Matokie Worrell Slaughter (December 21, 1919 – December 31, 1999), sometimes known as "Tokie" Slaughter, was an American

clawhammer Clawhammer, sometimes called down-picking, overhand, or most commonly known as frailing, is a distinctive banjo playing style and a common component of American old-time music. The style likely descends from that of West African lutes, suc ...

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of plastic, where early membranes were made of animal skin. ...

player. Born in Pulaski, Virginia, to a large musical family, Slaughter performed regularly with her family on local radio in the 1940s. She and her sister Virgie (later Virgie Worrel Richardson) also appeared regularly at local fiddler's conventions. She was discovered by the larger

old-time music Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dancing, contra dance, clogging, and buck dancing. It is played on acoustic instruments, generally centering ...

community when some of her recordings appeared on Charles Faurot's clawhammer banjo anthologies during the 1960s. Later, she made many appearances at

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

festivals and workshops throughout the US and formed a band called Matokie Slaughter & The Back Creek Buddies with her sister Virgie and old-time music revivalist Alice Gerrard. The band issued a cassette-only release, ''Saro'', in 1990."Here & There"
by John Currie, ''The Old-Time Herald'' 7:3, Spring 2000. Slaughter is known for her unique, driving style of clawhammer banjo playing, with complex noting and double-noting and featuring both uppicking and

downpicking Downpicking, sometimes referred to as down-stroke picking, is a technique used by musicians on plucked string instruments in which the player moves the plectrum, or pick in a downward motion, relative to the position of the instrument, against on ...

. She also occasionally played

fiddle A fiddle is a Bow (music), bowed String instrument, string musical instrument, most often a violin or a bass. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including European classical music, classical music. Althou ...

. During the 1990s,

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

artist

Margaret Kilgallen Margaret Leisha Kilgallen (October 28, 1967 – June 26, 2001) was a San Francisco Bay Area artist who combined graffiti art, painting, and installation art. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was ...

began drawing freight-train graffiti using the name "Matokie Slaughter" as an homage to the original Matokie Slaughter. A fictionalized version of Matokie Slaughter also figured prominently in many of Kilgallen's non-graffiti artworks. She died ten days after her 80th birthday in 1999.
"Femme Vital: Margaret Kilgallen Hand in Hand"
by Michele Lockwood, ''Super X Media'' #2.2, 1998.

by Maria Porges, ''ArtForum'', May 1997.

References

;Citations

External links

Matokie Slaughter
at Digital Library of Appalachia. – links to streaming

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

audio of a number of Matokie Slaughter performances. {{DEFAULTSORT:Slaughter, Matokie 1919 births 1999 deaths People from Pulaski, Virginia Old-time musicians American banjoists 20th-century American musicians