In the 1970s, after 25 years of research on her own, Dena
Epstein published a series of papers and her monumental book,
Sinful
Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folks Music to the Civil War,
which shattered myths that African slaves arrived in the Americas
"culturally naked." She documented a musical culture among Africans and
African-Americans that was rich with song, dance and instrumentation.
In 2009 Jim Carrier was able to interview Dena and produced a film
about her life and legacy titled "The
Librarian and The Banjo".
The
Carolina Chocolate Drops are a group of young
African-American stringband musicians that have come to together to
play the rich tradition of fiddle and banjo music in Carolinas'
piedmont.
In the spirit of independent, community-based music comes Sankofa
Strings, a trio of African American artists in love with
self-made music. Armed with fiddles and 'jos, bones and
drums, Sankofa
Strings is taking that "Old Time" sound and using it to bring
the people together again. Young and old love this music—it is deep in
our collective memory. Come back, and let's go forward
together.
Lesley
Riddle never became a professional musician; however, it is
his contribution to country music for which he is most remembered.
Maybelle Carter credited Riddle with teaching her the "bottleneck"
style of guitar picking, in which the index finger plays the melody
while the thumb keeps the rhythm on the bass strings. Riddle taught the
Carter Family such songs as "The Cannon Ball," "1 Know What It Means To
Be Lonesome," and "Let the Church Roll On."
Joe
Thompson is an 87 year-old Old-time traditional black string
band musician from Cedar Grove, North Carolina in the Piedmont region
near the Virginia border. Joe plays fiddle and sings in his
Granddaddy's style of music that can be traced in America to the
1700's, and even earlier to origins in Africa. Joe is one of the last
of the black musicians of his generation who play this style of music.
His music builds community by crossing boundaries of generations,
races, and cultures.
Richard
(Richie) Brown has been a part-time bluegrass musician in the
Boston area since the mid-sixties. Richard has played with several
prominent New England bands and occasionally filled in with nationally
known bluegrass artists, as well. He has done mandolin workshops with
Ron Thomason, Dave McLaughlin, and Lou Martin at the Joe Val Memorial
Bluegrass Festival and other events for the Boston Bluegrass Union, and
with Mike Holmes at the New England Folk Festival. Richard's playing is
heavily influenced by Bill Monroe's style and "old style" mandolin
players. He currently plays mandolin and sings in the Boston-based Reunion
Band with Dave Dillon, Lauck Benson, Margaret Gerteis and Art
Schatz.
Clarence
"Gatemouth" Brown was born on this date in 1924. He
was an African-American musician. Given the "Gatemouth" handle by a
high school instructor who accused Brown of having a "voice like a
gate," He played an impressive array of instruments such as guitar,
fiddle, mandolin, viola as well as harmonica and drums. He was featured
on the TV show Hee Haw with pal Roy Clark after they cut a 1979 duet
album for MCA, Makin' Music. During his career, Brown recorded 30
records. He won a Grammy Award for Traditional Blues in 1983 for his
album, Alright Again. Gatemouth Brown passed away on September 10, 2005
in Orange, TX.
The
Ebony Hillbillies are not only one of the last black string
bands in AMERICA, but they are the only string band based in
NYC. Consisting of fiddle, banjo, washboard and bass fiddle,
They have successfully created a following that has crossed over to
audiences in pop, country, bluegrass, folk, jazz and beyond while
maintaining their grassroots credibility.
. . . These days the old-time music and dance scene is
predominantly white. It is rare to see an African-American musician or
dancer at Mt. Airy, Clifftop, or other music festivals where old-time
or bluegrass music is being played. There are a few, such as fiddler Earl
White, who was an early member of the Green Grass Cloggers,
but how many other black old-time musicians or dancers do you know?
That is why I remember the day, a number of years ago, when I first saw
Arthur
Grimes. He was clogging in cowboy boots at a square dance I
was calling at Merlefest in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Since that
time, we have become friends, and we have shared the dance floor many
times. But it wasn't until last December, when I interviewed him at the
Boone Drug Store in Boone, that I learned how he got involved in
old-time dancing.
