I don’t know if a single bluegrass banjo player who uses clawhammer. Plenty of old-time players though. Do you have any examples? I’d love to see them.
I’m from the Appalachian mountains, and this is how I learned to play banjo after I picked up guitar. However, I’m much more comfortable playing with finger picks since I played guitar for so long before learning banjo. TLDR learned hammerclaw, but prefer finger picks for comfort
As a new banjo player (switching over from classic guitar) something just seems overtly natural about this way of playing. Thank you for articulating what my thoughts felt!!!
The banjo is derived from the African instrument called akonting. African slaves in America continued to make and play them. Slowly the gourd body was replaced with a wooden frame, and five strings became the standard. The banjo became very popular with the white Americans, especially in the southern and appalachain regions. Eventually the wood body was replaced with metal and steel strings and frets were added to get the bluegrass instrument we know today. However, this video shows that the older wooden style is still around.
Exactly! The banza, precursor to the banjo: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UTQc9MErxZk.htmlsi=s853cN-WkG_-cbDX The akonting: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lzt0v9roU6g.htmlsi=z9ByA4IZCRjhgU9a The *muh banjo* 😭🪕 crowd is doing way too much in the comments.
Thanks for the history lesson. Banjo is such a unique string instrument. It's like a Violin and a snare drum had a kid that grew really tall and lanky.
You see, the Caribbeans are in the Americas and are populated by allot of africans. So a black person in the Caribbeans can be accurately described as an african-american. Sorry for the sass couldn't helpmyselff lol
The history is a little bit revisionist when it comes to the banjo. Yes, the original banjo came from Africa with gourds and hides stretched across them, and without frets, however, the modern banjo has more of a lineage back to European instruments with its frets and resonator on a wooden body, and probably has more of a lineage to that of Western Asia than that of Africa. It wasn’t until 1890 that the American Banjo even received frets. And bluegrass players do approach it completely differently. If people still played a gourd with a few strings, then I would say it is an African instrument still, however, today it is completely a different instrument than that played by early Americans with lineage to Africa.
@@indigoplateau357 🙄 has little to do with me personally as I’m a multiracial guy. Just stating history a bit more clearly -which modern aesthetics seem allergic to.
Your history’s right at least, if not an African instrument, I still think of it as a slave instrument. Gourd banjos existed a for a lot longer than the modern victorian banjo, and the sound’s not very different despite what lots of uneducated people in the comments say. Clifton Hicks has some great videos on youtube of him playing every style of banjo imaginable.
@@barryallenporter8127 Except they are literally different instruments. That’s like saying “well the kick drum and the snare drum both make a thudding noise when struck with another object, so that means they’re the same instrument!”
It came from them, not Africans. For some reason the black Americans think their African captors allowed them to pack their things before they were force-marched through the jungle to the slave markets. That didn’t happen.
@@scumshine2351 “Music is at a low ebb. Admirable tunists, and no mean tunists, the people betray their incapacity for improvement by remaining contented with the simplest and the most monotonous combinations of sounds. As in everything else, so in this art, - creative talent is wanting. A higher development would have produced other results; yet it is impossible not to remark the delight which they take in harmony. The fisherman will accompany his paddle, the porter his trudge, and the housewife her task of shelling grain, with a song; and for long hours at night the peasants will sit in a ring repeating, with a zest that never flags, the same few notes, and the same unmeaning line." - Burton’s Africa, page 468.
@@scumshine2351 “Devotedly fond of music, the negro's love of tune has invented nothing but whistling and the whistle ; his instruments are all borrowed from the coast people. He delights in singing, yet he has no metrical songs; he contents himself with improvising a few notes without sense or rhyme, and repeats them till they nauseate. . . . When mourning, the love of music assumes a peculiar form; women weeping or sobbing, especially after chastisement, will break into a protracted threne or dirge, every period of which concludes with its own particular groan or wail. After venting a little natural distress in a natural sound, the long, loud improvisation, in the highest falsetto key, continues as before." - Burton's Africa, page 497.
