Celebrating 20th Anniversary
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Celebrating 20th Anniversary **
Welcome
The Carolina Chocolate Drops are a GRAMMY Award Winning black string band created by Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson. In 2005, the original trio founded the group after attending the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, NC and in 2025 they are celebrating their 20th anniversary. In 2016, The Carolina Chocolate Drops were inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame and their legacy continues through their successful solo careers while extending to the next generation and their peers.
“Carolina Chocolate Drops, I believe, are not only paying homage to their ancestors who sang and played their way through some incredibly harsh conditions, but are also attempting to resurrect an entire genre of music not just lost amongst African-Americans but all Americans… Carolina Chocolate Drops are Rhiannon Giddens, Justin Robinson, and Dom Flemons, and are and will be for a long time, a powerful force in the world of roots music. This is roots music at its rootsiest and it must be heard.”
- No Depression
Carolina Chocolate Drops Founders
Dom Flemons
Dom Flemons “The American Songster" is a GRAMMY Award Winner with four GRAMMY nominations, Two-Time EMMY Nominee, International Acoustic Music Award Grand Prize Winner, and a 2020 United States Artists Fellow. Flemons received an Honorary Doctorate from Northern Arizona University and was inducted into the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame.
Flemons is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music scholar, historian, actor, narrator, host, slam poet, record collector, podcaster, and the creator, host, and producer of the American Songster Radio Show on WSM in Nashville, TN. Mojo Magazine declared “Dom Flemons is one of the most accomplished American Folk Artists… few have pumped as much lifeblood into tradition as he has.”
Rhiannon Giddens
Rhiannon Giddens is a two-time GRAMMY Award-Winning singer and multi-instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, Pulitzer Prize winner, and composer of opera, ballet, and film.
Giddens has centered her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, and advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art.
NPR named her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century and American Songwriter called her “one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet.”
Justin Robinson
Justin Robinson is a GRAMMY Award-Winning musician and vocalist, cultural preservationist, and historic foodways expert. Robinson has used his wide range of interests and talents to preserve North Carolina’s African American history and culture, connecting people to the past and to the world around them.
Robinson is also committed to helping African Americans rekindle their ties to the land. He is a founding member of the Earthseed Land Cooperative a collective in northern Durham “made up of farmers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and teachers who are currently engaged in creating alternative models for sustainability, equity, and cooperation within communities of color.”