Oral History: Hubby Jenkins | Old Time Music from Brooklyn, New York

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>> Stephen Winick: Welcome. This is Steve Winick with The American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. We've been doing the Homegrown Concert Series for many years. During the pandemic of 2020, we shifted focus to doing this series as a video concert series, which we call Homegrown at Home. So, now in 2021, we are in our second season of Homegrown at Home concerts. And we were very happy to have with us in this year's series Hubby Jenkins. Hubby is a great old time and blues musician, does gospel songs as well, living in Brooklyn, and we have him here for an interview. So, Hubby, welcome to the Homegrown at Home interview series. >> Hubby Jenkins: Thank you. Good to be here. Had fun playing the concert in my backyard. And, yeah, look forward to talking to you. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, that was really fun. So, you are from Brooklyn, I believe, a New Yorker. So, tell us how you got into music growing up in Brooklyn. >> Hubby Jenkins: Sure. Well, yeah, I grew up in Brooklyn. I grew up with two moms. One of my moms is Puerto Rican. My other mom's family is from North Carolina. But she was born and raised in Queens. But with that, I grew up with like a lot of music, so like whenever a cookout or barbecue, just hearing lots of different types of music. On my Puerto Rican side of the family, there was always conga drums. And, you know, someone would put a cowbell in my hand and like probably learning the Clave was the first thing I ever did as a kid. And then I started playing saxophone from the age of like five, I played saxophone from the age of five all the way into high school. And I guess that's where I like learned to like read music and play with other people. And I had a really good teacher in middle school, Kevin K. Knutsen, who had a very funny sense of humor. All of our permission slips, he would just put KKK on because he thought it was funny. And 11 year old me thought it was funny too. But just like how to use your ear, he made us, he did sure everyone could snap with both hands and play with rhythms and do things like that. And around that time, I kind of like discovered music and stopped watching as much TV and obsessively listened to everything. And back then, CDs were cheap, so I could just like get my allowance or whatever and just spend it all on CDs. And, you know, one movie at a matinee or something. But, yeah, I guess that's most, the bulk of my childhood and raising. And I guess I grew up like in the late 80s. I have like distinct music memories. Like I remember when like 36 Chambers of Death by Wu Tang Clan came out, and like just walking on the streets, and just heard it everywhere, every boombox, every car passing, just like things like that just amazed me. And one last tangent. But just like I remember being 11 or 12, and our apartment was right on the corner, and I was listening to the radio, 103.5 KTU, that's a dance music station in New York, and they were playing Rick James' Super Freak. And it's the part where he goes ha ha ha, like that part of the song. And I'm like just sitting like looking out the windows, listening to the radio, and there was this person walking across the street and they have their headphones in and they just stopped in the middle of street and went ha ha ha like that, and I like was like oh, snap, we're listening, like, I don't know, like it just blew my 12 year old mind, like, all right, we're all listening to it. Something about that really stuck with me for sure. >> Right. No, that's great. And, yeah, it kind of gives you that feeling of the city and how, you know, that's going on all the time during like your, it's a big community, and it's great, it's a great place to live and grow up in many ways. So, so, at some point, you took this, you know, giant musical stew, right, of everything, and you ended up focuses a little bit on what we would now say was like old time music or folk music, or, you know, given one of those names. So, how did that happen? >> Yeah, in high school, I dropped the saxophone because the music teacher was weird. He was too patriotic for me actually. And then I started playing cello and viola in the orchestra, classical orchestra. And then started playing bass there. And people were like, oh, you can read, you know, the same, it's the same cleft or whatever, so you can play this music. And I started playing bass in bands, getting into, you know, I heard Jimi Hendrix for the first time and Bob Dylan for the first time. And so getting into playing bass and I started a band with some friends and we were just like imitating 60s music. Like we were just all about the 60s. And then we got really into Bob Dylan. And somehow eventually we got our, you know, got our hands on his first record. And that's basically blues, they're all blues covers, that