Unsung Black Heroes of Folk Rock

Songs: “Tripping Billies” by the Dave Matthews Band, “Big Country” by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, “Love Her In The Mornin” by Rising Appalachia, “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman

Listen for Carter Beauford’s exceptional drumming and Boyd Tinsley killin’ at at 3:00.

The idea for this article germinated when I ran into my old neighbor (a Black engineer for NASA) who was wearing a Floydfest shirt. (For the un-initiated, that’s a big yearly bluegrass festival an hour south of Roanoke, VA.) It got me thinking: there are so many fantastic Black folk-rock musicians whose work gets overshadowed by Caucasian band members and Black History Month would be an ideal time to give them some much-deserved credit. Roots music all too often gets whitewashed, but it actually draws on a rich tradition of African rhythms, harmonies, and instruments; the five-string banjo, a staple of the folk genre, was originally developed by West African slaves working on Caribbean sugar plantations. Tl;dr: traditional American composition and performance are a lot more diverse than you might think.

Nowhere is this more evident than the Dave Matthews Band, a Virginia jam quintet that formed in 1991. I’ll defer to the opinion of my Peabody-trained high school piano teacher: “I’m not a fan of Dave, but I love the band!” The group’s notable standouts were all Black: Boyd Tinsley on violin, LeRoi Moore (R.I.P.) on saxophone, and Carter Beauford on percussion (ranked #10 on Rolling Stone’s list of Greatest Drummers.) The odds of finding three world-class talents in the sleepy mountain hamlet of Charlottesville, VA (pop. 50,000) were astronomically small and yet it happened- to the tune of 25 million concert tickets and 38 million albums sold. Without his mostly Black ensemble, Dave would probably still be playing weeknights at Mellow Mushroom Pizza instead of winning Grammys, buying wineries, and selling out basketball stadiums.

A young “DMB” was greatly helped by the addition of Boyd Tinsley (far right) in 1992, who was a much bigger concert draw at the time.

Another outfit to benefit from diversity was Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, a jazz/bluegrass fusion quartet active since the late 80s. Helmed by Caucasian banjo virtuoso Fleck, the group has won seven Grammys and received consistently ecstatic (bordering on giddy) critical reviews- “marvelous musicians,” “fires on all cylinders,” and “so fresh, so innovative, so important.” The Flecktones feature two phenomenal Black talents: brothers Victor and Roy Wooten (the latter known as “Future Man.”) Victor was ranked among Rolling Stone’s Top 10 Bassists of All Time and Future Man plays an electronic instrument called the Drumitar that he developed himself. They co-write many of the band’s songs (notably the spoken-word “Sojourn of Arjuna,” based on the Bhagavad Gita) and have played an integral role in shaping the Flecktones’ unique sound.

Our existing pantheon of instruments wasn’t enough for Future Man, so he made his own. Think about that for a minute.

The next group deserves a whole article of their own: Atlanta’s brilliant, effortless Rising Appalachia, melding folk and soul with world influences. The band originally started as two multi-instrumentalist sisters, Leah and Chloe Smith, who recorded a handful of harmonized traditional tunes for friends and family in 2005. They received so much positive feedback that they started performing full-time and released a second album two years later called Scale Down. I was a teenager in the Blue Ridge Mountains back then; half my memories involve blasting this CD in my battered, rusting ’92 Subaru. (I’ll admit that I’ve been a huge fan for years and saw them live recently in D.C.) The sisters performed solo at first but gradually added backing members- notably African musicians Biko Casini (djembe, ngoni) and Arouna Diarra (ngoni, balafon, talking drum.)

We always sense connections between far removed places, and our album [2019’s “Leylines”] is a reflection of that with the layering of Appalachia, Ireland, and West Africa.

-Chloe Smith

Trad melodies with an urban kick.

You can’t write about Black folk musicians without mentioning Tracy Chapman, a prodigiously talented vocalist and guitarist whose soothing, world-weary voice crossed into the mainstream with 1989’s “Fast Car.” Her debut Tracy Chapman won her three Grammys and is one of the best-selling albums of all time. (Rolling Stone rated it #10 on the “100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s.”) Chapman’s low, impassioned voice and tragic storyline makes “Fast Car” an absolute knockout masterpiece; one reviewer credited her as singlehandedly “reviving the singer-songwriter tradition.” Her lyrics are infused with social and political commentary without being preachy or overbearing. This song was considered such a landmark that she sang it for Nelson Mandela’s 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley Stadium (along with co-performers Sting, Dire Straits, Whitney Houston, Eurythmics, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Wonder, and Salt-N-Pepa.)

They don’t make songs like this anymore.

I’m sure I’ve barely scratched the surface of Black folk-rock talent; these are just a few that immediately come to mind. Please comment if you have suggestions- I’m always open to new music!

Hey hey! Thanks for visiting- your presence is warmly welcomed. Please correct me if I accidentally got something wrong. If there are any songs, artists, or genres you’d love to learn more about, I’m always down for recommendations! This blog is free to read (and always will be) due to a fair amount of academic traffic, but you can always buy me a coffee (aka put a tip in my jar) if you enjoyed this article.