I did not know this about the banjo ... Ms. Giddens is pure talent! I've been enjoying her music since following the Carolina Chocolate Drops ... Outstanding musicians, brilliant sounds, great history for all music lovers.
for the over-sensitive reactionaries confused about what she's saying (not what you think she's saying) and the history of the banjo, here's the smithsonian on the history of the banjo "Few musical instruments are more deeply connected to the American experience than the banjo. The banjo was created by enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean and colonial North America. Here, they maintained and perpetuated the tradition within a complex system of slave-labor camps, plantations, and in a variety of rural and urban settings. From the earliest references in the 17th century, and through the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively known as an African-American tradition with a West African heritage. What further distinguishes the banjo is that it did not come from Africa “as-is” as an unaltered tradition. Rather, the banjo’s creation was the result of a blending between West African and European forms. Sharing some similarities with the guitar, the best-documented form of the early banjo includes a drum-like body made out of a gourd (or sometimes a calabash) and a neck that could accommodate 4 strings-three long strings that run the full length of the instrument and one short thumb string that stops about halfway up the side of the neck. The drum-like gourd body and strings of different lengths are uniquely African, while the flat fingerboard and tuning pegs are more commonly associated with European traditions."
@@NoahBodze ok, im going to take your comment at face value for a moment even though youre absolutely begging for it not to be. First of all, im curious why, in your opinion, “feral blacks” would attempt to, in your opinion, falsely reclaim an instrument most strongly associated in mainstream culture with inbred, white trash racists? Seems like a funny choice but I digress. While I don’t know how to convince you the smithsonian wouldnt kowtow on the historicity of something because of your “culture war”, ill give you this excerpt from an article in a 2022 issue of _Nature_ that I ironically found while searching “banjo origin africa debunked” “The banjo entered world musical culture through the ingenuity of communities of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean. The banjo is rooted within the lute-playing traditions of West Africa, where several remarkably banjo-like instruments and playing styles exist today. The banjo is a creation of the Black diaspora, however, and has no obvious single ancestor among extant West African lutes. Understanding the relative similarities between extant West African lutes and the gourd banjo may shed light on the cultural context of banjo origins. This study examines structural similarities between the gourd banjo and 61 West African lutes using two quantitative approaches for measuring and representing similarity among entities. The banjo groups with a cluster of lutes from peoples in the Senegambia region speaking Bakic languages, which includes the Jola ekonting, an instrument that has garnered considerable recent attention as a banjo relative, but also shows similarities to lutes from the Niger Basin. This suggests that the relatively egalitarian social context of lute playing seen in Bakic language-speaking cultures may have been especially influential on the development of the banjo among enslaved populations in the Caribbean, but that the banjo draws on heterogeneous cultural influences and that more attention should be paid to the influence of eastern Sahel musical cultures on the evolution of the instrument.” I’ll excerpt a portion of a review put out by the Winterthur Portfolio (a Uchicago journal) on the 2007 biography of Joel Sweeney as well, titled _The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy_ (please forgive formatting errors, it was copy and pasted from a pdf) “When historians of American minstrelsy and popular music write about early nineteenth-century blackface performance, they seldom mention Joel Walker Sweeney. Popular performers such as Thomas Rice (who popularized the character ‘‘Jim Crow’’), Dan Emmett (composer of ‘‘Dixie’’), and Billy Whitlock (an early blackface banjo player) usually receive a lion’s share of the glory for making minstrelsy and the banjo part of America’s musical consciousness. The few authors who do mention Joe Sweeney erroneously portray him as either the first white banjo player or inventor of the modern (that is, five-string) banjo. Independent scholar and banjoist Bob Carlin disagrees with his predecessors’ treatments of Sweeney and seeks to set the record straight with his The Birth of the Banjo: Joel Walker Sweeney and Early Minstrelsy. Carlin argues that Joe Sweeney is one of the most important American minstrels, particularly because of his role in popularizing the banjo. Sweeney helped make this instrument famous by bringing together several existing musical practices to form a novel mode of performance centering on the banjo. A native of Appomattox County, Virginia, Joe Sweeney learned African American songs and performance style from slaves on plantations near his home. Most important, those same bondsmen taught him to play the banjo, an instrument with West African origins that by the 1830s had gained widespread recognition from white musicians and instrument makers. Sweeney inserted his African American musical skills into the blackface routines then fashionable among whites to create a type of entertainment that quickly caught on with concertgoers”
@@wrench8149 im shocked. i'd deign to guess you might only trust sources that provide claims that support your preconceptions, veracity be damned. however, im curious _why_ you dont trust the smithsonian and which sources you _would_ trust.
