ALBUM REVIEW: Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson’s New LP Honors Past and Present

Rhiannon Giddens is a visionary, as well as a revitalizer. With her banjo and her voice, she has brought Black string band music to the attention of a mass audience through her work with The Carolina Chocolate Drops and as a solo artist.

Giddens grew up in rural North Carolina and had heard some of the Black sting band music since childhood, learning more about the music from going to contra dances in the area. But attending the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone in 2005 galvanized her and introduced her to Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson, who would go on to form The Carolina Chocolate Drops.

The Chocolate Drops released their first album, Dona Got A Ramblin’ Mind in 2006, and would release seven albums together (albeit in multiple lineup configurations), including 2010’s Grammy award-winning Genuine Negro Jig. Giddens recalls the band’s debut at MerleFest in 2008 — when their appearance at the tiny Watson Stage to the side of the Main Stage had attendees sprinting from their seats to see who and what was causing all the ruckus over there — as their turning point, setting them up to be the festival’s top merch sellers for two consecutive years and having fan come up to them for years afterwards, lauding that initial performance.

Since the Drops disbanded in 2012, Giddens has continued to record and perform solo and with a slew of collaborators including Beyoncé and Yo-Yo Ma. In 2022, she earned another Grammy for Best Folk Album for They’re Calling Me Home (ND review) and won the Pulitzer Prize (with composer Michael Abels) for the opera Omar in 2023.

But for this outing, Giddens reunites with former Chocolate Drop Robinson on fiddle, accompanying him on banjo and vocals. Describing the sound as a “digital porch,” the record was recorded outdoors with ambient sounds of birds and insects acting as accompanists. The 18-song package is mostly instrumental. Robinson voices a few quick stanzas about a minute into “Hook and Line,” a tune they learned from their mentor Joe Thompson, who trained them from his rural home in Mebane, NC in the art of performing Black string band music. Thompson, who passed away in 2012, played square dances around the Carolinas before World War II then worked in a furniture factory until being rediscovered in the ’70s and ultimately playing Carnegie Hall in 1990.

Invited to a rehearsal at Thompson’s house in 2006, Giddens, Robinson, and the rest of the Chocolate Drops realized that their mentor’s playing and teaching was special. Thompson’s fiddle playing was much more percussive, the rhythm an irresistible stimulant for his feet. “His style, it’s deceptive. You hear him play and you say, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ and then the more you hear him play the more you realize how much he’s putting in without even thinking about it,” Giddens said in a 2014 interview for O. Henry Magazine. “The rhythm in it is really unique. There’s a reason people have been rallying around him for years, because he is something special and he does have something that’s disappearing as a field for playing.”

Those lessons from Thompson are evident across What Did the Blackbird Say to The Crow, as is the homage to another mentor, Etta Baker. The duo offers dueling banjos for “Marching Jaybird,” a tune recorded at Baker’s Morganton, NC house. It’s a mellow, beautiful rendering, suitable for some outdoor porch, shoes off, feet up laid-back listening. Elsewhere, “Going to Raleigh” is as lively and upbeat as befits an outing from the farm to the capitol city.

Even a chestnut like “Little Brown Jug” gets an update, with Robinson doing the honors on vocals while Giddens provides the backbone and Robinson tosses out the fiddle guidelines for the feet to follow, and some birds in residence add their parts on the outro.

This new album is a good lead-in to Giddens’ upcoming inaugural Biscuits & Banjos Festival to be held in Durham April 25-27, 2025, which will feature a performance by the reunited Chocolate Drops, as well as sets from Taj Mahal, Leyla McCalla and more. The festival is already sold out, but a livestream of the Drops’ performance will be available. Even standing on its own, What Did the Blackbird Say to The Crow is enough to keep fans enthralled, coating the faithful with joy from head to foot.

Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson’s What Did the Blackbird Say to The Crow is due out April 18, 2025 via Nonesuch Records.