album. I think he covers like Bukka White on there and some other stuff. And so I had a good friend, who is still a friend of mine, Jonah, whose dad is a, or I don't know if he still does, but he was a collector of CDs and tapes and records. This is pre internet now. So, well, not pre internet, but like, you know, the way it is now. So, we would like, oh, like I heard of someone named Bukka White, you know, we'd just go to Jonah's dad house and like look through the shelves and borrow the CD. And so that was kind of my first intro to a lot of that, that music. And I now am in like post high school. I'm taking my year off from college, which is a couple of decades in counting now. And I threw a party like my parents were out of town and threw like, you know, let's just have a few friends over, and it turned into a big old party. And a friend of mine made me a mixed CD and I had a terrible fight with my then girlfriend and ticked everyone out of the party and put on the mix CD that he had made for me after everyone was gone, and the first track was Devil Got My Woman Blues by Skip James. And I was like, I was like, I get the blues now entirely for the very first time, and I got a paycheck from the ice cream stand I was working in at Bryant Park and went to Guitar Center and said turn this into a guitar. And that's how I got my first guitar. And I spent the whole day in the ice cream stand just learning cords. And then I quit like maybe a week or so later, and was like I'm going to play music. >> Stephen Winick: That's cool. So, so that was, so that sort of put a guitar in your hands. But you also now play a whole bunch of other instruments, some of which are, you know, things that have become part of the identity of you and some of the bands that you're in, including the banjo. So, why don't you talk about how you sort of diversified into other string instruments? Because, I mean, I know you also play mandolin, you play a lot of stuff. So, talk about your instruments a little bit. >> Hubby Jenkins: Sure. Yeah, that's how the guitar came to me. I think the banjo came next. And is that true? Wow, at my age, it's hard to remember the orders. But like it was around the time I was living with some musicians in College Point in Queens. And we would hang out in Washington Square Park a lot, kind of our connection to the old time music being New Yorkers was the, you know, the West Village, and the folk scene of the 50s and 60s. And so that's where we would congregate a lot. And we would meet musicians who would also, folkies who would go there, and we just, you know, you need a place to crash, and they would just crash at our house. And one day I woke up and was walking in my living room and I tripped over someone. I'm like, who are you? And he's like, I'm the Don. I'm like, the Don? No, Dom, Dom Flemons. And my roommate had met Dom in Washington Square Park, and that's how we met each other. And I think it was maybe the next year he came past, or maybe later, I don't know, at some point he came through with a friend, Lydia, from, I think she's from Baltimore, or D.C., and they were just traveling together. And she had a banjo. And we were in Washington Square Park, and she was like, oh, yeah, this is my traveling banjo. And she started showing me how to claw hammer. And I picked it up like in an hour or a stupid quick time. I always tell people it was like, you know, the light from heaven shined on me, and it just clicked, or bounced, or bum diddied. And just, you know, a little bit of a tangent too, you know, you know, I'd listen to like, you know, Harry Smith folk anthology or whatever, and I would skip like Clarence Ashley and skip a lot of that stuff. I was kind of like I don't know what that is, I don't really get what's happening there, it's not really, I don't know if that's my music, I don't know what the hell that is, you know, and I was just really like blues focused for a very long time. And then like reading whatever book, I think I was reading like Birth of a Banjo or [inaudible] or something and just like learned that the banjo was a black instrument, and it kind of like blew my mind, you know, 20, 21 year old Hubby just like, ah. And then the banjo, and then literally this banjo came into my hands, and then I was able to like claw hammer very quickly. And she gave it to me. She was like, you can just have this banjo. And so that became that. And then I ended up getting a mandolin and doing that to play, you know, blues stuff, and just kind of picking with friends. And the bones I actually learned from Michael [inaudible] Common Ground on the Hill in Westminster, Maryland, which is a, if we had a lot of time, I could tell you a lot of stories about that. But, and then when I joined The Carolina Chocolate Drops, you know, I got a call from their manager who I started doing some work with solo, and he was like, hey, do you play the violin? And I was like, not even a little bit. And he was like, okay, do you want to be the main banjo player for Carolina Chocolate Drops? And that really like catapulted my banjo playing for sure. >> Stephen Winick: That's great. Well, let's talk about The Carolina. >> Hubby Jenkins: Oh, go ahead. