![]() Say you have a gigantic stringed instrument that requires big waving arm motions that you’ve been doing all day at work-that’s what you do at play, as well. So, you automatically have the muscle memory. The folk music that you do later that night will incorporate the same movements because you’ve been doing it all day. So say, for example, when you’re working in the field you might be cutting grass with a gigantic blade and you have a certain movement that you do all day long, working. The idea of choreometrics was that, when you see a traditional culture do a dance, the movement represents everything about that particular culture that’s significant. In his later career, to serve as an academic for folklore music, he created a system called cantometrics, and another system called choreometrics. Of course, Carolina Chocolate Drops became very popular so we were able to tour all over the world and be able to be a performing arm for that type of music, which had been under represented in a lot of folklore.ĬITA: Could you give me a couple examples of what you mean by “cultural cues” in music?ĭom: I put it this way, the great folklorist Alan Lomax, he went out and recorded people for the Library of Congress in the thirties with his father. That’s kind of where I started with all of it. That’s a little bit heady on the subject, but when you hear me play, I’m just playing a song and trying to entertain you with it. And be able to embed cultural cues within my actual performances, so people react and respond and get to understand the cultures I’m representing. So I’ve been able to find a good hodge-podge of different things that have interested me in music and really crafting it in the true traditional style, which is knowing a bunch of different cultural cues that music can tell you. Tim Duffy’s tintypes of southern blues musicians were on exhibit at Florida Museum of Photographic Arts in 2018. Then I was able to really incorporate vernacular southern music in the style, the lifestyle into my performances. I was able to interpret that music is listened art. That was something that gave me a different perspective on music. Tim runs a nonprofit called Music Maker Relief Foundation and I got to meet some amazing older blues singers that were obscure singers, even in of themselves. I got connected with a fellow named Tim Duffy, who did a lot of photos in the most recent project … old tintype photography. I moved from Phoenix over to North Carolina, and I lived in Chapel Hill for a little while and Hillsboro for a little bit, as well. ![]() So that was when I started the group Carolina Chocolate Drops. I started studying the African and African American Banjo. ![]() Just listening to music and wanting to learn those styles.Īfter that, I went to an event called the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina. I got into the sixties’ folk revival … Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf, and Lightnin Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Boggs, Doc Watson, a whole bunch of different people. From there it turned into folk music, through Bob Dylan, of course. And Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Hank Williams, and that was where I started. That got me into early rock and roll like the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, stuff like that. ![]() Once I got into LPs, I really started to notice some amazing music. As I started getting into listening to records, first it was CD’s, then I got into LPs and cassettes a little bit growing up. That all goes back to my first years performing music. That’s one of the things I’ve tried to do from the beginning, is to be able to showcase a lot of different angles of American culture.ĬITA: For any of our readers who may be hearing about you for the first time, can you describe what it is you do with American historical music?ĭom: Sure. I was the first artist they’d ever had that was representing American historical music. There were 47 different countries representing. Quite a transition from busking on the streets of Phoenix.ĬITA: You represented the United States at the Rainforest World Music Festival in Malaysia recently.ĭom: Yeah. I’ve also gotten to travel to quite a few wonderful destinations in my time of doing music. 19 and spoke with us about his music and upcoming show at The Straz in this exclusive interview.Ĭaught in the Act: We have such a huge respect for what you have dedicated your career to do.ĭom: Oh, thank you so much! It’s been a very interesting and wonderful journey into music, as well as history and culture. Dom Flemons founded groundbreaking black string band Carolina Chocolate Drops and recently recorded a seminal music work, Black Cowboys, for Smithsonian Folkways.
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