brudford - Posted - 03/27/2024:  18:17:08

Just watched this short documentary on YouTube about the history of the banjo and it's African ancestry . It would of ranked A+ for me but I would have to give the movie a solid B grade . The Doc. did a great job of explaining how the banjo had some of it's origins in the Far East moving to West Africa , the Caribbean and to America from there once the direct transatlantic slave trade was banned from bringing slaves directly to America from the African continent . Rhiannon went on to mention how she being a black person did not know of the banjos African origins ect... What the documentary
utterly failed to do was explain in regard to black culture why blacks in America abandoned the banjo . About twenty years ago when my eldest daughter made S.C. her home I was visiting her and through some of her friends I met and older black gentlemen who was an acoustic guitar blues player . We talked for about an hour and I mentioned I was also a guitar player and liked playing some of the older Country Blues such as Mississippi John Hurt and I informed him I had recently taken up Clawhammer banjo . He told me that after the Civil War freed black slaves considered the banjo to be a slave instrument and wanted nothing to do with the instrument even though they knew it was their instrument . There was a period of time when freed Blacks in small numbers moved to the fiddle but it was not until the 1890's that American Blacks moved to the guitar , this was not that old plantation slave instrument . How lucky are we that love rock music that theses black musicians who gave up their banjo moved to the guitar and gave us blues music and we all know the transition from there to modern pop music . I was surprised that this piece of information was not spoken of considering that most Black folks in this country do not know the banjo belonged to them .

banjowannabe - Posted - 03/28/2024:  03:56:48

Interesting. I wonder if that is a generally agreed upon fact in the black community. I always kind of assumed that minstrels in blackface might have motivated African-Americans to move away from the banjo stereotype.

Joel Hooks - Posted - 03/28/2024:  06:17:22

Could you be more specific about which video you watched? Giddens has done a number of these things and they can vary with the info.

Giddens has a specific narrative that she is promoting that sorta aligns with current research. But she seems to leap and bound over the world wide phenomena of popular banjo to get to her special interest version of old time. When telling the history of the banjo, redacting 50 years of huge popularity is a pretty big omission.

Giddens also continues to promote the myth that the "Snowden's wrote Dixie". She cites the book "Way Up North In Dixie" which she obviously did read past the back cover and the NPR article on it. Had she read the book, it is pretty obvious that there is not even the weakest circumstantial evidence to support this claim.

Tim Jumper - Posted - 03/28/2024:  06:55:07

Libba Cotten started out on the banjo, Rev. Gary Davis played a guitar-banjo, and Taj Mahal featured the five-string in his act, to name only three well-known modern Black musicians who played the "merrywang."
If so many Blacks are unaware of the banjo's African origins, what is Black History Month accomplishing?

RB3 - Posted - 03/28/2024:  07:38:58

Blackface and the banjo are two of the primary iconic elements that were used for the racial parodies of black slaves in the 19th century minstrel shows. After slavery was abolished and we moved into the 20th century, it doesn't seem surprising that black people would want to disassociate themselves from a device that had been used to disparage them. Rejecting the banjo seems like it would have been a good strategy to avoid the stigma of a widely recognized stereotype.

dlm7507 - Posted - 03/28/2024:  09:58:47

[Giddens also continues to promote the myth that the "Snowden's wrote Dixie". She cites the book "Way Up North In Dixie" which she obviously did read past the back cover and the NPR article on it. Had she read the book, it is pretty obvious that there is not even the weakest circumstantial evidence to support this claim.]

The most complete story of the Snowdens and Dixie that I've heard:
youtu.be/JdE-SGkZZCA?si=TPYGzAap9RZXz6Nm

Joel Hooks - Posted - 03/28/2024:  10:47:33

quote:

---

Originally posted by dlm7507

[Giddens also continues to promote the myth that the "Snowden's wrote Dixie". She cites the book "Way Up North In Dixie" which she obviously did read past the back cover and the NPR article on it. Had she read the book, it is pretty obvious that there is not even the weakest circumstantial evidence to support this claim.]



The most complete story of the Snowdens and Dixie that I've heard:

youtu.be/JdE-SGkZZCA?si=TPYGzAap9RZXz6Nm

---

It is a neat story, but I will state again, there is no actual evidence of this being true and LOTS of evidence that it is not.  Even in the book "Way Up North" the authors tried as best as they could to make a connection and they could not do it.

This is a local myth that inspired a marker being erected in the mid 1970s for the bicentennial.  That is it.

Please, read the book.  It just ain't there.

But it did make national headlines. 

davidppp - Posted - 03/28/2024:  11:33:54

Percival Everett quotes a first-hand witness in James to the effect that Dixie was written by Daniel Emmett. ;)

In those days, there was no copyright protection, and publishers made almost all the money and could attribute authorship to whomever.

A couple of years ago, a singer-song writer at a local farmers' market played banjo and sang:

The physicist says man is made out of strings.
Listen to them ring.
The Good Book says man is made out of dust.
Who do you trust?

Jehoshaphat - Posted - 03/28/2024:  12:02:06

There seems to be some NPR style revisionist history going on there. Cedric Watson is more to my taste, but to each his own.

Lew H - Posted - 03/28/2024:  12:03:43

Tony Thomas wrote a chapter, Why blacks put down the banjo, in a book titled, Hidden in the mix. He argues (as I recall) differently from most posters here to say that the blues came along and the banjo didn't fit well. Several here have said that blues emerged from blacks putting down the banjo. Good evidence for his point of view is that many African American string bands played during the 19th and 20th centuries. When commercial recording companies separated music niches into "race" and "hillbilly" (aka "old time"), some black string bands were lumped in with hillbilly music. Blacks put down the banjo far later than the demise of minstrel shows.

