Carolina Chocolate Drops "Diddle Box"

Every summer, we cover The Newport Folk Festival live on mvyradio, as we did this past weekend. We take the Main Stage performances and air them in real time on the radio.

The question, as programmers, that we always have to ask, is "What does this sound like to the average listener?"

I mean, if you knew that mvyradio was going to be broadcasting Emmylou Harris at 6pm, and you really wanted to hear that, you'd tune in, and get what you were expecting.

But what about the people who listen to the station, who are not involved with/aware of/immersed in Newport Folk? What about the listeners who just like mvyradio and what we do. What is there experience when the tune into the station and get 45 minutes of a live performance?

Well, with familiar, straight-forward-style consensus-artists, like Amos Lee or Elvis Costello, I'm sure it only partially registers.

This issue that we worry about, are the more challenging (in relation to our usual programming) acts.

For instance, I had a few friends who had tuned in to the Gypsy Punk of Gogol Bordello, and said to me, "What was that!?"

This morning, I had to roll out of bed in Newport, and get in the car with DJ Jess Phaneuf and her boyfriend Ryan, and rush back to the ferry, so I could get to work in time to do my airshift today. Along with bringing back some of the equipment, we were transporting a stack of CDs---board mixes of the Main Stage performances.

Ryan popped in The Carolina Chocolate Drops, a band I do personally love.

But their old-time string band style, is not exactly in-the-pocket for mvyradio.

After a couple of songs, I said, "What do you think people were saying yesterday if they had just tuned into mvyradio, to get the usual mvy vibe while driving around the Island, or sitting on the beach?"

I mean, really, if you expected to tune into mvyradio because you know you're going to hear Van Morrison and Bonnie Raitt and Talking Heads and Ray Lamontagne, and instead you heard banjos and foot-stomping and twang, well . . .

"Because I'm betting those listeners were saying, 'What the fuck is this?'"

But then they introduced the 3rd song, called "Diddle Box."

We didn't really talk as we were listening, we all just kind of shook our heads. The vocal performance, the building energy, the free-style spirit, the incredible bridging of old time and scat and (did I detect some kind of Gaelic connection?) and the fully modern, totally won me over.

"What do you think those listeners are saying now?" said Ryan, knowing that the Chocolate Drops had effectively silenced any non-believers.

Here the whole set from Newport at mvyradio.com. "Diddle Box" comes in about 8 minutes into the show.

Not from Newport, but here's a video:

Carolina Chocolate Drops “Cornbread And Butterbeans”

We still have a lot to work out, as a society, when it comes to race.

I was in a public place, chit-chatting with an acquaintance. He was telling me a story about him and his friends. He happens to be white, his friends happen to be black.

So as he’s describing the scene and the dialogue, he’s affecting the voices of his friends.

Standing right next to him, is a young black man. He’s not part of the conversation, doesn’t know either of us. He’s just a bystander.

This guy I know is going on and on. Middle age white guy, doing his version of an older black man.

The bystander is pretending he’s not listening, but you can see by the way he “not listening,” and by his body language, that we’re in an uncomfortable zone for him.

And even if he wasn’t there, we’d entered an uncomfortable zone for me, because all I can think about is this: “Is it racist for a white guy to affect the voice of an older black man, IF he’s not doing a caricature, but a true and fair imitation?”

If I were listening to that conversation as an outsider, I think I would’ve thought, “This guy’s a racist.” But knowing that he wasn’t being cartoony, that he was sincerely trying to imitate someone he knew, made me wonder, “Why is this making me so uncomfortable?”

A short time later, I got in the car, and who should be on the radio, but The Carolina Chocolate Drops. And it posed a whole new set of questions for me.

Why does it feel so wrong, that they’ve titled their album “Genuine Negro Jig”? It’s a phrase I don’t think I’ll be able to bring myself to say on the air.

And if you’ve ever seen them live, you know the band usually dresses in period clothes (1930’s South), plays the jug and the washboard, and even dances broadly. It feel so wildly inappropriate on some level, but, in fact, the band is trying to be true to a tradition that, while carrying a lot of baggage, has great merit.

Intellectually, I know that what the CCD do is perfectly acceptable. But something in my gut still squirms a bit.

We still have a lot to work out, as a society, when it comes to race, and I guess my work starts within me.





Hear a live performance recorded by mvyradio at Newport Folk 2007 and head to the mvyradio archives for more performances from Newport Folk and Merlefest 2007 and Merlefest 2008.