reubenstump - Posted - 07/09/2024:  13:30:28

What music genres do you like outside of country/bluegrass/Irish/jazz/folk/roots/Americana/etc., that use an instrument that's similar to, or maybe a precursor to, the American banjo?  Four, five, six, seven string?  Maybe only three.  That usually, but perhaps not always, have a drone string?

I don't know much about it, but I find some of the north African and Middle Eastern music very interesting.

Five string fretless pre-banjo, likely with a real calf or goat skin head.  At first glance it looks like it has three strings, but brief shots of the bridge show 5 strings, widely spaced.  And yes, the fifth string is shorter.  I think that the other instruments are castanas - they don't quite seem to be castanets, but certainly related.  My youngest daughter saw this group at my suggestion, as she lived in Brooklyn NY at the time where Innov Gnawa is located, and both she and her husband are into a lot of different types of music.

Innov Gnawa - Bangara

The drum, known as a daf, is the main instrument in this (and it's fantastic, IMHO), but the banjo-ish instrument is not to be discounted.  I don't know what it's called, but I like how it provides a subtle, droning, hypnotic background - "atmospherics", one might say.  I can't even tell how many strings it has, so maybe it's more like a guitar or oud than a banjo.  Hopefully someone here can provide more info.

Sufi dance with daf and unknown stringed instrument

It's a big world out there, with lots of different types of music.

Barnacle Joe - Posted - 07/15/2024:  10:38:53

I'm reasonably confident that the stringed instrument in the second video is a Persian setar. Wikipedia tells me they traditionally have 3 strings. I'm pretty sure it's a close cousin of the tar which has 6 strings (in 3 pairs) and a skin-head instead of a wooden top (and sounds more like a banjo, albeit with doubled strings).

reubenstump - Posted - 07/15/2024:  14:20:10

I'm a dummy.

I just went back and expanded the description and it says "Tambour: Mirtohid Radfar". I should have done that earlier. Duh.

But when I looked up tambour, it seems to be like the daf (drum/tambourine).

Looking up setar seems to confirm your suggestion, at least visually. And the music and religion are from that part of the world.

Thanks.