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, I was going to say, let's talk about The Carolina Chocolate Drops a little bit, because we've sort of gotten there in your story, and that was a big part of how I met you, but also, you know, it's how you first came to the library, but also just your musical career. So, let's talk about that. How did you meet up with those folks and start that process? >> Hubby Jenkins: Sure. How long is this? Can I just ramble like I've been rambling? >> Stephen Winick: Well, it's going to go probably close to an hour, so you can probably ramble a little bit, we're okay. >> Hubby Jenkins: All right, we're good, we're good. >> Stephen Winick: I'll ring it in if I have to, but, yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins: Yeah, yeah, I give you, I give you that power, please. >> Stephen Winick: Thank you. >> Hubby Jenkins: But, yeah, so me getting into The Chocolate Drops, I guess there's a few things. So, like in that time period of like hanging around in the West Village, there was me and some friends found out about a show happening in the back of a Thai restaurant on McDougal Street, and the person running the show was like I don't want to do this anymore. So, my friend, Farol [phonetic] Foster took it over and every Wednesday night just started doing a folk show. And we would just invite young people and just like we were playing folk music in the back of this Thai restaurant and a show called Roots and Ruckus, which like grew and still happens today. We're actually having their Roots and Ruckus festival this weekend at Jalopy Tavern, or Jalopy Theatre. But anyway, so I met a lot of people from playing there. And like my first like gigs were playing there every Wednesday and like, and through that I ended up meeting this guy, Sam, and Karen Duffy, who were a couple, and Sam Duffy was a brother of Tim Duffy, who runs Music Make a Relief Foundation, and was the first manager of Carolina Chocolate Drops. So, I met him and Dom like within a couple years of each other. And just through like, you know, me being good at playing music and them needing someone handsome and black and talented to fill in after Justin left, I got the call. And we, I did my little audition, and it went great, as you can imagine. And I remember like, they're like, okay, we're going to go, it was like maybe the fall, they're like, we start in February. Like, great. Like, what's your repertoire? And they're just like, oh, no problem, and they just mailed me all of their CDs. They're like, that's our repertoire. I was like, okay, cool. And just kind of started to go through it. It was the first time I had really like listen listened to Joe Thompson and started breaking down his stuff a little bit. And then, of course, and then in that first year, we did 260 days on the road and 200 and some odd shows. So, that really like busted my chops and learning more in that way. And I don't know if they, had they already had the kind of tradition of stopping by when they came through D.C.? >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, the first time we had them in the reading room, you weren't in the group yet, but, yeah, so Justin was there actually that first time, so >> Hubby Jenkins: Yeah. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins: And so when we went, I was, I was totally amazed. And I remember the first time that I, we came through, because I remember I played Sam Cook Live at the Harlem Square Club in the band on the way there, which I think is one of the greatest albums of all time. And they didn't, they didn't like it as much. And I was like, these people are weird. And then we got to the, and then we got to the reading room, I was like, all right, they're all right, they're all right. And, yeah, and I think that was just, you know, it was also a cool thing to being able to, what's the word I'm looking for, I just like feel like part of the reason why I became, you know, I don't know if I would call myself a researcher, but like became interested in that sort of thing is just, you know, when you're black and you play this music, old time music, you can feel very isolated, especially if you're, I don't know, in New York, but I don't know what it can be like if you're also in the South and like the spaces you go to are very white and people are telling you like, you know, different things about it. So, you just end up reading and wanting to dive into more and just, you know, get to the truth of things. And so that was kind of the impetus for me. And so when we're, you know, in an all black string band, and our mission is to like, you know, reinsert black people into the narrative of