Black
String Revival --- "Before the Blues--and the phonograph--
revolutionized popular music, African-American string bands featuring
banjo and fiddle played for "frolics" (square dances), parades, house
parties, corn shuckings, funerals, and baby christenings. Largely
forgotten, this vital musical tradition survived into the 1950s. Now a
new generation of blacks is rediscovering and reinvigorating the string
band tradition. Black and white scholars are documenting the African
origins of the banjo and how African-Americans adapted it. At the same
time, young African-American string bands like The Carolina Chocolate
Drops, The Ebony Hillbillies, Sankofa Strings, and Don Vappie and His
Creole Jazz Serenaders are reinventing traditional banjo and fiddle
music. Black String Revival, an hour-long documentary, will tell the
story of the rise and fall and the rise again of the Black string band
tradition."
The name of Joe
Thompson is hardly well known in music circles and yet in
some ways he should be regarded as one of the most historically
important American traditional performers active today. For,
since his re-emergence in the Seventies and introduction to a wider
audience, Joe has upheld and represented a tradition of Afro-American
country fiddling now all but vanished.
The name
Arnold Shultz is one we need to become better aware
of. Arnold was a wandering fiddler/guitarist in Kentucky who
had a wide range of influence. It is documented that he was a
major influence for Bill Monroe, Merle Travis and Ike Everly (father to
the Everly Brothers). He lived from 1886-1931 and
unfortunately, was never recorded.
The
Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation is keeping East
coast acoustic folk blues alive. Through weekly Saturday
jams, performances, workshops, exhibits, and lectures, AEBHF carries on
the educational tradition of celebrated Piedmont blues artist Archie
Edwards.
African-American Fiddlers on Early Phonograph Records (Many
black musicians active during the 1920s and '30s came from a
string-band tradition rooted in the 19th century, an era predating the
blues when fiddles and banjos were the predominant instruments, and
guitars a rarity. Although the blues signaled a major shift in
African-American music, the older traditions proved resilient, and a
number of black string bands were documented on early phonograph
records in spite of marketing strategies that frequently excluded them.
Record company executives, ever mindful of profit margins, were
impressed with the sweeping popularity of blues music among black
audiences, and felt reluctant to take a chance on the older forms of
African-American music. Black fiddlers and string bands, still common
in the South throughout the 1920s, were not entirely ignored by the
record industry, but were they were sadly under-represented.)
FOLKS,
HE SURE DO PULL SOME BOW! It's a funny thing. As we
embark further on our journey into the new century, we are just now
starting to rediscover all the long-forgotten, wonderful things about
the 20th. Whether it's bluegrass or early jazz, many music lovers have
developed a growing fondness for the musical styles of yesteryear. The
result has been a slow but growing interest in older recorded music,
music trapped on old 78 RPM records, just waiting to be unleashed by
modern technology.
Vintage Fiddle Music, 1927-1935. Blues,
Jazz, Stomps, Shuffles & Rags
The
Black Banjo-Playing Tradition in Virginia and West Virginia
(In 1781, Thomas Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia that
"The instrument proper to [blacks] is the Banjar, which they brought
hither from Africa, and which is the original of the guitar, its lower
chords being precisely the four lower chords of the guitar." While
Jefferson was wrong about the banjo being the original of the guitar,
he was right about its having been brought from Africa and about its
being "proper" to blacks, which I take to mean uniquely their
instrument and rather widely played by them.)
The
Banjo's African American Heritage
This article was written by Tony Thomas, the leading African American
scholar of the banjo. Thomas organized the 2005 Black Banjo Gathering,
served as contributing historian to the PBS documentary Give Me the
Banjo, plays banjo and guitar with the Ebony Hillbillies, and has
presented on Black banjo history and taught banjo at old time music,
blues, and banjo festivals, universities, and public schools in the
United States and Europe. His work has been published in periodicals
like The Black Scholar and the Old Time Herald and is forthcoming at
Illinois and Duke University presses. He can be reached for
presentations, performance, and classes at BlackBanjoEducation@outlook.com
Black
Cowboys, is a website dedicated to telling the story of African
American American Cowboys (which contrary to the old westerns portrayed in Hollywood,
did exist and were a part of the history of the West.