Tractor1 - Posted - 03/28/2024:  13:47:34

If someone did not take up banjo--for any reason--they just did not like it enough-to go through the process--

brudford - Posted - 03/28/2024:  20:25:37

Will try to answer a few of the questions , do a search on YouTube for " History of the Banjo with Rhiannon Giddens " There was a minimal amount of time devoted to Minstrel / Black Face maybe just a early drawing flashed on the screen depicting a minstrel show with Black Face . Someone mentioned the banjo maybe not being suited very well for Blues music , the movie did mentioned that the banjo did move into early jazz as a accompaniment instrument ? A short story I have is that I recently retired from thirty-three years in the medical field and one of my colleagues made the comment to a group of us who were sitting in the Hospital cafeteria having lunch when the topic of I believe Bluegrass music was discussed

and this person who was black commented that every time he sees a banjos he gets depressed because it makes him think of how his ancestors were slaves . I never gave it much thought to be honest , although I have never lived in America as a black man . I am not sure you could say there is a rediscovering of black Americans to the banjo however I think there is a small but dedicated group of black banjo  players such as the members of the Carolina Choculate Drops , Taj Mahal . Being mainly a guitar player growing up in the late 1960's early 1970's there seemed to be a lot more black guitar players around I am speaking of Rock and Jazz guitar not so much anymore . I do see some younger black men playing bass guitar and the drums .

Edited by - brudford on 03/28/2024 20:36:44

Common Tater - Posted - 03/30/2024:  13:39:55

Adding to the mix is the Black Banjo Reclamation Project.

L50EF15 - Posted - 03/30/2024:  15:01:50

I have to watch this film and will do so shortly. But I thought I would offer some comments and observations on the topic of how the banjo is viewed among African-Americans, at least in my experience. Being black, and having been a guitarist for 40 years (but only having gotten around to the banjo in the past seven years), my perspective is perhaps different from most here.

I was born in South Carolina in the mid 60s and grew up in the D.C. suburbs. My parents are from the Carolinas. I have lived in NYC for the past 33 years.

I give the demographic background to say that I am old enough, just, to know firsthand about a lot of the negative connotations that the banjo—and country music generally, including bluegrass and old time—have for a lot of black people. It’s not so much the cultural memory of minstrelsy, but the association of the music with the kind of people who lynched Emmitt Till and assassinated Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr., and who pledged “massive resistance” to efforts to end segregation and Jim Crow (see also the Confederate battle flags at Lynyrd Skynyrd concerts, and the lyrics to the admittedly catchy “Sweet Home Alabama” in response to Neil Young’s “Alabama” and “Southern Man”).

I don’t say that this stereotype is a good thing; like all stereotypes, it’s an offensive characterization. But its existence is simply a fact, one that has only recently changed even a little (similar modern stereotype: rappers and the people who listen to them are dangerous criminals…but see also the reaction to “Try That In A Small Town”).

That said, I ALWAYS liked the sound of the banjo, from the time I was two or three years old. But the first time I heard one, it wasn’t a five string, and it wasn’t bluegrass or old time. In fact, it was this show:

youtu.be/zOYqy6sIwSY?si=NW7omQKxsKGcaSyL

I am also just old enough to have caught the end of the Shakey’s Pizza banjo band phenomenon, and that also stuck in my head. And I saw Deliverance, Hee Haw, and Bonnie and Clyde. All this said, I grew up listening to the radio, AM and FM, so I still have a soft spot for all the 70s Top 40 stuff. By the time I got to high school, I was heavily into rock (Rush and The Police for example) and funk (The S.O.S. Band, Funkadelic, and the D.C. area go-go bands like Trouble Funk and Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers). By the time I started college, I was a jazz fanatic and also heavily into Prog rock. But I noticed something even as I took up guitar circa 1984, midway through my freshman year:

There were very few prominent black guitar players then; certainly few rock players, but even jazz, and definitely few young players (Stanley Jordan, Hiram Bullock, Mark Whitfield, and Tony McAlpine were exceptions). Forget about black banjo players outside of New Orleans jazz.

As years passed and I finished school and moved to New York, I came across an attitude that blacks shouldn’t play instruments, that doing so was a “white thing.” I vividly remember an older coworker (black woman) being surprised that I liked Jimi Hendrix, whom she condemned as a minstrel and an Uncle Tom.

I still hear some of that attitude. Jazz is acceptable (and in exceptional cases, classical), but that’s because it’s for old folks. If you’re black and interested in music, the peer pressure is to do rap/hip hop/r&b.

All this to say, I know I am unusual simply for being black and playing any string instrument, even now. I play guitar, but violin, mandolin, and tenor banjo too (I started off with the five string but play it plectrum style. I read enough posts to the effect that this was “doing it wrong” that I made sure to take up tenor ??).

I have huge respect for anyone who plays ANY instrument in any style. I know how hard it is to learn and become proficient at playing one. But I will repeat what I said above: For a long time, there has been this notion that “blacks shouldn’t play instruments,” period. Add to that the lingering stereotype that people who enjoy the music typically played on the banjo are hostile to blacks, and the result is an uphill struggle for the instrument to appeal to American blacks.

I do think that’s changing: My niece plays violin and recently took up guitar. I also agree that the music I have heard from Rhiannon Giddens, good as it is, is a thin slice of what’s possible, and indeed of what has gone before. I understand how and why she came out of trying to preserve an all but forgotten tradition. But she is moving the tradition forward.

It won’t be me, because I’m just a civil servant who plays music as a hobby (granted it’s a hobby I am passionate about; I feel physically and mentally unwell if I go more than a day without playing an instrument). But I would like to see someone inspire young blacks to play instruments other than microphones or laptops or turntables. And I would love to see banjo, in all its forms (let’s give the four strings some love!), be part of that.

Pomeroy - Posted - 03/30/2024:  16:16:18

quote:

---

Originally posted by brudford

>There was a minimal amount of time devoted to Minstrel / Black Face maybe just a early drawing flashed on the screen depicting a minstrel show with Black Face <

---

If you're seeking perspective and new research specifically on BlackFace I can recommend you watch this:

bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001...blackface

Based on sound recent research, the content is presented in way that makes it accessible, transparent, informative and profoundly shocking. It's also a shining example of how, when thorough methodology is applied to a subject we think we 'know', we quickly discover that what we 'know' is a superficial gloss both in the 'shortened' sense and the 'passing quickly over' sense. Such a neglect of research and detail serves only to maintain often false assumption and deflect rather than address and provide genuine understanding.