American music, and then, you know, there's this wonderful place that we can just walk into and like hear it, and also hear like, oh, you've heard that recording, but have you heard this one before, you know, or like, you know, I've never heard Skip James curse before, or whatever, I'm making stuff up. But like that just seemed very magical to me. Yeah, it's like Hogwarts or something like that, I don't know. >> Stephen Winick: Right. It's interesting that you say that, because one of the things that always comes to my mind is people really associate the blues with just a guy with a guitar, but if you come to our archive and you listen to those first muddy waters recordings, for example, he's playing guitar, but there's a mandolin and there's a fiddle and it's basically string band music with muddy singing and playing guitar. And people have kind of erased black people from the string band tradition in their minds, but there were always African American string bands, and Carolina Chocolate Drops, you know, is a great example of that tradition. Did you meet any of the old timers from other string bands, other African American string bands as a member of The Chocolate Drops? >> Hubby Jenkins: Did I meet any other members of African American string bands? I don't know. I think like through Music Maker, I was able to meet, you know, they had a big heavy focus on blues, so I met a lot of older blues musicians there. In my life, I mean, no, I would say probably not. You know, without The Chocolate Drops, I was able to spend time with people like John Cohen of New Lost City Ramblers and stuff like that. But no, I don't think so. Oh, and I guess I met, what is it called, I went to the second black banjo gathering in Boone, North Carolina. And there I met like Joe Thompson for the first time. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins: I think I met Otis, Otis Taylor for the first time. Yeah, sorry, I'm blanking on that one. >> Stephen Winick: So, just, so, just a couple of folks, but, yeah, but, I mean, it just speaks to what you were saying, that the tradition, you know, there was kind of a hiatus, right, so that most of the folks who played in that tradition were very old by the time you were getting into the scene. And so, yeah, and so it was, that speaks to the isolation that you were talking about, right, as a black person trying to do this person, and you find that your antecedents are either, you know, super old or they're white. So, it's >> Hubby Jenkins: Right. >> Stephen Winick: You know. >> Hubby Jenkins: Yeah, for sure. >> Stephen Winick: That you found yourself in. Yeah, well, one thing that I've heard you talk about before, and you might want to mention it now, is the Black Banjo Reclamation Project on this same topic. >> Hubby Jenkins: I guess it's the Banjo Reclamation Project is in California, in the Bay Area, in Oakland probably, I'm going to say it's in Oakland. Hannah Mayree is running it. And it's this project of, you know, getting, you know, they're getting money, getting instruments together and being able to take banjos and put them into the hands of black and brown kids. And, you know, this, the banjo reclamation, you know, it's just such a very strong name, but, you know, the power, let me just still my emotions. When I started playing the banjo, when I started touring with Chocolate Drops and we would play shows and say, you know, the banjo is a black instrument, and at that time I think that would be like the most, you know, radical we would get with what we talked about, you know, and still after shows people would be like that's a lie, my granddaddy played the banjo, like, boy, you don't know what you're talking about, like people would get aggressive, like upset, like very mad about it. And so it becomes like, you know, also like, you know, just this denial of history, right, it's a denial of history, but it's a denial of my history, it's a denial of me, it's a denial of my ancestors, it's a denial of their importance, but like by proxy my importance as an American, right? To say like, no, you had nothing to do with the thing that you, like this is my, this is ours too, you know, fuck you. And so I'll try not to curse that much, New Yorker over here, so I'm like, you know, to be, so that became very important, very emboldening to be like, no, banjo is a black instrument, you're going to deal with it. And then you're also going to deal with an hour and a half of black people just playing banjo at you. You know? And not to make it us versus them, but just that pride of doing it, right? And so when you have this thing, like this Banjo Reclamation Project, or just like, you know, when we, when I go to schools, or when we used to go to schools as a band, you know, looking at kids and saying like this is yours too. Right? Like you are not a visitor here, you are not a guest here, like this is also yours, this country is also you, like you are part of cultivating this thing. And so I just think it's a very beautiful project and very important. >> Stephen Winick: Cool. Well, thanks for talking about it a little bit. To go back to The Chocolate Drops, so, so, you joined this band, you said you did this first massive tour, you know, 200 plus dates in your first year, and then you stayed with them for some years. So, talk a little bit about the dynamics of that band and some of the great people you were able to play with in the band. >> Hubby Jenkins: Sure. I guess, you know, over the years with The Carolina Chocolate Drops, you know, I won't go too deep. Oh, you meant musical dynamics, not band dynamics, obviously. