Music/Movie Combo at the NC Museum of Art

MUSIC/MOVIE COMBO
Carolina Chocolate Drops
Followed by a screening of The Great Debaters
Friday, August 1 | 7 p.m.
$15 ($12 Members) General admission
$7.50 Children 7?12
Children 6 and under free

A trio of talented young African American musicians known as the Carolina Chocolate Drops has sparked a revival of interest in the traditional stringband music of the Carolina Piedmont. The propulsive music of the fiddle and banjo, which once rang out at country dances throughout the Southeast, was popular with both white and African American farm and mill folk before the second World War. Eventually the rural black community lost interest in the older sounds and the music was carried forward largely by whites. The Carolina Chocolate Drops may just change all that. Inspired by one of the few remaining African American fiddlers?a Tar Heel named Joe Thompson?the Chocolate Drops have been taking the country by storm with their dynamic and infectious renditions of age-old tunes. The band features Rhiannon Giddens on banjo, Justin Robinson on fiddle, and Dom Flemons on guitar and jug.

The band contributed to the soundtrack of (and appears briefly in) the recent Denzel Washington directed movie The Great Debaters, which stars Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker. Based on a true story, the movie chronicles the triumph of the debate team from the small black college in east Texas that went on to win the national debating championship in 1935.

The Great Debaters (2007) Directed by Denzel Washington. Denzel Washington, Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett. (123 min.) PG-13

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