Edited by - Pomeroy on 03/30/2024 16:29:50

Tim Jumper - Posted - 03/30/2024:  16:41:24

Well said, Rudy.

dlm7507 - Posted - 04/01/2024:  11:34:06

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pomeroy

quote:

---

Originally posted by brudford

>There was a minimal amount of time devoted to Minstrel / Black Face maybe just a early drawing flashed on the screen depicting a minstrel show with Black Face <

---

If you're seeking perspective and new research specifically on BlackFace I can recommend you watch this:

bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001...blackface

---

Unfortunately it's UK only.

L50EF15 - Posted - 04/01/2024:  13:46:24

Yes, it’s unfortunate that last link is UK only.

Slightly off topic (but maybe not, from a certain point of view), I am going to an open mic tonight and I am taking my tenor banjo with me; hopefully the slots won’t fill up before I get there.

I will be interested to see what the reaction is; I have done a lot of open mic’s over the years and I have never seen a banjo of any kind at any of them.

L50EF15 - Posted - 04/01/2024:  13:49:13

P.S.: Here’s some information on the event:

brooklynmusickitchen.com/calendar/

I’ll report back on how the experience fits with my observations above.

L50EF15 - Posted - 04/01/2024:  15:16:28

Nope; got stuck at the office at the last minute. But I will try a different one next weekend.

Rusty - Posted - 04/07/2024:  12:45:59

Read the book that came out a few years back: "Well of Souls - Uncovering the banjos hidden history" by Kristina R Gaddy quote:

---

Originally posted by brudford

Just watched this short documentary on YouTube about the history of the banjo and it's African ancestry . It would of ranked A+ for me but I would have to give the movie a solid B grade . The Doc. did a great job of explaining how the banjo had some of it's origins in the Far East moving to West Africa , the Caribbean and to America from there once the direct transatlantic slave trade was banned from bringing slaves directly to America from the African continent . Rhiannon went on to mention how she being a black person did not know of the banjos African origins ect... What the documentary

utterly failed to do was explain in regard to black culture why blacks in America abandoned the banjo . About twenty years ago when my eldest daughter made S.C. her home I was visiting her and through some of her friends I met and older black gentlemen who was an acoustic guitar blues player . We talked for about an hour and I mentioned I was also a guitar player and liked playing some of the older Country Blues such as Mississippi John Hurt and I informed him I had recently taken up Clawhammer banjo . He told me that after the Civil War freed black slaves considered the banjo to be a slave instrument and wanted nothing to do with the instrument even though they knew it was their instrument . There was a period of time when freed Blacks in small numbers moved to the fiddle but it was not until the 1890's that American Blacks moved to the guitar , this was not that old plantation slave instrument . How lucky are we that love rock music that theses black musicians who gave up their banjo moved to the guitar and gave us blues music and we all know the transition from there to modern pop music . I was surprised that this piece of information was not spoken of considering that most Black folks in this country do not know the banjo belonged to them .

---

brudford - Posted - 04/11/2024:  09:01:26

I had a chance to leaf through " well of Souls " book and it seems to be just another true history of the banjo mantra ! I would agree that enslaved people of African descent made their stringed instruments from gourds or calabashes and made their way to the Southern American slave States from West Africa to the Caribbean to the colonies . The narrative of cultural appropriation by white musicians must never be forgotten , right ?
Was there musical appropriation by black musicians melding their African rhythms with white Southern Oldtime music having it's roots in ancient British Isle music ? That is another topic , back to the banjos roots . There were a few indigenous stringed instruments such as the Apache fiddle , the most interesting history of banjo-like instruments goes back to pre-Columbian stringed musical instruments, the Quijongo of Central America ,there are drawings of primitive stringed gourd Mayan musical instruments , also ancient drawings of Aztec banjo- like stringed instruments . The so-called history that media outlets such as NPR always remind us that the banjo was an invention of African origin is just false . Theses early South American stringed instruments pre- date slavery in North America by centuries and remember it is the Americas .

Lew H - Posted - 04/11/2024:  11:04:04

brudford Two things: I'd like to know more about these native South American banjo-like instruments. Do you have links or citations to publications, museums, etc. depicting them?

Second, I see Kristina Gaddy's Well of Souls as much more than just another banjo history. I ordered it out of curiosity, for I thought that all the history of the banjo's origin and development had been published already. We knew the time and place of significant events, changes in the morphology of banjos--the physical facts as it were. I found instead that she had taken a different angle: She uncovered the history of the social and ritual context of the banjo. I was astounded by all the new-to-me information she dug up.

RG - Posted - 04/11/2024:  11:25:26

Interesting articles found in just a cursory search...

jstor.org/stable/658759

mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/music/...nt-mexico

theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbo...90929.htm

istmo.denison.edu/n17/articulo...hez2.html

Video's of various stringed Central American instruments...

youtube.com/watch?v=ERTXJMaGltg

youtu.be/ERTXJMaGltg?si=_KUy1J8_6o5O-edp

Certainly many ancient peoples figured out that a drum would amplify sound.  Our ancesters were pretty resourceful.

Edited by - RG on 04/11/2024 11:39:22

davidppp - Posted - 04/11/2024:  11:34:25

The sarod is an instrument of (India) Indian music. It's basically a fretless gourd banjo played with a pick. Supposedly it got there a couple hundred years ago from Afghanistan. I presume it has some "fertile crescent" antecedent. Most cultures in Central Asia have some variant of what looks like a three-string, cigarbox, fretless tackhead, although the boxes are often trapezoidal rather than rectangular. Of course, the Chinese and Japanese play tackheads, often square -- both plucked and bowed.

Go figure.