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins: I've been watching that Beatles documentary. And, boy, you know, I just relate to so there's one part where Paul looks at George and he goes, look, you can play it slow or you can play it good. And I was like, oh, I've been in that, I've been in that room before. But, you know, when I first joined Chocolate Drops, it was me, Rhiannon, Dom, and Adam Matta, the human beatbox machine. And just right there, you can see a lot of what we were doing was taking different traditions, different folk traditions. I include hip hop as a folk tradition. But that's maybe another video we could make. But like didn't you guys just do the hip hop? Anyway, I'm on a tangent. The coffee's going to go away, I'm going to bring the water over here. But, you know, just combining these different traditions, and just seeing how that works, you know, being able to just, you know, boom, soured mountain, straight, we're all timing it, we can bring it to you with a little blue razz flavor. But we could also play for you, Rhiannon's going to do some Gaelic little ting. Adam's going to do a beat on the human machine, on, you know, with his mouth. Dom's going to play a giant bass drum and the [inaudible] drum, and I'm going to play bones in the style of madness. You know? And that becomes all these different traditions coming together. So, that was always kind of a cool aspect, you know, cool aspect of playing. And so that he had with that, and then we got to play with Layla Macala [phonetic], Malcolm Parson, my brother from another mother, Rowen Corbit [phonetic], I think that's all The Carolina Chocolate Drops, before we get into Rhiannon Giddens' band. And it's funny, we also, we played, we played the Grand Ole Opry a couple of times. And I forget like, it's like the second time we played there, because Malcolm was with us at this point. And there was a guard there who was telling us that like, you know, there are maybe like six black people who had ever performed at the Grand Ole Opry, and it was like Charlie Pride, Ray Charles, DeFord Bailey, James Brown, the guy from Hootie & the Blowfish, and then like eight people from Carolina Chocolate Drops, you know what I mean. So, I was like that's pretty, there's something amazing about that, you know, but also Grand Ole Opry got it together, but also just, you know, amazing. And so, yeah, that was just the beauty of that, and just traveling around and seeing people react positively to the music, being able to create and combine these things. And then over time, you know, like the first couple of years, it's like the banjo is a black instrument, the banjo is a black instrument. And then eventually getting questions like, you know, what are the ramifications of an all black street band playing this music in America today? Like okay, we're getting there, you know, like how does this relate to like what happened to Freddie Gray last week, like yes, okay, now we're getting there, you know? So, it was interesting. I don't know. It's just, I'm just very grateful to have that journey and have that band during that time, if that makes sense. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, and I guess through the success of the band, you were able to play in spaces that as you say have been typically dominated by white people, you know, the Opry being an obvious example, but just the whole bluegrass scene, the whole kind of Americana scene, the image that we have within those, you know, those spaces is typically a bunch of white people. So, what was it like to be that band that was able to, you know, go in there and have everyone go, whoa, these guys are amazing? >> Hubby Jenkins: You know, across the board, like just generally, it was great. And it was just great to like perform and people to be like, whoa, you just knocked my socks off, or whoa, you just blew my mind. Excuse me. And it's also work, you know, it can be hard, because sometimes you'd have to break, you have to break the ice or break through to people sometimes, you know? And people will quickly put up their guard if, you know, like we were saying before, with something as simple as the banjo is a black instrument, that chiaroscuro put people on guard. You know, and then you also have things