We Are the Music Makers

We Are the Music Makers is an album from the founding trio of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Durham, North Carolina string band that brought African American old-time music to wide audiences beginning in the mid-2000s. Rhiannon Giddens sings and plays fiddle, banjo, and kazoo; Dom Flemons plays guitar, harmonica, banjo, and bones; and Justin Robinson plays fiddle, banjo, and mandolin. The three musicians formed the Carolina Chocolate Drops after studying under Joe Thompson, the North Carolina fiddler who had preserved a strain of African American old-time string-band tradition into the twenty-first century, and their shared approach combined exacting historical research with the communal energy of the string band as a social form. The program draws from the prewar African American string-band tradition with the same commitment to authentic performance practice that has characterized the trio's work throughout their career.