RG - Posted - 04/11/2024:  11:42:14

El Chapareke... Central American indigenous stringed instrument...

youtu.be/SdAUSADfduc?si=gIY0M9DjcVFas7Y9

And the hool...

youtu.be/Fv1QIdMy2No?si=OcjptUGpk8i4chs-

Edited by - RG on 04/11/2024 11:46:52

brudford - Posted - 04/11/2024:  11:53:25

This should get you started Lew H ." Stringed Instruments in the Americas / Mexico" , by Chris Garcia , Robert Murrell Stevenson has two books , " Music in Mexico" and " Music in Aztec and Inca Territory " , "pre-Columbian Musical Instruments in America " By Edward S. Morse .

All this research suggests a banjo like stringed instrument with a hollow gourd resonator pre-dates the arrival of African slaves to the Americas . West Africans invented their version of a stringed instrument with some type of hollowed out bowl rather it be called the Banjo, Banjer , Bandora or the Akonting . I guess you could make an argument that their version of a banjo type instrument was brought to North America , however they did not invent this type of stringed instrument . African Banjos were nothing more than a bamboo stick attached to a hollow gourd with maybe a few gut strings . The West Africans never made it to the Copper Age let alone the Iron Age . Look at pictures from ancient stringed banjo like instruments from the Far East where they were using metallurgy in their instruments thousands of years before America was even a thought in Europe . It was the Western world that gave us the modern day banjo as we know it to be .

Edited by - brudford on 04/11/2024 11:54:54

brudford - Posted - 04/11/2024:  12:05:02

This should get you started Lew H ." Stringed Instruments in the Americas / Mexico" , by Chris Garcia , Robert Murrell Stevenson has two books , " Music in Mexico" and " Music in Aztec and Inca Territory " , "pre-Columbian Musical Instruments in America " By Edward S. Morse .
All this research suggests a banjo like stringed instrument with a hollow gourd resonator pre-dates the arrival of African slaves to the Americas . West Africans invented their version of a stringed instrument with some type of hollowed out bowl rather it be called the Banjo, Banjer , Bandora or the Akonting . I guess you could make an argument that their version of a banjo type instrument was brought to North America , however they did not invent this type of stringed instrument . African Banjos were nothing more than a bamboo stick attached to a hollow gourd with maybe a few gut strings . The West Africans never made it to the Copper Age let alone the Iron Age . Look at pictures from ancient stringed banjo like instruments from the Far East where they were using metallurgy in their instruments thousands of years before America was even a thought in Europe . It was the Western world that gave us the modern day banjo as we know it to be .

dlm7507 - Posted - 04/11/2024:  12:29:30

Someone with more knowledge than me can straighten me out on this, but in my mind the most compelling evidence of African ancestry to what became the American banjo is not the use or gourds, but the short drone string found on the Akonting, a lute from Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa where many slaves came from. Also, it is customarily down picked (frailing), which may have been the earliest style of banjo play in the Americas. True?



Spiked lutes exist worldwide to the best of my knowledge, which is limited. My question, is the short thumb string used as a drone unique or traceable in origin to the West African lutes? That, in addition to the use of gourds with a skin seem compelling to me. Yes, drones are also world-wide (mountain dulcimers and bagpipes) but I am speaking of lutes.

Edited by - dlm7507 on 04/11/2024 12:31:16

brudford - Posted - 04/11/2024:  12:48:50

There is that famous 18th Century painting of a Black boy holding a Banjo and you can clearly see the 5th string drone ! We know that Joel Sweeny did not invent the 5th short string drone in the mid 19th century as has been proven to be false from this earlier painting . Is that the banjo with the 5th string drone that Slaves brought to North American Slave States, I do not know . I watched a special on TV a few years back about the early banjo and the host I think maybe one of our modern day Bluegrass banjo players went to Africa and they interviewed a African man playing what he called the Akonting and I believe it only had one string and not a short drone string . So maybe more research would need to be done . The 5th string drone would make sense with the type of African war drums , their African spiritual voice music seemed to have a chanting drown element to it .

Lew H - Posted - 04/11/2024:  15:34:12

brudford Thanks for those citations. I'll try to find them in the local university library. I'm interested to know more.

dlm7507 A book edited by Robert Winans, The Banjo: Roots and Branches, was produced a group searching out the history of the banjo. Several early chapters are relevant to your question. Here is my idea of their basic conclusion: In Africa, there are 60 or more instruments that are banjo-like with skin heads. These were all fretless, had either gourd frames or wood frames in various shapes. The number of strings and the mode of attaching the neck varied. Some had a shorter string on one side (like a 5th string); others didn't. In the Caribbean and Central America slaves from diverse African ethnic groups were introduced to European instruments, from which they borrowed some elements, for example, tuning pegs or a flat fingerboard rather than a round stick. They also used the European tools provided by their owners to do their work. They produced what these researchers call a banjo. It was a 4-string instrument with a shorter 4th string as in the old paintings. It was fretless, had a gourd body with a skin head. A side of the gourd was sliced for the head to be attached, and the spot were the gourd was attached to the stem was cut off to make a hole.The neck was very long and went through through this hole and protruded through another on the other end of the gourd.

I think the authors are saying that there was no African instrument exactly like the Caribbean banjo. Not one had all the essential features of what they call the first banjo: Skin head, fingerboard, tuning pegs, short string beside the bass string, neck extension going through the body of the instrument.

I suppose we could broaden the definition of "banjo' and call many other things banjos. But as best I remember, this is how I see the origin of the think that developed into open back and resonators banjos with plastic heads, and strings numbering from 4 to 8. Most recent ones have steel rods rather than wooden neck extensions, but a few modern makers, especially smaller scale producers, have returned to skin for heads, dowel sticks, and even gourds or the thin rims of banjos from long ago. It's wonderful to see all of today's varieties of banjo!