like would people get too comfortable. You know, one of my first festivals I ever played, this is before Chocolate Drops, but I played at Shakori Hills Festival in North Carolina. And one night I was hanging out like around a fire playing music with all these musicians and having a great time, and then all of a sudden like they start dropping N bombs and telling nigger jokes. And I was just like, oh, you know, like they told me about the South, you know, and so he says, I just have to deal with it, you know, I dealt with it by like telling the worst nigger joke that I know, and it made everyone stop. But I was young and drunk on moonshine for the first time. But like as you get older, you also like deal with things, where people are calling you boy or talking to you in a certain way that you have to like, oh, yeah, assert yourself and like constantly have to defend, not defend, I think it starts with a word in these spaces, and then other times it's just welcoming, you get to play music that you freaking love with people who are really good at it, you know? So, it's a mixed bag, I guess. But now I think, I don't know, that's all turning around. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. Well, so, you know, you mentioned, you know, that's all The Chocolate Drops before it became Rhiannon Giddens' band, before we moved into that phase. So, talk about working with Rhiannon as the Rhiannon Giddens' band. >> Hubby Jenkins: Yeah. I mean, that was, how did that even start, you know, I guess like T Bone Burnett was a big part of that, and we did some stuff for that movie, the Llewyn Davis movie. But that's when we like, when we got some white folks in the band, Jason, Jason Sypher and Jamie Dick on drums, Jason on bass, whose birthday is coming up in a couple days. And just so became like, you know, bigger and more rockish. Your boy, Hubby Jenkins, started playing electric guitar. I had never even owned an electric guitar until this band. And just people would talk about like you don't know how to set an amp? And I was like, uh, you know, but I learned about that kind of stuff and reverb and just loving it. You know, you could just hit one note and just walk away from the guitar if you want. And so that was pretty rockish. And then I think we started getting, I don't know, we started getting more shows. We did David Letterman. That's where I got this cup from, was like Rhiannon Giddens. And so like we were able to incorporate these sounds, and I think we're reaching out to more people, and, yeah, I was traveling further around the world. And I'd say like even, you know, talking about like audiences in spaces, you know, like we started noticing more POCs showing up to shows, like especially like in New York or D.C. or in California. I remember we played Atlanta, and like people from Afropunk came to check it out, and it was just like, whoa, like, you know, that would not, that was not happening when we were, you know, [inaudible]. But, yeah, I guess that, I guess that, I don't know if you have more specific questions, but I think that's it in a nutshell. >> Stephen Winick: Sounds good. Well, you know, might make sense to talk about your kind of solo work as well, particularly, you know, just before and during the pandemic, what have you been focusing on lately I guess is the question. >> Hubby Jenkins: Yeah, sure. Yeah, before the pandemic, it was kind of continuing the work of The Chocolate Drops and just like using the music to kind of tell my interpretations of his, not, interpretation of history is a bad thing, let's go back three, two, one, but it's my understandings of history, and just, you know, putting a scope to it. So, for a long time, I was doing a show of like why are black people not associated with the banjo, the instrument that they created? Like what sort of factors could contribute to that? And so I could do like an hour, hour and a half of just like, you know, we could talk about [inaudible], we can talk about the record industry, we can talk about the great migration, we can talk about all these things that like, you know, now we get to this time where we don't associate black people as much with the instrument. And then my next obsession became spirituals and gospel, which I am still on. I think what I need to do is to make like a record. Like once I make my spirituals gospel album, it will be like closing the chapter and then move onto my next thing, which I am not a hundred percent sure what it will be yet. I've been working a lot on Joseph Spence right now and breaking down his guitar playing. And I have a big dream of, or I had a dream anyway of playing it in a band, like having a fiddle and base and trying to turn his style of music, I don't know what you would call it, like Caribbean blues gospel jazz, you know, but I want to maybe turn it into a band thing. And that's, you know, copyright Hubby Jenkins 2021, but there's that. I don't know, I just have many things percolating. I'm thinking about double entendre stuff. Also thinking about just like, I mean, it's hard to do work songs and to do prison songs, but just wondered like, you know, just all those like great recordings, you know, that [inaudible] did, like going into prisons and stuff like that. I was like, what would that experience be like today? Like what is the music now? And I know a lot of it is hip hop and I lot of people, you know, which I love, and like I said earlier, consider like a folk art, so like I know someday someone might give me money to try and do that, and, anyway, I'm telling you all my ideas, but, you know, stuff like this, they're percolating. