Black Roots: Frank Johnson, Joe Thompson and the fiddle in North Carolina

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Acclaimed musician Rhiannon Giddens returns to her home state of North Carolina to explore the lives of two black fiddlers: Joe Thompson and Frank Johnson. Johnson was one of the first black celebrities in the southern states of the US. Born into slavery, he bought freedom for himself and his family on the back of his profits as a musician. More than 2,000 people processed through Wilmington, North Carolina for his funeral in 1871. Though he died before the start of the recording industry, his music was passed down through generations of black fiddlers in the region. The last of these fiddlers was Joe Thompson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I know friendly on his dying bed held my hand to his bone breast.
0:19.0	When I had that stroke down the left side that tore me down.
0:23.8	I thought it was gone.
0:25.7	I come down that hospital that day and I sit myself.
0:30.4	One of them will ever play a fiddler again.
0:32.7	There calling me.
0:35.7	I'm going home and she's by my fiddler.
0:39.5	That's the voice of Joe Thompson, a black fiddler from Mevin,
0:43.0	North Carolina, recorded just a few years
0:45.8	before his death in 2012.
0:48.5	Joe was a mentor to me.
0:51.0	Well, he was more than a mentor.
0:53.3	He opened up a whole history of African American music to me.
0:58.6	I'm a musician from North Carolina, and you're listening
1:01.4	to Black Roots on the BBC World Service, a new series
1:05.2	where I look into the African American pioneers of folk
1:08.0	and country music.
1:13.9	This kind of music has come to be synonymous with white culture.
1:18.2	Why does the fact that black people
1:19.9	have a long history of playing fiddle and banjo music
1:22.8	seem so strange?
1:25.3	I want to begin this journey back through history
	...

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