Lew H - Posted - 04/11/2024:  15:44:37

@RG Thanks for those citations! The El Chapareke interests me especially for I seems to work like a picking bow--which I have built and play a bit. The Mexican folk instrument is like a 3-string picking bow. It appears that the mouth is used as a sort of "soundboard" just as with the picking bow. I have been thinking for a few months of making a 2-string picking bow tuned in thirds, fourths, or fifths. I don't know what harmonies might be produced or if they would clash.

Edited by - Lew H on 04/11/2024 15:45:14

dlm7507 - Posted - 04/11/2024:  15:48:57

@Lew H , I've read that book, thanks. I think of the banjo I played today as an American instrument (all of us), but I also understand the desire of people historically excluded to want to claim their part in its heritage. I don't think that many would deny how in came here. There is a great deal of diversity in their construction and how they are played. That's why we like it.

Lew H - Posted - 04/11/2024:  15:57:23

dlm7507 So sorry to be 'splaining things you already know about! Have you read the book by Laurent Du Bois, The Banjo: American's African Instrument? I like it's passages on the longer evolution of the banjo and other lutes originating in the Middle East or Asia, with skin head instruments moving into Africa, and wooden soundboard instruments being adapted in Europe to become guitars, mandolins, etc.

brudford - Posted - 04/11/2024:  16:36:02

The American banjo is a very diverse instrument at least for North American Southern States it's origin was West Africa to the Caribbean to us . And yes probably starting sometime in the 1830's North American wood working tools , metal working tools and wood/metal laths all of which I am sure Souther Slaves had access to . Being trained by their white Slavers on the specific skill set needed to create this original North American instrument was truly a group effort . Unfortunately this group build effort was under human Slavery and suffering , nevertheless our banjo unlike the South American banjo-like instruments and Middle Eastern banjo like instruments is very unique and it is a very unique American instrument . We who play especially open back Clawhammer know what beautiful soulful music can be heard . Probably starting in the 1920's with radios in homes and the whole Hillbilly / banjo / music scene I believed diminished the banjos reputation even further from the Black Face Minstrels . Shows like Hee Haw and other clowns wearing their bib overhauls , straw hats and bare feet did not help the banjos image either . When I tell people I play Clawhammer banjo they have no clue how beautiful and haunting the Irish /British/Scottish music can sound, I usually hear them try to make a shrill banjo sound and start dancing like the mountain people in the movie Deliverance , and always followed-up with " he's got a purty mouth " I guess you have to be of a certain age to remember that movie .

Edited by - brudford on 04/11/2024 16:37:53

dlm7507 - Posted - 04/11/2024:  18:10:59

@Lew_H No need for apology, I'm here to learn. I have not read that book.

At this point I'm time I see the banjo as the silver lining in a dark cloud of the past. We can't go back in time to change it, but we got the banjo and should all enjoy it.

san jorge - Posted - 04/12/2024:  04:19:14

quote:

---

Originally posted by dlm7507

Someone with more knowledge than me can straighten me out on this, but in my mind the most compelling evidence of African ancestry to what became the American banjo is not the use or gourds, but the short drone string found on the Akonting, a lute from Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa where many slaves came from. Also, it is customarily down picked (frailing), which may have been the earliest style of banjo play in the Americas. True?



Spiked lutes exist worldwide to the best of my knowledge, which is limited. My question, is the short thumb string used as a drone unique or traceable in origin to the West African lutes? That, in addition to the use of gourds with a skin seem compelling to me. Yes, drones are also world-wide (mountain dulcimers and bagpipes) but I am speaking of lutes.

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The short drone string plucked exclusively by the thumb is an unusual feature of West African lutes; however, it is not unique. For example, there's a Portuguese lute with a short thumb string, and this lute predates the emergence of the banjo.

It can also not be denied that the flat fingerboard was unknown in West Africa before the arrival of the Portuguese, as were tuning pegs, tail pieces, and nuts. All of these organological details are European inventions. Furthermore, the amalgamation of these mixed traits into The Banjo does not appear to have taken place in Africa. It happened in the Caribbean, which is America.

Edited by - san jorge on 04/12/2024 04:19:41

dlm7507 - Posted - 04/12/2024:  06:21:04

Thanks for that @san_jorge. The Portuguese influence is news to me. Interestingly, we also have the ukulele thanks to them.

brudford - Posted - 04/12/2024:  06:35:28

I think it is also a heritage / pride thing with black folks such as Rhiannon Giddens / Carolina Chocolates Drops and other black Old time musicians as it should be that our North American banjo came to us from West Africa as a starting point before the Caribbean . We also have been told that jazz music is the only true American art form that America was responsible for and the credit for Jazz should almost exclusively
be given to black musicians . I was not aware of drone strings on other world banjo type instruments , like the old saying goes , " there is nothing new under the sun " .

Joel Hooks - Posted - 04/12/2024:  07:33:01

There is this thing that happens where people seem or claim to be shocked to find out that the banjo is descended from Africa. There is also this trend to claim that there was some world wide conspiracy to remove any reference to Black people's involvement in the development.

This is a bit of a Straw Man Fallacy.

Reviewing period documents, and excluding the silly novelty articles on "banjo origins", it was generally stated by serious enthusiasts that the "banjo was from Africa" or "the banjo came from Slaves". While that was a simplification, it was general knowledge.

With that said, there was one person who made it his personal mission to spread the "Joe Sweeney" myth. J. E. Henning. Henning went to Appomattox and obtained a renecked banjo claimed by the Sweeney family to have been made by Joe. This was, in early letters, described as a new neck made by Joe for a "discarded rim" for his cousin. This eventually morphed into a straight up lie by Henning claiming that he had the first ever banjo made by Joel Sweeney.

The professional minstrel E. M. Hall took this claim and put together a short lived show that he toured of the "history of the banjo" playing examples, styles, and music of the different historical versions. Others such as Clarence Partee and Alfred Farland perpetuated this Joe Sweeney myth.

All of this happened AFTER S. S. Stewart died, but that did not stop folk revival era academics from blaming him.

The Black origins denial seems to have ramped up during the early interest in "folklore" complete with its own fantasy narrative based on Jim Crow era historical revisionism of the "good old days".