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, I mean, that would be cool to take that hip hop tradition that's there, you know, in prisons, as well as other places, and try to sort of infuse it with some of the older styles of music, some of the, you know, the banjo stuff, the stuff that you play in other contexts, and sort of marry those traditions, that would be very cool. >> Hubby Jenkins: For sure. But also to even just look at it in the same way, right, because like if I, you know, I don't know, what's one you can think of, like No More Cane on the Brazos or something like that, right, like, I don't know why I picked that one, but, you know, if I hear something today where someone's, you know, got some song in there that's about, you know, having to do the rodeo in Angola, or having to, you know, the chance to get free, or doing license plates or whatever, it's that same context. You're able to kind of connect them in that way. And I think that's a part of like what I do musically as well, so it's like, you know, I might play when the, you know, [inaudible] Frisco by Mississippi Fred McDowell, it's not, you know, it's not about the great migration, but it perfectly fits it so I can use it in that way to like describe it. So, I think that would be, not necessarily that I would want to put a banjo under what's happening, but to really look at it as now, and then, you know, we have this whole history and this whole musical library, you especially, that we can reference to say this is what this, like this is how this stacks up, or it's connected, or is part of the stream. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. And one of the interesting things is that even though people kind of associate hip hop per se with, you know, like you said, the 80s, and that great era, you know, that tradition, that rapping tradition goes back as long as any of these other traditions we're talking about. And there's, you know, field recordings of that as well. So, just to look at it as its own thing is another I think important part of talking about, you know, American history and black American history particularly. So, yeah, do all those projects. That would be cool. >> Hubby Jenkins: Yes, sir. I've got to go. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah. Right. >> Hubby Jenkins: And there's also toast, which I think I first heard, like I feel like I have a memory of you playing for me like the, like a Hitler toast or something like that. >> Stephen Winick: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, we have a lot of toasts. Yeah. >> Hubby Jenkins: And I don't know what you do with them. I remember I got go ahead. >> Stephen Winick: I was going to say those things are basically rap. Early, you know, if you look at the very early hip hop, there was a lot of those kinds of stories being told within the raps as well. So >> Hubby Jenkins: Oh, for sure. And then you have stuff like, what's that record, six boys and six boys in danger or something like that, six it's a Smithsonian record. It's like six boys in trouble. And it's like, it's like a bunch of kids in New York and they're playing like, I don't know what they're playing, maybe like buckets or something, and they're telling stories, like I'm so hungry, or something like that. But, and it's like in the same tradition, six boys in danger on the streets or something like that. Anyway, I could go on. And I remember trying to do some toast, and they, I think I picked the wrong toast, because some of them can go off the rails really quickly, and people are not ready for that kind of raunchiness necessarily at an old time folks show. It surprises them. >> Stephen Winick: Cool. Well, you can, you can keep working on integrating some of that stuff into the show. But like you say, it can be a challenge to put all these things into one audience and I guess that's one of the issues that you're always going to have is the, is the audience question. And sort of emerging from the pandemic, what are you finding in terms of finding an audience again? >> Hubby Jenkins: You know, it's been a little, finding an audience again, I'm still doing things online, which is okay. This year has been a little bit tougher, you know, some plans that I made got