@jojo25, I'm a Folksinger who plays banjo and guitar, not a banjo virtuoso by any means. When I started playing in the 1960s, countless Folk groups were using banjos in countless ways - I learned styles that nobody plays today (I still get grief from both clawhammer and Bluegrass players because I don't play the "right way" by their standards).
That said, I gave up playing the banjo in concert in the late 1970s because people whose only knowledge of banjo came from Hee Haw, Deliverance, etc., assumed I was too stupid to realize how "dumb" this classic instrument made me look. (Not realizing, of course, that the banjo's popularity exceeded that of the guitar for over 120 years).
About 14 years ago, I picked up a beat-up Goodtime in a pawn shop and fell in love all over again. I eventually picked up some better banjos and started incorporating the banjo back into my sets.
The crazy part of this is that people over 50 still roll their eyes when I bring it out, and make every stupid banjo-players-are-all-illiterate-hicks jokes they know.
But many audience members under 40 tend to be fascinated by a sound they've seldom heard before outside of certain circles. Musicians often ask to "see" it between or after sets. No, it doesn't have the same effect in Bluegrass jams, where there are always several Bluegrass pickers better than I. But in "open mics," church concerts, Folk festivals, etc., the banjo gets far more respect from the under-40 crowd than it does from folks my age.
In other words, there's far more hope of the banjo being taken seriously by under-40 audiences than by folks my age. So there's hope. . . . :-)
Dissing is just jealousy in disguise. That simple.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said something like, "No one can insult you without your permission."
Don't give them permission. I've always taken the ribbing to refer to the fact that banjos go out of tune more quickly than do guitars. That's why I've worked so hard at finding a solution to the problem.
And, yes, I've found a few.
It's just jealousy, it's beyond them to play a banjo or they would. Everyone knows that the banjo player always gets the girls... :-)
I haven't really heard many harsh jokes about the banjo other than from people who play the banjo.
In somewhat recent years, when someone asks what instrument i play i've been embarrassed/cautious to say "banjo". To my surprise almost every time, the young people get excited. I have a lot of young, radical thinking people that work on my farm that love it! They'll come to our shows and dances. Some even ask for lessons..
I think maybe they think less 'minstrel' or 'HeeHaw' and more 'African'. Or maybe they just respond to the rhythm..
I agree with 'Strumbody', that people under 40 seem to have a higher respect for the banjo. Lately, our dances tend to be about 60% high school kids out of an average of 80-100 dancers. A dance from a few months ago topped 200!
We've also played for the local college 'clubs' and they go nuts over it. And we're not that great. We like to play hard and in the groove but were not fancy..
My overall point is, things are a changing! Perhaps as the youth have grown up overdosed on plastics and digitization, the gut, wood, and wire cut thru the fog.
OT as it's played today is very boxed in by people who feel it must be played in some sort of "proper" or "authentic" way (same w Celtic sessions). In the current style, the banjo is accompanying the fiddle and vocals, it's not a lead instrument. Which is a lot of balderdash (proper OT vocab). I'm a big fan of Uncle Dave Macon, Grandpa Jones, String Bean, and Charlie Poole. Their banjos were front and center and loud and clangy as hell (just how I like it). I play basic bluegrass but no fills or runs, just loud, loose, rhythmic and fun like those old guys did.
Needless to say, I get crap from all sides- "Do a lead!", me- "No!", or "you can't play that song on that type of banjo", or simply, "What are you playing?". This is my own rant tangential to yours, but I get it w the respect issue. John Hartford finally just played by himself, maybe he was tired of people not understanding his quirky style.
oh, and I agree that the disrespect and jokes is more a class issue w the hillbilly association- Deliverance, Hee Haw, all of that. Actually seeing Deliverance is one of the first things that drew me to the banjo.