RG - Posted - 04/12/2024:  07:43:16

The history of jazz is far more complicated than what is presented to us as "fact"... a huge influence in early jazz where Mexican brass bands that would travel to New Orleans to play in the mid-late 1800's, as well as a heavy European influence of brass bands as well, primarily from Sicilian dock workers, and of course African influence from slaves as well as freed Blacks from Haiti.



One of the earliest creators of what we now know as jazz was Papa Jack Laine, credited by the majority of jazz historians as being the first to fuse Latin/African/European rhythms with the European brass band tradition into what later became known as "jazz."  Also of note, In Buddy Bolden's band, the lead instrument was originally the violin, not the cornet (and later trumpet) which eventually replaced it to create more volume in an ensemble setting.

I'm always puzzled that people claim certain musical traditions as being exclusive to their ethnicity rather than realizing that in a country like American, with a non-homogenous population, culture (music included)  is a literal melting pot of ideas as well.  I'm always reminded of Howlin' Wolf stating that he learned his trademark "howl" from listening to Jimmy Rodgers records or Louis Armstrong recalling the the Original Dixieland Jazz Band were the first to change "jazz" into a more popular style than ragtime, primarily by changing the time signature from 2/4 to 4/4 which was more popular with dancers and made the "old songs sound new" as Armstrong put it.

brudford - Posted - 04/12/2024:  08:54:55

I never knew that about early Mexican brass bands , perhaps then we could conclude that there may have been musicians from South America with Spanish and native mixed peoples and their string instruments by way of Texas and other Southern routes brought with them their banjo like instruments . The Americas truly a grand melting pot of all world instruments from Europe , South America , Africa and the Caribbean . So it may be a question of invention verses evolution .

Yes our current day banjo was invented and brought to us from Slaves from Africa and the evolution by way of Western world modern materials , tools and building techniques . If Slavery never came to the Americas would of their Banjer had evolved from a simple round piece of bamboo with a hollowed bowl , to metal parts, a lathed wood rim with a flat fretboard with wire frets ? Possibly only after colonialism had taken hold in Africa . White musicians cannot take any credit for the invention of the banjo , but without Western world influences we would not have our current banjos at their high level of refinement . An Analogy , Henry Ford invented the automobile , the Japanese did not and starting in the 1960's took that American invention and refined and improved the auto and by 1980 probably had a superior product compared to American vehicles . I was watching a YouTube video of Dwight Diller and before he played a particular song he stated the song had black influences , so give credit where credit is do . But to hold up a modern day banjo and proclaim this is a African instrument , well it is not and has very little in common either by construction or sound as compared to the original Banjer invented by Africans and brought to America by way of the Slave trade .

Edited by - brudford on 04/12/2024 09:02:00

Jehoshaphat - Posted - 04/12/2024:  10:49:29

quote:

dlm7507 A book edited by Robert Winans, The Banjo: Roots and Branches, was produced a group searching out the history of the banjo

George Gibson's essay in that book debunks the myth that white people took up the banjo because of black face.  He's Melungeon himself and details how whites and blacks intermarried and formed their own communities in the mountains, often identifying as "Indians" or "Portuguese."  

A lot of the recent "history" about the banjo is just marketing.  White people love to show how they are not racist by listening to black musicians while they check their stock portfolios.  I've listened closely to Dink Roberts and the Thompson brothers, and none of the Berklee graduates reclaiming the banjo play like that.  They play like white Northerners who adopted one of the many Southern banjo styles.  That's fine.  They are all fine players.  Just don't tell me you're a vegan while eating steak.

Edited by - Jehoshaphat on 04/12/2024 11:02:02

dlm7507 - Posted - 04/12/2024:  11:00:01

quote:

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Originally posted by Jehoshaphat

quote:

dlm7507 A book edited by Robert Winans, The Banjo: Roots and Branches, was produced a group searching out the history of the bano

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I have that book and read it. The ancestor African instruments are not quite the Caribbean banjos of the slave days though probably the inspiration. As others have pointed out, the banjo as we know it today is a cultural blend like all things American. The conversation has been informative and thought provoking.

brudford - Posted - 04/14/2024:  13:21:07

biologist/historian Says:

"well to be fair you havent actually havent done your research. the african banjo may have been the inspiration for white music in america, but the banjo itself is not african. it is middle eastern as archaeologists have found examples of primitive banjos in from ancient egypt. in asian cultures such as china and japan they have their own versions which couldve come from the middle east. the “sanxian” from china and the japanese “shamisen”. youtube shows chinese musicians playing what sounds similar to bluegrass music with the “sanxian”. but I get what you are saying, Ben, white people tend to appropriate from other cultures and then claim that they invented it. cultures far older than america probably played bluegrass music before america even existed. here is a video of a chinese musician playing the “sanxian”, sounds very western/cowboy. youtube.com/watch?v=wSPXjbbTeo...IWV-sGEzA "

Edited by - brudford on 04/14/2024 13:21:35

brudford - Posted - 04/14/2024:  13:25:40

PAUL DRUMMOND Says:

"The gourd banjo was African and the ‘Strum Strump’ banjo was from the Caribbean but Sweeney created the 5 string banjo and it was developed from there. The down stroke playing style was from Africa but later the finger style came along and the modern banjo was born with S.S. Stewart. By the early 1880s the banjo was a concert instrument and totally removed from any links to Africa. There were few African banjo players around until Horace Weston and all the developments with the instrument was done by white banjoists and makers. The Sweeney banjo began the white connection to it and it went from there. Musical trends took it out of the Minstrel show tradition and it became a refined instrument. The banjo developed over time and evolved just like other instruments did so the early link to Africa was

not so much denied in the 1880s but questioned as it’s origin. George Dobson in 1884 said that it was from Egypt. The bottom line is that the banjo of today owes nothing to the gourd banjo which arrived from Africa and the Caribbean, it’s a different instrument. The banjo has no racism, that’s a human fault but I know that it is enjoyed by so many people today irraspective of colour. "

Edited by - brudford on 04/14/2024 13:26:12

writerrad - Posted - 04/25/2024:  14:33:36

quote:

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Originally posted by Joel Hooks

quote:

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Originally posted by dlm7507

[Giddens also continues to promote the myth that the "Snowden's wrote Dixie". She cites the book "Way Up North In Dixie" which she obviously did read past the back cover and the NPR article on it. Had she read the book, it is pretty obvious that there is not even the weakest circumstantial evidence to support this claim.]



