Beyonce’s hit “Texas Hold ’Em” opens with a beat seldom heard on hip-hop tracks: the unmistakable clip-clop of a four-stringed clawhammer banjo. It comes via folk icon Rhiannon Giddens, who was invited by the pop superstar to play on the song from Cowboy Carter, an album celebrating the Black roots of country music.
For Dom Flemons, “Texas Hold ’Em” is more than music to his ears. It means a broader swath of listeners will be introduced to the banjo’s Black roots while doing the TikTok dance.
“It is very similar to Lil Nas X and ‘Old Town Road,’” Flemons says. “Those particular songs are bringing the idea of Black banjo and Black folk songs to a huge audience, along with the reality of Black cowboys.”
But these chart-toppers weren’t the millennium’s first foray into this underexplored history. With Giddens and Justin Robinson, Flemons co-founded the pioneering all-Black string band The Carolina Chocolate Drops in 2005.
“People were starved for this kind of music,” the 42-year-old musician says. “They really embraced [us].”
Flemons has since become the Swiss Army knife of contemporary Black folk music. During his story-filled shows, he plays various banjos, guitars, a harmonica and rhythm bones. Producer of the American Songster Radio Show on Nashville’s WSM, he is regarded as a major curator of early Black country and jazz history and recordings.
From Africa with love
Arizona might seem like an unlikely spot for such a banjo scholar to emerge. But that’s where Flemons first became entranced by the instrument after borrowing one from a friend and playing along with his favorite blues and country songs.
“One of the first times I heard a banjo was Earl Scruggs playing ‘Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.’ A lot of old cartoons would also feature old-time jazz with the banjo,” Flemons recalls. “So I got into both bluegrass and New Orleans jazz at the same time, but I wasn’t thinking about the banjo’s origins.”
As Flemons became swept away by the instrument’s natural syncopation and versatility, his understanding of its history broadened when he picked up Pete Seeger’s How to Play the Five-String Banjo.
“Pete talked about the banjo being a string instrument derived from Africa that became used in Southern mountain music,” he says. “I was 22 or 23. I was already aware that there were four-, five-, and six-string banjos that were used in the Black community.”
Flemons discovered a tradition of Black banjo stretching back more than 200 years. He points to early recordings of players like Lesley Riddle, whose tutoring of the Carter Family helped shape what country music became.
‘The beauties of the banjo’
The debut Black Banjo Gathering in North Carolina in 2005 was a turning point in Flemons’ life and Black acoustic music in the 21st century.
“I met banjo scholars and about two dozen Black banjo players and African players of the instruments that led to the banjo,” he says. That event was also where the members of The Carolina Chocolate Drops first met.
Flemons will share what he has learned since at two different Front Range shows. Swallow Hill’s debut BanjoFest on Nov. 9 is an all-day blowout featuring banjo workshops and concerts. Joining Flemons in Denver is acclaimed five-string bluegrass virtuoso Tony Trischka, an Earl Scruggs archivist and Béla Fleck’s banjo teacher, as well as Baltimore-based clawhammer banjo specialist Brad Kolodner.
“I’m going to be pulling out some of my unique arrangements. There’s one South African song I’ll perform called ‘Mahala,’” he says. Flemons will also tell stories and play tunes by Black banjo icons like Papa Charlie Jackson, Gus Cannon and Henry Thomas.
“I wish I had enough hands to bring all the banjos I play,” he says with a laugh.
The musician’s Nov. 10 show at the Chautauqua Community House in Boulder offers something a little different. The first half of the performance features Flemons accompanying an edited version of the 1939 film, The Bronze Buckaroo, an all-Black production starring Herb Jeffries, the first African-American singing cowboy. He’ll also share songs from his 2018 Grammy-nominated Black Cowboys album, researched in part at Denver’s Black American West Museum.
After the intermission, Flemons returns to pick and sing through a century of Black American folk, string and jug-band songs alongside his original tunes.
Ultimately, Flemons says the banjo’s enduring appeal — and the reason successive generations “discover” it — is its versatility in jazz, folk, blues, country, bluegrass, rock and, occasionally, even classical music.
“One of the beauties of the banjo is it allows you to go way beyond any singular style of music,” he says. “I’ve been able to take ideas from the banjo’s history and push them forward in some new directions.”
ON THE BILL: BanjoFest. Nov. 9, Swallow Hill, 71 E. Yale Ave., Denver. $50+ | Dom Flemons Presents Black Cowboys. Nov. 10, Chautauqua Community House, 900 Baseline Road, Boulder. $35