The rising tide of Black representation in (Mainstream) American roots music has resulted, to no inconsiderable extent, from the efforts of Dominique “Dom” Flemons and his colleagues in the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an exceptional band founded in Durham, North Carolina back in 2005. Flemons’ departure from the group in 2013 initiated what appears to have been the group’s final dissolution …
Mama’s Broke | Tiny Desk Concert
A couple of chairs, a small room and a cozy crowd describes the last eight years of tour stops for Mama’s Broke. Having performed in intimate venues including homes and cabins, as well as stages, being at the Tiny Desk may have felt right at home for the Canadian duo. Lisa Maria Bates and Amy Lou Keeler make powerful songs …
Jake Blount | Tiny Desk Concert
Jake Blount has an astonishing imagination. While a concert of folk tunes could simply be a singer and perhaps a fiddle or banjo, the young proponent of traditional music brought eight bandmates and told the NPR crowd that they were here to play “Black folk music from the future.” Most of the songs are from Jake Blount’s late-2022 release, The …
Jake Blount’s ‘The New Faith’ is a Cautionary, Clarifying Afrofuturist Tale
Generations ago, gospel giants Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson each sang the rhetorical question, “Didn’t it rain, children?” and bent time with the emphatic answers they supplied. “Just listen how it’s rainin’,” they urged, adopting present tense, “all day, all night.” Their ebullient, imaginative readings of the scriptural event of the Great Flood testified to past divine judgment and …