The real question no one is asking is why do you spell the the saying "no one" as "noone"? If it was spelled that way you would pronounce more like the word "known".
The African banjo was not anything like the banjo she's holding. It was invented by Appalachian English Irish. Claiming credit for something they had nothing to do with
Is it not, what she is doing, cultural appropriation, and according to that moronic Professor from Arizona, that equates to white or in this case, let's say for the sake of argument, "Blacksupremacy", as Einstein once said: She started it...
@@charlesbrown4483 no, he stole the idea from african americans and popularized it when doing his mistrel shows. He "invented" it by copying what african americans were playing at the time while doing blackface.
As I understand it; the banjo is inside red the only instrument that is 100% American. Early versions were found among black slaves, those being made with hollow gourds having one to four strings. More refined versions came with the body type we know now having four string and a more standardized tuning. He fits string was added later on and with it came the claw hammer style. Earl Scruggs did not invent the three finger picking style, but he did make it popular.
There're precursor instruments to the banjo in various African instruments. It did evolve in the US however, and a very similar thing can be said to have happened with the mountain dulcimer, which early version of which were brought to the US by the German settlers who became the Pa Dutch, later taking it down into the Appalachians where it evolved into its current form. So if the Banjo is 100 percent american, it's not the only one
@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410banjo was made in America...the precursor instruments weren't called banjos... a lute isn't a banjo. A guitar isn't a lute. A mandolin isn't a guitar. A violin isn't a mandolin. A violin isn't a bass...ya get it
@@notsomething7561"the banjo is inside red the only instrument that is 100% American." The banjo is absolutely an American instrument. It may have begun on a stick with strings and evolved to a gourd with strings but it was made and has become synonymous with American bluegrass and classic country music.
I invented the banjo in my bathroom In my bathtub in Poland. It’s a polish instrument. I sold the rights to the Appalachians 50 years ago because they were the ones that produced the best music with what I had created. That was when Merritt and achievement mattered in a time that existed before the NFL started using diversity hires, and the referees were so terrible that the NFL came to an end, causing a global apocalypse. It was close to happening but James Kirk and his crew rescued the humpback whales, and we averted catastrophe.
Not true, the banjo grew out of my armpit as I was suffering through armpit cancer. The banjo is a stinky instrument with such good sound that big pharma commissioned many cancer patients. The humpback whale also sprung from my armpit and James T. Kirk was my Doctor. No bones about it.
It's amazing to hear that the banjo is an instrument from West Africa and the Caribbean. I always thought it came from the South. Now, it makes sense why the southern states are where it was was most popular. Always something new to learn, no matter how old I get or how many books I read! ❤
@@davebarrowcliffe1289from what part of history. The most divisive parts? Originally we were all part of the human race. But lets focus on the most divisive parts of history because thats more unifying. (Sarc)😶
It's a lyre with a resonating chamber. There is evidence of a lyre in Syria about 2700 BCE. Not much later there are lyres in Egypt. And the Greeks did great things with it.
I don’t think that’s right. They would have been used for American music more than Irish music. It was an Irish-American minstrel who popularized the banjo though, but due to the racist nature of minstrel shows, he played it because it was seen as a black instrument.
Pretty sure that's a hard no. Irish music wouldn't get the banjo until much later in the 20th century decades if not a full century after its use had been popularized among white people in the United States after the minstrel bands took it.
I remember watching Rhiannon on “Nashville” and thinking she was a talented actress who could also play an instrument. It was only after the show ended that I realized she was a legitimately great musician!
