Unlike the fiddle, which African Americans played far more commonly, the banjo was primarily a southern instrument.
All but four of these referenced Black musicians. There are more than eighty-five documented banjo sightings in North America between 17. In the book Banjo Roots and Branches, historian Pete Ross concludes, “All three banjos differ enough from African instruments while sharing some details specific to later banjos played and made by European Americans to place them at a point in the banjo’s history where it was no longer simply a relocated African instrument, but on its way to attaining the structure of the well-known antebellum nineteenth-century banjo.” Many details of these early gourd banjos are evident in the instruments built by European American banjo makers in the mid-nineteenth century. This design was firmly ingrained in the New World, as evidenced by the following instruments found across time and distance: the strum strump observed in Jamaica in the late 1680s, the early gourd banjo in John Rose’s watercolor (sometimes called The Old Plantation) from South Carolina around 1785, and the banza collected in Haiti in 1841. They share features that differentiate them from West African lutes, including a flat, fretless fingerboard, wooden friction tuning pegs, and the way the neck enters and attaches to the gourd body. Historians refer to these new instruments as early gourd banjos. The lead finger, usually the index or middle, strikes a string or strings with a downward motion, and the thumb sometimes plucks a string as the hand returns to starting position.Įkona Diatta plays "Gambia" on the akonting (2007)Įnslaved West Africans in the Caribbean created a new instrument by incorporating elements of European instruments into the familiar design of their plucked spike lutes. Musicians play these instruments with a down-stroke technique similar to the earliest known banjo playing in North America. The akonting, n’goni, molo, and gurmi are among the African relatives of the banjo. Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta with an akonting (photo by Chuck Levy) Players tune the instrument by sliding the rings up or down to tighten or loosen the strings. The strings are attached to the neck with leather or cloth rings. The body is a hollow gourd, calabash, or carved wood, covered like a drum with an animal hide. West African plucked spike lutes share three basic design features. “Plucked” means that it produces sound when the strings are struck or plucked. “Spike” implies that the neck passes over or through the body of the instrument.
Lutes are stringed instruments with necks that are distinct from their bodies. The instrument shares design elements and playing techniques with a family of approximately eighty known West African plucked spike lutes. There is likely no single ancestor of the banjo. However, a wealth of historical research conducted since the 1970s has brought attention to the African roots of the banjo, and performers and scholars have been making efforts to restore the instrument’s place in Black culture. Association with these genres, and the diminished presence of the instrument in twentieth-century African American music, led to the banjo becoming a representation of rural White culture. Played in the rural South since the second half of the nineteenth century, the banjo rose to become prominent in folk, country, old-time, and bluegrass music. By the end of the century, banjo repertoire had expanded from plantation and minstrel tunes to include sentimental popular songs, waltzes, mazurkas, polkas, and ragtime. Starting in the 1840s, blackface minstrel performers began popularizing the banjo among middle-class Whites who purchased manufactured instruments and learned to play. It was played exclusively by Africans in America and African Americans during colonial times and the early United States. Sharing design elements with many similar West African instruments, the banjo developed in the Caribbean during the first century of the transatlantic slave trade. The banjo is a stringed instrument that is, or has been, prominent in American folk, country, bluegrass, ragtime, and jazz music.