Edited by - Johnny TooManyBanjos on 11/16/2024 09:12:45
I had a friend (I say had insofar as he is passed away) who was a scholar of popular culture including jokes. He pointed out to me that there are a series of jokes that must have begun in the early 19th century that get attached to instruments that go out of style or fashion as music playing and music fashion have changed. I mentioned a few banjo jokes, and he said that these were standard jokes that had passed down from other instruments that have gone out of fashion that were applied to banjos at the moment they went out fashion largely in the after the 1920s when in most forms of popular, folk, parlor, and jazz music the banjo became out of fashion in the face of changes of musical taste,and the unsuitability of the banjo's pitching to new forms of music that became in in the 1930s and so on, for which the guitar was much more suited. We both agreed that the banjo also went out of fashion like many instruments across the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and 1960s insofar as playing an instrument yourself, as opposed to records, broadcast, television, and other electronic reproduction became the way people got their music more .
The jokes go from instrument to instrument. And the banjo got hit with jokes that had been saved up from other instruments before it and were ultimately sent on to other instruments that became unfashionable after it., When I was growing up in the 1950s, there seemed to be one music teacher and music store and musician in every neighborhood who was trying to convince parents that their kid learning accordian was a way to fun, employment, and culture. I can still see a guy who taught according to went to the same parish church we went to and who son was in my Boy Scout troop standing at our door and welcomed into our front parlor, trying to convince my parents that my brother and I learning accordion would boost our lives.
The thing about the banjo is that the banjo faced a massive decline in popularity and extent say from 1930 to 1960 or 70 in popular usage, especially in its usuage outside of folk music, old time music, and bluegrass. Today people do not believe it when I tell them that the act on the Ed Sullivan show before he introduced the Beatles the first time was a woman who was a smaltzy 20s/30s tenor banjo player!
However, what has happened to the banjo, unlike say the accordion, is that there has been a massive revival in banjo playing, after all the banjo jokes were generated when the banjo went out of fashion before. The growth of revivalism, insofar as people now can access all kinds of music not fashionable today or not vended by the record companies or not on pop radio, and other factors has led to an explosion of banjo playing all across the board, not only from Bluegrass that carried the torch for so many years, but with the wide spread of old time banjo, and folk banjo, and the recognition of Black banjo playing, etc, etc
More and better banjos are probably being made today than in any time in history, even if banjos are not at center stage in popular culture the way the were in the mid to late 19th century.
So we run into all the banjo jokes that were the product of the relatively brief waning of banjo popularity from the 40s and 50s, and 60s (though we know these were years when great masters of old time and then bluegrass as well as jazz banjo flourished) that conflict with the new rise of banjo playing which seems to be widespread among people of all ages.
Get over it, snowflake.
It sounds like the OP is either way too sensitive or needs new friends. Or a little of both?
When I'm with close friends, I don't usually get dissed for my banjo; rather, I typically get dissed as much as the next guy for stupid things I do or say. Then I just wear it.
A few great moments in the middle
youtu.be/l0zxL9cYTME
Only thing worse than a sensitive banjo player is listening to the banjo.
sarcasm off
I had my banjo refretted in a shop that does mostly guitars. I went in to receive the finished banjo and I capoed it to 7th fret and played Fisher's Hornpipe. One of the luthiers said admiringly, "Wow - that doesn't even sound like a banjo!"
People are jealous because banjo players go their own way. They are non-conformists. That bothers the sheep so very much. Be proud that you are an individualist!
Edited by - HighLonesomeF5 on 11/16/2024 14:27:36
The banjo is the best sounding and the best looking of all instruments.
ken
I was once invited to a barbecue at a friend's house. Most of the folks were around back visiting and eating. there was a guy there wearing a "Paddle faster, I hear banjoes" t-shirt. I complimented him on it, and we had a laugh at the expense of banjoistas everywhere (he wasn't a musician and I'm thinking bought into the stereotype). Later, I went around front and was playing my banjo to a small group on the porch that had gathered to listen. About that time the guy with the t-shirt came around the corner and saw me playing... his expression was priceless.
When another musician hits on the banjo, I take it with a grain of salt, or depending on what and how is said, just chalk it up to ignorance and re-classify them as a persona non grata.
The folks that tended to get to me more were the non-musicians who were razzing based on the hillbilly stereotype. This is where I have to disagree with the OP a bit- I think the anti-banjo prejudice is not based on anti-Black racism, but a denigration of rural White Southerners based on the ignorant acceptance of a stereotype. The majority of the public knows nothing about the Black origins of the banjo.
quote:
Originally posted by csacwpThe way I see it, old-time musicians brought this upon themselves by adopting the hillbilly stereotype and undoing decades of hard work by more serious banjo players like Frank Converse, Fred Bacon, and Parke Hunter.
