Carolina Chocolate Drops

The Carolina Chocolate Drops, a string band whose core lineup consisted of Dom Flemons on guitar, jug, and harmonica, Rhiannon Giddens on banjo and fiddle, and Justin Robinson on banjo and fiddle, first assembled in 2005 when Sule Greg Wilson occasionally joined on percussion. The musicians came together at the Black Banjo Gathering held at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, united by shared enthusiasm for bluegrass, “jass,” jug music, and early forms of country and rock. Their performances blended standards with original material drawn from these traditions, delivered in tongue-in-cheek period costumes whose playful irreverence never concealed the players’ instrumental command.

Dona Got a Ramblin Mind, the group’s 2006 debut issued by the Music Maker label, earned broad praise, after which three further independent releases appeared before Genuine Negro Jig reached a national audience via Nonesuch in 2010. Early the following year the band issued a four-song EP made in collaboration with the New York City-based Romanian Gypsy punk outfit the Luminescent Orchestrii. Robinson departed in 2011, at which point multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins joined; the ensemble then expanded further by adding New Orleans-based cellist Leyla McCalla and beat-box specialist Adam Matta for the 2012 album Leaving Eden, produced by Buddy Miller. That same year the Drops supplied the track “Daughter’s Lament” to the Hunger Games soundtrack.

In 2013 the group disclosed that founding member Dom Flemons would exit to focus on solo work. Cellist Malcolm Parson and multi-instrumentalist Rowan Corbett were brought into the lineup, enabling the band to maintain an active touring schedule even as frontwoman Giddens issued her first solo recording in early 2015.