Justin Robinson

He grew up in Gastonia with grandparents who loved country music and a mother who sang opera, and he took classical violin lessons from about nine until thirteen, when he gave them up. While he was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, old-time jams drew him back to the instrument as a fiddler. In April 2005 he went to the first Black Banjo Gathering at Appalachian State University in Boone, mainly because Joe Thompson would be there, and met Giddens. That summer Robinson, Giddens and Flemons were all living in Durham and visiting Thompson regularly to learn from him.

The three formed the Carolina Chocolate Drops in November 2005, with Robinson on fiddle and also playing jug and beatboxing. Their albums with him were Dona Got a Ramblin’ Mind (Music Maker, 2006), Heritage (2008), Carolina Chocolate Drops & Joe Thompson (Music Maker, 2009), recorded live with Thompson at MerleFest on 25 April 2008, and Genuine Negro Jig (Nonesuch, 2010). In February 2011 the band announced that he was leaving, citing in his case the strain of constant touring.

His first full solo album, Bones for the Tinder, made with his band the Mary Annettes, was reviewed in January 2012; it set rhythm and blues, soul and hip-hop on folk instruments. He went on to a master’s degree in forestry and environmental science at North Carolina State University and to work as a culinary historian of the foods of the African diaspora. In 2024 he and Giddens recorded What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow, eighteen North Carolina fiddle and banjo pieces, many of them learned from Thompson, with Robinson playing one of Thompson’s own restored fiddles. Nonesuch released it on 18 April 2025.