The three members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops belong to a generation whose musical tastes run to artists such as Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent.

Yet, Dom Flemons, Justin Robinson and Rhiannon Giddens, all in their 20s, prefer the old-timey sounds of Elizabeth Cotten, Gribble and Lusk, and fiddler Joe Thompson, a National Endowment for the Arts Folk Heritage Fellow, from Mebane.

This earlier generation of African-American artists played music that was grounded in agrarian values of the 19th and early 20th centuries, a time when music was homemade and performed at square dances and corn shuckings. For the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the music is both emotional and personal, connecting them to an important, but overlooked, expression of African-American culture.

"All three of us have a real strong interest in history," says Giddens, who will play fiddle and banjo with the band today through Sunday at MerleFest in Wilkesboro. "We've discovered through this music that we learn more about our own families and upbringing. So it's that connection to history and to family. Also, music today is getting so shallow and electronic, and this is music made by hand, which is what we were used to. That's also one of its draws."

Flemons (guitar, banjo, harmonica, jug), Robinson (fiddle, banjo), and Giddens (banjo, fiddle) met in 2005 at the Black Banjo Gathering, an academic conference held at Appalachian State University in Boone. During a jam session, they discovered their mutual interest in, and common approach to playing, the old tunes.

"We had a very nice moment where we realized that independently we had come up with the same funky arrangement of 'Old Joe Clark,' " Giddens says. "So we said we should play together. We really clicked.

"I had a dream of playing in an all-black stringband. I met the other guys and it was like magic."

After the conference, Flemons, a native of Arizona, moved to Chapel Hill to be closer to his new friends and to the source of his muse.

Giddens, a native of Greensboro, and Robinson, from Gastonia, live in Durham. They began visiting fiddler Joe Thompson, learning about an earlier period of African-American culture and the role of fiddle-banjo tunes in Piedmont farm communities.

Thompson, 88, grew up playing music for dances and other events with his banjo-playing cousin, Odell Thompson, and their fathers, who were brothers. Odell was killed in 1994, when he was struck by a car while crossing a street in Wilkesboro, where he and Joe were performing at MerleFest.

The trio chose of one the Thompsons' songs, "Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind,' as the title track for their debut album, released last year on the Music Maker Relief Foundation label. The CD features other Thompson songs, including "Georgie Buck" and "Black Annie."

"When you look at some of the old songs, they tell you about what's going on now," says Giddens. "Justin and I are from North Carolina and we're one generation removed from the farm. This music is rural music. For me, it's a connection to my family. My mom's side of the family is from Mebane, which is where Joe is from.

"All three of us consider Joe as a grandfather figure."

The Carolina Chocolate Drops bring a wealth of experience to their band. Flemons performed extensively in Arizona, where he was known for his rich repertoire of folk, jazz and blues. Robinson studied classical violin; his mother is a classically trained opera singer and cellist, and his sister plays classical piano. Giddens graduated from Oberlin Conservatory of Music with a degree in voice, and has performed in musical theater and opera. Last summer, she traveled to Gambia to study the akonting, a lutelike instrument played in traditional West African music.

Besides concerts and dances, the Chocolate Drops perform in schools where they use string-band music to teach students about the roots of hip-hop and rap. Giddens says that students are skeptical at first, but light up when they hear Flemons play the same sorts of rhythms on the jug that they hear on radio and CD.

"What we want to do is to continue to be true to the music and true to ourselves," she says. "We don't want to become a gimmick like 'The Carolina Chocolate Drops Do Hip-Hop.'

"We do songs that appeal to us and that we can do in a good, unique way. If people continue to want to hear that ... then we're happy. We also want to work with kids, telling them that the history of American music is not as black-and-white as people make it out to be.

"We want them to know that [African-Americans] used to do this music, too, and that here is an option to rap and to hip-hop, and that it will hopefully have meaning to them."

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