History is my biggest teacher.Collection: Teacher
Othering people is something that humans have done for ever.
When you sit at the feet of an elder, it changes you.
For me the bare feet are grounding. I'm connected to the Earth in a way that I cannot be any other way.
Separation in culture and arts does nobody any favors except for the people in power. That's just it... So I feel like I'm in the business of challenging that narrative.
I don't consider myself at the kind of stature of somebody who can play five cities on a tour, and that's it. I go where I'm wanted, and I've always had the rural areas of the country. We've always gone there, since the Carolina Chocolate Drops. There's a fan base that's there, and if I can afford to do it, I do it.
I kind of have found my identity through the music, through the roots music of North Carolina, and kind of realized that that's my identity as a North Carolinian.
White people are so fragile, God bless 'em. 'Well, I didn't own slaves.' No you didn't. Nobody is asking you to take personal responsibility for this. But you're a beneficiary of a system that did. Just own that and move on.
My dad's white, my mom's black, and I've struggled with being mixed race.
To learn the history of the banjo is to recover the actual history of America.
In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.
My work as a whole is about excavating and shining a light on pieces of history that not only need to be seen and heard, but that can also add to the conversation about what's going on now.
Being mixed in the South, that's a struggle that everybody deals with differently. Some people go careening to one side or the other, and some people try to walk a tightrope between the two. I grew up spending equal time with both sides of my family.
I love the U.K. folk scene. In the States, nobody knows what to do with me. There's still a very narrow definition of Americana.
At some point you have to take responsibility for who you are and where you are and being able to listen to other points of view, whichever side of the tracks you're on.
I grew up listening to country music. I got into traditional stuff later, but I listened to the commercial stuff of the '90s, especially the women who were so strong, like Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kathy Mattea. It's a great art form.
People say, 'I'm tired of thinking about race, it's a drag.' Yeah, well, welcome to my life! I don't care who you are. We have the time and the headspace for this stuff. The least you can do is take a moment.
My stuff lives in Nashville but I live wherever my children are.
When I first got into string-band music I felt like such an interloper. It was like I was sneaking into this music that wasn't my own... I constantly felt the awkwardness of being the raisin in the oatmeal.
I remember so vividly the first time I saw one of Marshall Wyatt's superb compilations called 'Folks He Sure Do Pull Some Bow' and seeing a picture of a black fiddler and freaking out. I had stumbled upon the hidden legacy of the black string band and I wanted to know more.
Getting into the banjo and discovering that it was an African-American instrument, it totally turned on its head my idea of American music - and then, through that, American history.
When I first heard the minstrel banjo - I played a gourd first - I almost lost my mind. I was like, Oh, my god. And then I went to Africa, to the Gambia, and studied the akonting, which is an ancestor of the banjo, and just that connection to me was just immense.
Well, you know, the original banjos were all handmade instruments. Gourd - it would be made with gourds and whatever, you know, materials would have been around. And, you know, first hundred years of its existence, the banjo's known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument, you know?
So my mom's folks are from one side of Greensboro - and, you know, outside of Greensboro. And my dad's folks, the white side, is from another very small town outside of Greensboro. So both sides are coming from the country.
I decided to study music my last year in high school.
Black women have historically had the most to lose and have therefore been the fiercest fighters for justice.
I had this dream like years ago. I had this dream - I wanted to be in an all-black string band.
I think that we definitely want to experiment, and if there's a hip-hop song that we like, we'll cover it. We don't want to be one of those bands that's like, you know, you know - Carolina Chocolate Drops does hip-hop. I mean, just know - you know, if it naturally works itself in, you know, cool.
There is a black folk music audience. They're just very small.
We're not here as a black band playing white string band music. You know, we play stuff in the Appalachians, we play stuff in the white community, but we really highlight the black community's music.
I really got into Gaelic music and the whole sound of it, and I got to go to Scotland.
I mean, my training at Oberlin has been absolutely valuable.
When I do Gaelic music, I've learned about Gaelic culture; I've tried to learn the language. Whenever I do mouth music and there's Gaelic speakers in the audience, and they come up and go, 'Good job,' I'm always like, 'Phew.'
You know, I really feel a responsibility to the music, and I teach workshops in music sometimes. And folks do come to me and they go, 'How do I make this blues song my own? How do I feel like I'm not an impostor doing this?' And I'm like, 'That's an excellent question.' That's where you should start, where you go, 'How does this speak to me?'
You have to find the balance of figuring out how can I be effective? How can I use my platform for good, you know, without jeopardizing everything so that I don't have that platform anymore.
I'm a North Carolina native. Grew up in North Carolina.
Each song has its own way that it likes to be done, but it can be more than one way. If you tap into it, you can feel it.
I think songs can have different lives.
Every song has a heart, and I just go for that.
I used to subscribe to Nintendo Power. The first issue had 'Mario 2,' and it had all the characters rendered in clay. So I started making all of these characters out of clay.
I like Queen Latifah.
I'm not gonna force something or fake something to try to get more black people at my shows. I'm not gonna do some big hip-hop crossover.
I'm not an urban black person. I'm a country black person.
I'm still black in the eyes of America.
We have to talk about the negativity, but we have to enjoy the beauty of what this country, culturally, has done.
It's not about me, it's about the music. I don't do this because I want to be a star. I don't do this because I want to make a lot of money.
What's really interesting to me is to have a connection to what was going on in the past, but to make it a living thing.
I'm so interested in the feminism of women in American music. These ladies, going out on the road, way before the opportunities and advantages that I have - it was absolutely rough out there. The fact that they were still able to get their art out there and do what they're doing is really impressive to me.
The question is not how do we get diversity into bluegrass, but how do we get diversity back into bluegrass?
Nobody can know what their legacy is going to be, you know?