Exactly, just yesterday someone stole my bike, and my "Stop stealing my bike" sign I happen to witness it just as they began to take off and in a moment of frustration I yelled out "Hey you bastards! Can't you read the sign!?" Quickly one yelled back "NOPE!" I began to laugh realizing I had over estimated my adversary.. I currentlt have a Newport cigarette box truck parked out front , rear cargo door open, and I am nearby hiding in wait. They will learn to respect the sign.
So what's the real history ? It's funny that anytime black people make a claim , it's somehow an attack on white people. You're hellbent on protecting the image of white people being the smartest and most creative humans on the planet who had a hand in inventing everything.
The original basic stick with strings may have originated elsewhere and the gourd with strings may have originated elsewhere but the snare/first tom with strings for resonance was created in Appalachia in the Americas, completely synonymizing itself with southern bluegrass and classic country. Sorry ma'am but this instrument was invented here and the "picks" you refer to are finger-picks used to retain the finger-style technique while allowing for a louder, more amplified sound.
@@mizzury54 She clearly said, "The banjo is an African American instrument that was invented in the Caribbean" Which makes absolutely no sense. You are the one hearing what you want to hear, because she never said it was invented here with roots in Africa... Those words never came out of her mouth.
The banza, precursor to the banjo. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UTQc9MErxZk.htmlsi=s853cN-WkG_-cbDX The akonting, a related lute instrument in West Africa, played similarly in an indigenous style ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lzt0v9roU6g.htmlsi=z9ByA4IZCRjhgU9a The modern banjo descends from the banza the same way the modern piano descends from the pianoforte and the earlier harpsichord and clavichord.
Amazing how people can introduce further inaccuracies when attempting to correct someone. The idea of utilizing a circular drum (as opposed to a gourd) is attributed to Joel Sweeney of Appomattox, VA, who was a wheelwright and violinist by training. It was this prototype that Sweeney began performing with in the 1830s. These performances, in which Sweeney would play a caricature of a plantation slave, would ultimately give rise to the minstrel show. This was the context in which most white Americans (yes, including those in Appalachia) first encountered the banjo.
This is like how they claim George Washington Carver invented peanut butter even though it was being eaten in China for 1000 years before he was born. 😂
Or like us Germans pretending we invented the car when all we did was invent the Otto-motor and Diesel-motor but not the actual idea of the car. There were earlier cars running on steam. Probably every ethnicity makes claims about stuff they "invented" that someone else had invented. Also I'm pretty certain that basically every culture invented string instruments mostly independently from one another.
To be fair, China was very isolationist and xenophobic ( a currently overused word) up until the mid to late 1800s. Thus causing it to not be widely known that it was made in China first until relatively recently.
@@dannystevens2818 To be fair,you cant invent things that already exist. The banjo is just a version of a Chinese Sanxian. It uses European musical scales and was invented by an Irishman. Banjo is just an incorrect pronunciation of a spanish word that means guitar. Black slaves definitely made handmade instruments that used the same basic principles as a modern banjo but so did the Chinese and they did it for thousands of years. The modern Banjo has nothing to do with slaves.
I had heard of people playing ballads from 16th century England on Banjos and had always assumed they came from yee ole country but turns out most of those were played on Lutes which are similar enough to Banjos to translate some songs!
@@donquixote8462most old world string instruments come from the arab oud (sehtar) sehtar would become sitar in modern hindi, kittara in ancient greek, cithara in latin, guitarra in spanish, then finally guitar in english. the lute and guitar embellishments on the banjo were added later, in america.
Okay, I just have to point out that if it was invented and created in the Caribbean. Wouldn't it be a Caribbean instrument, then that was based off of an African instrument??? I'm just saying......