canceled by second waves in areas or third waves at this point. Even Omicron is messing with some of my plans for next year already. But when I do go out, and also, you know, going out too people are a little bit hesitant still to be indoors, you know, for two hours or whatever it's going to be. But when I do play, you know, I was in Rhode Island this weekend, and people came, and they were happy and like appreciative and like glad to be out. And I miss it, you know, it's weird to, you know, play a song and then finish and you're just staring at yourself silently in your apartment or whatever. So, I really do miss it. And it's coming back, you know, people need, people need live music, and, you know, it's going to be all right. >> Stephen Winick: It always will come back. You know, one of the great things about your concert for us that you did in your backyard was when your neighbor got in on the, like you can't, you can't escape entertaining people when you do stuff as great as the music that you do, Hubby, so >> Hubby Jenkins: Oh, thanks, man. [ Inaudible ] Oh, yeah. Well, I wish you guys could have seen it, you know, it's New York, so it's like all the backyard, in the summertime, it's a beautiful scene, you know, people have, two people have pools and they're splashing, everyone's music is competing, you smell five different barbecues. It's one of the things I love about, you know, I'm a city mouse, or a town mouse. But, yeah, to this day, like every time I [inaudible] my man, mandolin. I keep telling him it's a banjo, you know, but >> Stephen Winick: That's funny. Yeah, well, that's kind of an interesting question too. So, you are, as you say, a city mouse. And yet a lot of the music that you play has these associations with rurality, with the rural world. How do you negotiate that difference or that distance? >> Hubby Jenkins: You know, I, how do I? I definitely, I think like as I got older, it might have affected like some of my song choices. Like I think I definitely dropped saying lordy at a certain point. Stuff like that. And then just when I'm in the country, you know, I can hang, I can hang in the country, you know, I can do, you know, but I just can't live there. That's the only difference. I just can't live there. But for me, you know, like the music is country music, but it's also part of this bigger thread. So, I feel like I can, you know, be my Yankee city self and still respect and honor the music. And other country folks, you know, they give me proper, so it's all good. >> Stephen Winick: So, we often kind of end these interviews by asking the person being interviewed, you know, what message do you want to convey in this interview? What would you like most to tell audiences at the Library of Congress? >> Hubby Jenkins: Oh, wow. The most. You know, I always know that this type of question is coming and I'm never fully prepared. I think that, you know, the importance of knowing your history and not just your, you know, your personal history, your country's history, the history of the things that you're interested in, and, you know, love, it cannot be understated how important that is to know it. And when you know it, you know, for me, understanding, you know, this music and the history around it has allowed me to dig deeper into American history, which has allowed me to feel stronger as a person, as a citizen of America and the world, as a black man. And it's just done all these things for me that makes it harder for me to, I don't know, put down someone else or press someone else or also [inaudible] I don't know it just makes it hard for me to do all of these things. And so I just think that, you know, dig into the roots of what you love, and like do it honestly and openly, and you just, the whole world will open up to you, and it will be a better place. Something like that. >> Stephen Winick: Well, that's a great, that's a great message to close an interview with. So, thank you very much. Hubby Jenkins, we should say that as a member of The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Hubby has played at the library, but he also performed in the homegrown 21, 2021 Homegrown at Home concert series. You can find that video on our website. And Hubby's also joined us in the reading room as a researcher. And we hope that you'll come back and listen to our recordings more, even though so many of them are online that you can listen to them there too. So, Hubby Jenkins, welcome back to our concert series, and thank you so much for doing this interview. >> Hubby Jenkins: Oh, any time, Steve. Glad we got to talk.
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Channel: Library of Congress
Views: 4,057
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Keywords: Library of Congress
Id: 7MeLwwdbAt8
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Length: 39min 35sec (2375 seconds)
Published: Tue Dec 21 2021
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