The most complete story of the Snowdens and Dixie that I've heard:

youtu.be/JdE-SGkZZCA?si=TPYGzAap9RZXz6Nm

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It is a neat story, but I will state again, there is no actual evidence of this being true and LOTS of evidence that it is not.  Even in the book "Way Up North" the authors tried as best as they could to make a connection and they could not do it.

This is a local myth that inspired a marker being erected in the mid 1970s for the bicentennial.  That is it.

Please, read the book.  It just ain't there.

But it did make national headlines. 

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Huh:

Don't remember Rhiannon alluding to way up North yes I do because Joel reminded me of it.  It is a prettty irrelevant issue.  The authors of that book do not understand the concept of authorship as it it existed in the antebellum period that they refer to.   I dont know and they produce rather inconclusive proof in regard to it, but they seem to be estranged to what people in the 1840s or 50s or 60s would have said about who wrote what.   Mark Twain's Huckelberry Finns' traveling Dauphine is closer to the way authorship of music was seen at the time that the rather thin claims about Emmett and Dixie.

Emmett wrote Dixie, no Black person would have written Dixie, insofar that Dixie sought to emphasize a chief concept in the Northern based mkinstrel entertainment Dan Emmett became a master at writing songs, and choreographing whole shoes, and is one of the founding creators of:  that African Amerians should remain in Slavery, and that especially them releasing themselves in various ways from Slavery and getting into the North, was  not good for them, and that any right thinking Black person who got out of slavery should sincerely wish to be a slave.

No Black person, no sane Black person, would have written such a song.  Dan Emmett was not in either category, and so wrote Dixie.  If he used some music he had learned from Black people to do so or a line or two fromt hat, that was just what people did then and do today.  When I was in MFA school, we had a slogan bad authors steal, great authors borrow.

Emmett was a great person in American popular culture for the bad and the good insofar as he was one of the deeply musically educated and musically literate people who was able to transfer his formal musical education and capacities into the popular music forms that arose from Black and white folk music and articulate them in folk and popular music styles of both the Banjo and the fiddle, two of the many instruments Emmett was expert at.  Emmett had writen the US Army's main tutorial manual for the the fife, a key instrument in practical military command in his time, and was a key person in minstrelsy, especially as it proceeded to doing things to like giving a minstrelized version of  a European opera two or three nights after it opened in New York.

writerrad - Posted - 04/25/2024:  15:20:17

Joel is a hero in my life, and a person of high integrity precision, and dedication to facts, and a person who has deep and wonderful research on  the history of the banjo.  I very very strongly advocated to Rhiannon that she include Joel among the people that she asked to be interviewed for this series, and I considered it a grave error or a sign of the weakness of her approach that she did not.  Even though I have known Rhiannon since she was singing Opera in Pizza parlors and respect her, I consider that to her detraction.  

I must say that I have written elsewhere  this week that if Joel Hooks posted something saying my name was not Anthony Marquette Thomas, elided mainly by my high school Latin teacher to Tony,  I would probably check back with St Vincents Hospital and the Archdiocese of  NY to make sure my recollection and records were correct, since neither of my parents or the priest who baptized me are above the ground.

I have written elsewhere as my dear friend Lew writes about the demise of the banjo among African Americans.   In the series even though Rhiannon knows what my views ont he issue were she elided any comment by me about this.  They are expressed most clearly in my chapter "Why African Americans Put the Banjo Down:" Hidden in the Mix published in

2013 by Duke University Press.   I have spent the interceding 11 years in more intensive research on Black and general banjo and musicological research and found nothing that undercuts and everything that emphasizes this,

African American playing of the banjo was general and widespread since Black people invented the banjo .  The great explosion and improvement of the instrument since white musical instrument players  and makers created improvements and changes in t he instrument starting in the late 1830s was excepted and welcome and adopted by African American players both those who continued to make what might be called Black traditional music, as well as those who ventured into music reflecting what white Banjo players and musicians provided for the banjo.  The cult of antique primitive banjos that seem in vogue with some people was not at all shared by traditional Black banjoists from the 1830s or 1840s on, and certainly was not welcomed by the last generations of Black banjo players we know of people who passed away from the 1990s until the early 2000s.  They tended to prefer RBs,  In fact, I know when Rhiannon was a pupil of Joe Thompson and gained instruction from Bob Carlin who was the closest banjoist to Odell's style in Joe's opinion, she obtained a Deering RB of the type that Deering banjos had generously donated to Odell before his death.

African American banjo playing declined as general banjo playing declined across the 20th century as styles of both "folk" and popular music changed,  that made the banjo less useful for new forms of music many of which emerged from African African music making, especially the vocal needs of new music.  Much of this was accentuated by the the five-string banjos development to an instrument whose pitching and tone changed with the raising of its pitching in the late 19th century, and with developments in its architecture dedicated to accentuate the treble lead capacity of the banjo's high strings and the upper register. All of these clashed with the need of supporting the changes in vocals and band arrangement that came with what might call the African Americanization and other changes in popular, folk, and dance music across the forst 40 years of the 20th century as well as the changes brought about by electrical and then electronic amplication of instruments and music venues.

in general forms of popular and folk music that once focused around the banjo tended to wither away or find other instruments to articulate them, as the banjo's architecture and pitching changed, and music also changed.  This was true for both white and black and other kinds of music that once centered around the five-string banjo.  This also was a factor in the decline o f the 4 string banjos, the 6 string :guitar banjo, or exotic banjos ike the 8-string mandolin banjo.