...not to mention decades of hard work by certain Old-Time musicians, who are trying to preserve a family/cultural legacy.
quote:
Originally posted by HighLonesomeF5People are jealous because banjo players go their own way. They are non-conformists. That bothers the sheep so very much. Be proud that you are an individualist!
quote:
Originally posted by R.D. LuncefordI was once invited to a barbecue at a friend's house. Most of the folks were around back visiting and eating. there was a guy there wearing a "Paddle faster, I hear banjoes" t-shirt. I complimented him on it, and we had a laugh at the expense of banjoistas everywhere (he wasn't a musician and I'm thinking bought into the stereotype). Later, I went around front and was playing my banjo to a small group on the porch that had gathered to listen. About that time the guy with the t-shirt came around the corner and saw me playing... his expression was priceless.
When another musician hits on the banjo, I take it with a grain of salt, or depending on what and how is said, just chalk it up to ignorance and re-classify them as a persona non grata.
R.D., I have one of those shirts, and being a banjoist, I think it's even more funny.
In my experience at jams, usually everyone respects the other, regardless of what instrument they have in their hands, and their skill level. But, a few like to poke fun (and that's just it, in fun) at the banjo player, the bass player, etc. Most everyone likes a good joke or bantering now and then, but when it's played on repeat, it gets old real quick. At local jams, proficient banjoists are well respected amongst the fiddlers.
To the OP, it sounds like you need to find a new group to jam with if they (or one person who's obviously a bully and probably jealous they can't play, thus taking it out on you, or they have other issues) can't respect you for the instrument you brought to play. That's tearing down, not building up. Dust your feet, come from among.
Speaking of tshirts and cultural ignorance, I was buying some jeans at a major retailer a few years ago and saw a tshirt with this "Dueling Banjos" design on it. I was so struck by the incomprehensible mash up of imagery and text that I had to buy it. Open back banjos for Dueling Banjos? 1969? (not the year the famous movie was released, or an especially significant year for bluegrass or BBQ)
In general, I think banjo razzing today is diminished from what it one was. I can tell you that in 1960's Los Angeles it was worse- especially for a junior-highschool kid. These days most folks under 40 draw a blank when you mention "Deliverance" or "The Beverly Hillbilly's" or "Hee-Haw". Way back then, they were a going thing that absolutely everyone knew of.
For me, the banjo was part of a family legacy passed down from Chariton Co, MO player Morgan Howard (b.1867) through my Dad (b.1914) to me. As such, at different times I was quite irritated at some of the razzing, viewing it as a personal insult to "my people". For years now, I've owned the "humor" and get a kick out of the buffoonery- it's all part and parcel.
When most folks hear that I play the banjo they think Bluegrass. When I play my low-tuned, gut-strung Bowlin fretless on the street, folks ask me what it is. I even had a guy tell me it wasn't a banjo- as if I don't know what instrument I'm playing! So much for fitting a stereotype.
Tony: Great info.
Noah: I too make a point of wearing my own "Paddle faster..." t-shirt when I'm busking, and rightly or wrongly, as your post indicates, I adopted a banjo-inspired superiority attitude a long time ago.
I was taking a video of myself playing an OT tune to send to my teacher. I introduced the tune then began to play. When I reviewed the video afterward, the mic had automatically muted my playing when I struck the first note! Talk about disrespect! This was the on board mic on my Dell laptop. Ouch!!
Rebecca
I like banjo jokes, I have a large collection of them, I have never heard anyone tell a banjo joke that I thought they were trying to insult me. Banjo playing takes a lot of work to learn and I am proud to be a picker. I consider the jokes to be part of the fun.
Steve Martin (banjo player: so this sets precedence) gets insulted over his nose. Here is how he responds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urdf4g-LXk4
Good luck. Have fun.
ken
Only been playing for a few years and have found it so hurtful I want to switch to accordion.
Simple solution - switch to the guitar. Problem solved. You'll sleep better and be respected by your new friends.
