We conclude our exploration of the African American presence and contribution to old time music with a documentary film I ran across this past week.  I haven’t watched it myself yet but it looks good.  Some members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and their mentor, Odell Thompson (his cousin Joe, the fiddler, died in 2012), are featured.  We’ll also hear from Earl White, founding member of the Green Grass Cloggers and still active as a fiddler and JAM program teacher.  On the scholarly side, there is Kip Lornell, a preeminent authority on gospel, old time, and other traditional music.

So, how can you watch the movie?  For those of us with a Transylvania County library card, it can be streamed via the Kanopy service.  And I believe many libraries also offer Kanopy.  Reelgood.com has an app that they claim is an option for watching the movie, but I think there’s a subscription fee involved.

And speaking of Joe Thompson, there’s an older, shorter documentary film about him, available on YouTube or the wonderful Folkstreams.