Even in white music that would later be labeled "country:  there was a long decline of 5 string banjo playing especially as the music became more and more centered around vocal songs that could be sold on phonograph records or played on the radio and TV.

Insofar as new music pioneered by African Americans such as blues, swing, jazz,  continued to follow have musical needs that the five-string banjo interfered with, and even substitutes like the 4- and six string banjos had even more of the pitch and tone problems that the five string had,  the banjo was uniformly abandoned by musicians pretty much internationally,  Black, white, or green.

There is no evidence that there was any non-msucial or cultural reason for the decline of the banjo except insofar as Black musicians saw themselves as the vanguard of the musical changes that led to the banjo being a less useful tool for new musics that developed starting around 1910 and continuing into the present.  Except for the revivalism expressed by Bluegrass and various forms of folk revivalism, of which old time music, including Black old time music both of which I am a life-long victim of, there is no sign of music for which the five string banjo and traditionally configured and as the height of its construction achieved (Joel might disagree) in the open back and internal resonator banjos created between 1890 and 1930, and their contemporary descendants, and the glorious five string resonator banjos that descend from the Paramount and Gibson and Bacon resonator banjos of the 1910-45 period.

In her last episode Rhiannon presents a dead wrong and totally unsubstantiated view which I contested, that the banjo's abandonment by Black people had to do with an urban rural change in Black population, but that is just not substantiated in fact.  The development and design and use of the banjo passed from traditional rural makers to urban designers and to the commercial makers of banjos from entertainment professionals probably in the 1840s and 50s. 

There is no sign from all of us who research the banjo and its Southern African American and European roots that traditional white and black southern banjoists did anything but welcome the innovations that commercial and artisan and professional banjo makers began in the 1830s and 40s down to those of the early 2000s.   I know of a bunch of stories of where old time revivalists of high order and repute tried to provide traditional Black banjoists with reproductions of gourd banjos from the 19th centuries or even originals, and the Black banjoists much more desired to play the RBs that they generally owned, or a variety of David Day inspired Fairbanks, Vegas, and Bacons, or in the one example I know the magnificent work of Kyle Creed, as opposed to gourds.

Black people like most other people who played banjos in the 20th century abandoned the five string banjo because its pitching and construction was no longer useful for the new types of music that fit into their musical life. 

This is not much different from white people.  Bluegrass achieved its status precisely at the point when Monroe decided he could not survive as a creative artist and a paid artist if he continued to make old time dance music as old time dance music had died.  He refigured his band around the concepts then prevalent in jazz small combos focusing on virtuoso solo artists of master level musical power, and was lucky to be a musical genius of high order himself both as a singer and a mandolin player and was able to draw other master musicians into creating a new music that unfortunately has never been a majority music, and never been associated with dance or other functions dance music had.

In her summary Rhiannon who tends to try to center everything around herself, tries to claim that the banjo went out because it was a rural thing claiming it had to do do with a recently discovered relative of her, as opposed to anything any banjo or music historian, Black,white or chartreuse has said.   She seems concerned with drawing for herself an authenticity that is not required (especially as a double major from the Oberlin Conservatory in violin and voice as well as a daughter of Bluegrass banjoist) rather than history. 

Banjo playing has been historically centered among Black and white people in urban centers since the 1840s.  The  mask of it being a "country" thing  has nothing to do with how the banjo developed historically or any of its most significant styles since the 1840s, but a mask the complex of music publishing, broadcasting, record selling, and entertainment capitalists decided to place upon the music since the 1920s and with vengeance since the 1940s or 50s.

The banjo is a world product, a combination of musical components that assembled only with the merging of West and East and Central African musical ancestors in the Caribbean in the1600s, transformed when it came to the North America in the 1700s and further transformed as it spread across the English speaking world in the mid 19th century and is a world instrument.  From the 1840s at least but certainly by the 1850s or 60s Black banjo playing becomes a part of world banjo playing with African American banjoists becoming significant figures in Banjo Playing in the UK, Australia, New Zealand,  Japan, and back to AFrica where the arrival of the banjo in the late 19th century brought new strains, and even in the Caribbean where the arrival of the frame or hoop headed banjo and later 4 string and 6 string banjos replaced the banjo on the islands it originated.

Black banjo playing died insofar as the practical utility of the instrument became less useful as the instrument changed in the early 20th century and Black music changed in the early 20th century in directions that had other requirements, much as the other music that used it, save Bluegrass.  Much of the rest of five string banjo playing outside of bluegrass resides in people like  Joeland myself and Rhiannon for that matter who try to reproduce music that was widespread in the past.  I have no doubt the future will provide revivals and new uses for the instrument.

Of course, it would be of significant help to my research of these issue is my array of banjos could be extended to test my thesis.  I am particularly desirous of a a five-string example of the work of David Day and Fred Bacon such as Lew possesses, and would love even a postwar Gibson RB or the closest Gold Tone to that, purely of course for the pursuit of banjo science.  I leave the previous banjos although I am desirous of a Van Epps Recording banjo such as Gus Cannon played.

Thanks to everyone wrong right crazy and wrong who cares about this.  I am in Lisbon Portugal where it is 1145 pm and fireworks celebrating the overthrow of the fascist-influenced dictatorship here are about to start.  Moreover, this is the night of the NFL draft.  But So I hope you realize ho wimportant all of this is to myself and my life.

Again, I want to thank Joel for all he has done wrong right or otherwise, he is a true hero.   I thank Lew too just fo rbeing Lew.

Edited by - writerrad on 04/25/2024 15:46:43

writerrad - Posted - 04/25/2024:  15:57:07

I cannot go back and edit, but the celebration tonight here in Lisbon and across Portugal is celebrating the overthrow of the Caetano/Salazar dictatorship in 1974 50 years ago, not any idea such a dictatorship occurs recently. 

It is a coincidence we are visiting Portugal on this date, although back in the 70s i was involved in supporting independence movements in Africa as well as socialist activists in Portugal who who were part of that struggle.