jimcarrier - Posted - 09/05/2014:  07:20:43

Minstrelsy, shunned for years because of its racial stereotypes, is revealing how slaves played the banjo. In this clip from "The Librarian and The Banjo" DVD, Dr. Bob Winans explains how his research into minstrel "tutors" has discovered a window to slave downstroke or clawhammer playing.

jimcarrier.com/librarian/dena-...ve-music/

To order the DVD, which includes this and many other clips, interviews with Tony Trischka, Eric Weissberg, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Bela Fleck, and, of course, Dena Epstein, go to jimcarrier.com/librarian.

Edited by - jimcarrier on 09/05/2014 07:53:05

Tatersoup - Posted - 09/05/2014:  07:45:39

Thanks for sharing.

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 09/05/2014:  08:26:05

If that clip is an "extra", I can't wait to see the documentary itself. Ordered.

(I wish I could have ordered it from some source in Canada, but that doesn't seem possible. I ordered it anyway.)

 

Edited by - Marc Nerenberg on 09/05/2014 08:27:50

trapdoor2 - Posted - 09/05/2014:  08:40:25

Cool.

My Ashborn banjo is an exact replica of Dr. Winan's original. Bob is a treasure.

banjopogo - Posted - 09/05/2014:  22:05:15

Overall, I think this is true... BUT:

In the 1950's, white kids listened to rhythm and blues on the radio, and then tried to play the songs.  The NOTES played were often the same, but many rhythmic subtleties were lost- overall, the music got simplified and straightened out (or Europeanized) rhythmically.  If anything, I think the tendency to do that would have been even stronger in the 1840's and 1850's than in the 1950's and 1960's.

Now, because they so often learned over the radio or from recordings, the white kids didn't get to ask questions.

A hundred years before, whites often got to learn directly from African-American musicians, but because of their low status at the time, I don't think they were that likely to pipe up and say "You're playing it wrong!!!"  That would have been too risky.  So I think the net effect was the same, to allow the white musicians to filter the music through their more European musical understanding without much correction.

As far as the structure of the tunes, I think it was very similar.   I play minstrel songs, spirituals, and Old Time mountain songs on the banjo.  If you played them without words or titles for someone musically perceptive but ignorant of the tunes,  I don't thing they could tell them apart.   Nearly all of them tend to be heavily pentatonic until the IV chord change, and more often than not, would be easy to play on a fretless banjo.

In singing well-known REAL cowboy songs vs. well known FAKE cowboy songs, the essential difference is that real working people tend to put in COMPLAINTS about their working conditions, and you don't get this romantic longing going on... NOBODY is going to long to be where they already are!!!

I think the difference between African-American folk songs of the era and the minstrel songs mostly boiled down to the same thing:

Excessive romantic longing and a lack of complaining in the minstrel songs!

R.D. Lunceford - Posted - 09/06/2014:  15:55:05

I think that by the time the first tutors were published (1850's), the music had been heavily Europeanized.
For one thing, the addition of the bass string seems to have been done to extend the range of the instrument.
This is a melodic concern, and more in line with European than African tradition. There is no doubt an African element
to the repertoire, but phrases such as "Genuine plantation melodies learned from the Negros when at the South" probably
are more of a marketing ploy.

The very first generation of white banjoists, Sweeney, et al, no doubt preserved some of what they learned from black banjoists.

I would put forth the opinion that certain portions of the clawhammer repertoire (being an ongoing folk tradition) may well preserve
the black banjo music better than much of the minstrel repertoire, especially from 1860 onwards.

Paul R - Posted - 09/06/2014:  19:46:41

Certainly a grey area, allowing for lots of speculation. It would be good to fill in the gaps, from Marc's banjo explorations in Africa to minstrelsy.

davidppp - Posted - 09/07/2014:  15:29:55

For those who read, Dena Epstein's book is a ground-breaking and amazing piece of American history. It's not an easy or light read -- I suspect because Epstein wanted to be sure it was not dismissed by professional historians. But I found it well-worth the time.

Explorer - Posted - 09/07/2014:  17:38:14

Being as I play Piedmont blues, I've known not just folks who play blues, but have also crossed paths with folks who had long banjo traditions.

I'm not in that area anymore, but it would be interesting if someone thereabouts was to get in touch with black banjo players so as to get a perspective from that side, instead of examining only those parts of the black tradition that made it throguh the filter of the white tradition.

