Hip-hop kids resurrecting 1800s Black fiddle music? Grammy voters lost their minds.
In 2010, The Carolina Chocolate Drops stunned the music world, taking home the Traditional Folk Album Grammy for their debut album, Genuine Negro Jig. Founded in 2005 in Raleigh, North Carolina, the old-time string band members included Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson, who were all inspired by the work of black fiddler Joe Thompson. As the documentary charts the band’s sudden rise, it also looks at the influence of their mentor, Thompson, and the African origins of the banjo.
Direction
Intimate vérité access that lets the music breathe and the personalities shine.
Production
Archival footage of Joe Thompson that feels like excavating lost cultural treasure.
Writing
Narrative elegantly weaves personal journey with suppressed music history.
Director
John Whitehead
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Béla Fleck appears in the film—he'd later collaborate extensively with Giddens, proving this scene is tiny and deeply interconnected.
The banjo's West African origins were aggressively suppressed by minstrelsy; this film participates in a larger 21st-century reclamation project also seen in works like Darius Rucker's country career.
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