Search - Negro Fife and Drum Bands :: Traveling Through the Jungle

The black fife-and-drum tradition is one of the most archaic and least documented styles of American music. Though its distinct aural and rhythmic qualities have their origins in West Africa, fife-and-drum also carries trance-inducing strains of a New Orleans second line, North Mississippi hill-country blues, and even Moroccan jajouka music. It's likely that, at one time, fife-and-drum was widespread in the American South, but to date the only evidence of the style has come from isolated areas around Como, Mississippi, and Waverly Hall, Georgia. Recorded mostly by noted folklorists George Mitchell and Dr. David Evans between 1969 and 1970, Jungle collects field recordings from virtually all the known masters of the form: Ephram Carter and J.W. Jones from Georgia, Napoleon Strickland and Othar Turner from Mississippi. It's an essential document of a timeless though--by the late 1990s--all but extinct art. --Matt Hanks