Since the Carolina Chocolate Drops are active, I assume that there must be some kind of history there to be dug up, for those interested in such things.

It could well be that there's not a lot of difference, with it just being one tradition across race lines. I know there's a lot of visibility to black Baptist singing, but a lot of folks, black and white, had the same kinds of other church singing traditions. Banjo could be another of those things after a certain point.

Edited by - Explorer on 09/07/2014 17:42:58

jimcarrier - Posted - 09/07/2014:  17:58:35

Based on the comments to date, I'm wondering if people actually watched the video. In it, Bob Winans explains that he compared the tutors of 1850s and 1860s (published by whites) to the playing styles of elderly black players that he found, recorded and transcribed in the 1970s. These players did not learn from the tutors. They were playing a traditional style passed down several generations in the black community. What he found was that the styles matched the tutors, more or less. His conclusion is that the tutors were a record of black playing styles at the time of slavery.

 

60spicker - Posted - 09/08/2014:  07:47:03

When will Hollywood get ahold of this, and who will play the black pickers? The whole thing is fascinating.

Lew H - Posted - 09/08/2014:  10:33:29

Cecelia Conway wrote a Ph.D. dissertation, which was published as a book by U. Tenn. Press., African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia.  It details history of  African American picking, case studies based on interviews and interactions with a handful of then contemporary black banjo players in Appalachia.  Conway notes in an epilogue that some of the elderly pickers have already died.  There are a few black banjo players aside from the Carolina Chocolate Drops, any of whom would have to stage presence to suit Hollywood.  I"ve met a few non-pros at banjo camps also

Conway's book has great bearing on this forum's topic, and deserves to be read by all who are interested in the African origins of the banjo and the banjo's history in the  new world. A second scholar, Tony Thomas, a BHO member, has studied and written several articles on this topic.  His book chapter on why blacks dropped the banjo is especially interesting (inD. Pecknold, Editor, Hidden in the Mix, Duke U. Press).

oldwoodchuckb - Posted - 09/08/2014:  11:05:23

One of the things few people mention when talking about the black migration from banjo to guitar, is that it was happening at about the same time as blacks were migrating from Cornet to Trumpet (essentially identical instruments with major tonal differences) and from Clarinet to Saxaphone - identical fingering but vastly different in sound. 

The migration to guitar for solo players was no doubt based on the smoother more harmonious sound of the guitar and the fuller sound of 6 close tuned strings.

For bands, I think the Guitar simply was seen as the better sound to go with 1930s style jazz.

Edited by - oldwoodchuckb on 09/08/2014 11:06:13

R.D. Lunceford - Posted - 09/08/2014:  16:55:52

I'd strongly second Lew's recommendation of Conway's book.

As for the early tutors (Briggs and Rice), there is a theory that they were in fact ghost written by Frank Converse,
so we're already thrice removed fron the original slave players. Yes of course there are stylistic elements surviving
in those books, but I would be quite surprised to find many of the selections in the pre-Sweeney black banjoist's
repertoire.

I think that as it is played today, clawhammer has a rhythmic vitality that exceeds the minstrel material, and I would guess
the original black players did too. I am not talking so much about syncopation, that is dotted notes, etc. as I am about a rhythmic "push"
or drive.

Lew H - Posted - 09/08/2014:  18:38:52

Some akonting players from Africa  and Greg Adams have done workshops at the Suwannee Banjo Camp over the past several years. The contemporary akonting (or ekonting) is another source of informatiion about this question. The right hand motion of contemporary Africans on the akonting is pretty much like the basic clawhammer lick. (This can be seen in the videos of akonting playing  that have been posted on BHO).  Of course the akonting is a gourd instrument a bit less refined than fretless gourd banjos today. It has only three stings, and a stick for a neck, so melody lines are quite limited.  Sort of like R.D., I think the right hand rhythm that led to both minstrel banjo and to clawhammer today hasn't changed much but the melodies played on banjos are more complex.  Of course, there are banjo wizards who can get a great variety of rhythms and frills from clawhammer, but I think that for most of us the right hand hasn't shifted much from the traditional African pattern.  

Since we cannot see or hear how the minstrel players picked, since there are few contemporary indigenous black American pickers, and since the akonting picking style could have changes over the centuries, we may never know for certain the precise changes and paths of change that banjo picking has taken from its African origins to modern times.  All we can do is assemble the many bits and pieces of evidence into some choerent whole pattern.