Georgie Buck," their drawled, raspy vocals about not putting "shortenin' in my bread" helped capture the feel of a rural house party, while Rhiannon Giddens, the combo's female member, took to the floor to do the Charleston to their '20s-era jazzy jug-band take on "Salty Dog." The Drops also proved to be more than just traditional music revivalists. They cleverly transformed Blu Cantrell's 2001 R&B song "Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!)" into, well, Chocolate Drops music, with Giddens testifying soulfully, Dom Flemons turning the banjo into a country-goes-funk instrument, and Justin Robinson doing human beat-box percussion. Giddens introduced the final number, "Sourwood Mountain," as a "singing, dancing, hootin' and hollerin' extravaganza," and that description fit the whole evening.

-- Steve Kiviat