The group won a Grammy for its 2010 album "Genuine Negro Jig," and recently earned a nomination for their 2012 album, "Leaving Eden."
The band's material and inspiration is largely drawn from the Piedmont region of the Carolinas.
"It just made sense, we really liked the music," Giddens said. "It was kind of a no-brainer to do Carolina tunes."
The group plays mostly existing material out of the Piedmont tradition, yet they are able to add their own zest to the already established music.
"We mostly find older material and figure out ways to make it fresh and now," Giddens said. "There's a large part of history in our song collection and for the most part it's finding older things and sort of breathing new life into them."
In a sense, the Carolina Chocolate Drops reactivated the string-band style and brought newer audiences to the somewhat antiquated tradition. The band's name draws from the 1930s string band the Tennessee Chocolate Drops. While the early 1930s saw more of an influx of Southern black string bands, today the custom is mostly associated with white musicians and audiences. It is clear that the Carolina Chocolate Drops, through their music and incredible talent, have a dedication to the music and its history. Giddens said they continue to try and reach as diverse audiences as possible simply by playing music.
"We pretty much always play to a white audience," Giddens said. "We're all aware we don't have much black presence, it's just getting the nature of the music out there, that market is very different. We're slowly chipping away at it and we're seeing numbers of black audiences grow and we're trying to keep that going."
While the Carolina Chocolate Drops have enjoyed success and gained notoriety for their efforts, they do not plan to take a more mainstream, commercialized route anytime soon.
"We've kind of put our heads down into expanding our audience, getting more information out there and getting people to know the origins of the banjo and how complicated American music is," Giddens said. "If we can get that message out there to more people, we'll be happy."
While the music the Carolina Chocolate Drops plays may not be the sounds emanating from a subterranean level on Webster Avenue, their style exemplifies fusing several types of traditions together into one that a musically ignorant student may find refreshing. Giddens noted that it is important for everyone to branch out in search of something new.
"Everything that comes in the music world is based on something that's come before, nothing's pure relation," Giddens said. "We're even further on that spectrum towards the traditional, and in a lot of ways it can make it even fresher, and because it's traditional music and out of the popular idiom, I would hope people would see us and be open to what we're doing."
On Monday evening, Giddens and Jenkins led an open fiddle workshop in Alumni Hall. The crowd featured a mix of experienced and more novice players, as well as jubilant observers tapping their feet in the background. Giddens, playing the fiddle, and Jenkins, playing the banjo, started with "Black Annie" to loosen up.
During the workshop, Giddens expressed the importance of making the music danceable, and even danced for a moment to give an example of how the wrong emphasis in the music can create an awkward beat to move to.
Giddens reassured some of the lesser-experienced players that what she learned on the fiddle was "through blood, sweat and tears."