It was brought from Africa and developed in the Caribbean, where many of the ancestors of today’s African Americans are from due to the Atlantic Slave Trade. They brought it to the North American mainland as the banza/banjar and it developed with time and exposure to Euro-descended musical traditions into the modern banjo. The banza, precursor to the banjo. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UTQc9MErxZk.htmlsi=s853cN-WkG_-cbDX The akonting, a related lute instrument in West Africa, played similarly in an indigenous style ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lzt0v9roU6g.htmlsi=z9ByA4IZCRjhgU9a
The banjo is a uniquely American instrument. Modeled after the African akonting. Developed the Appalachian sound after Scottish bagpipe tunes.Went from a gourd to wood with a short 5th string added in 1831. 3 finger picking stlye was developed by Snuffy Jenkins and perfected by Earl Scruggs around 1945. Been used in jazz, gospel, country, rock, blues, bluegrass, orchastra, hip hop and others. Very fun stuff!
He popularized and changed many aspects of the 5 string banjo that we still use today, but he didn't invent the banjo. Bonus points for being a minstrel blackface artist 🙄
@@Vicente_Moreno No he didn't popularize it. He created it. Just because Africa used rocks tied on sticks doesn't mean they get the credit for inventing the jackhammer......
@@Froward_Thinker Incorrect nonsensical comparison. African slaves used a gourd with strings stretched over it which makes it a precursor to a banjo in the same way an upright fretless bass is precursor to the Electric Bass Guitar, which, incidentally, also comes in a fretless model. 🤣
@Froward_Thinker the noun "banjo" has etymologies attributed to African languages, so in name is African. Banjo was a descriptor for a string instrument with a drum as a resonator which had gut or metal strings and was brought from west Africa. I'm sorry that reality disagrees with how you feel.
There are 2 types of people in these comments. 1: the people who understand she pulled the history out of her ass. 2: people who are desperate to say she is right for various reasons. I love it. 😂😂
She stumbled on her words. She should've said the original Banjo was called the Banjar, it was invented in West Africa and passed down through the Carribeans to America. The African slaves in America then made the Banjar's relative, the Banjo. The banjo she is playing is an Appalachian banjo.
Yup, and of course, it's all about race. We'll just ignore that most everyone using finger picks is a relatively new thing because broke ass people couldn't spend money on em. Not to mention there's a few guitar players like Jerry Reed who also use that style. Of course, pointing that out wouldn't make it all about blacks.
Absolutely! ... and why not. Let's just not turn every discussion into a competition about who is better like a lot of comments above yours... cos it never ends
@@BefreitDieLeit No. they didn’t. You don’t even realize they never had a language or any of these instruments and that everything they “created” was because of whites.
There was a guy that went by the nickname of Stringbean on an old show called Hee Haw. He used to play banjo using claw hammer style. He was amazing at it. The rest of the cast used to make fun of his playing style off camera, but they also respected his talent and none of them could play like him.
Vikings didn’t invent cornrows, or braids in general… At any rate, the very first humans were black originating from Africa.. HAIR goes all the way back to the first people in the world. Black People😐Goofy ass trolls.. lol
What you talkin about? Everything she said is 100% accurate. WTF does Cleopatra have to do with anything? She certainly was not white anyway. Haven't you got a coffin to get back to?
I grew up in the blue ridge mountains, one of /the/ historical centers for blue grass. Been a while since I heard someone say clawhammer. And also love that she talked about the African and African American roots of blue grass, the banjo, and other string instruments. Lots of people make blue grass a part of their southern identity but forget where it came from and the historical processes (many of them not at all pretty) that gave rise to the music tradition. Blue grass (and music across the Atlantic/‘New World’) is just one of many ways people of African descent adapted, resisted, and created new ways of being in the world and the fact that blue grass has also been traditionally a music tradition for blue collar workers, rural communities, low income people and a tradition that speaks to things like hard work, pain, struggle, and turning that stuff into an unmatched and entirely unique sound speaks volumes to its history and the people who pioneered it. That’s why many blue grass instruments (washboards, everyday items for percussion, standing basses made out of alternative materials, etc) are usually still so unique and unconventional. Even “traditional” instruments are played in entirely unique “non traditional” blue grass (like the violin vs the fiddle)
@@rtk90083 nope. I never said there weren’t plenty of other influences in blue grass. I’ve family descended from Irish and other ‘settlers’ who influenced the genre, so I’m plenty aware of the impact and origins of other groups on the genre. And there are intersections between the two genres besides. ‘This chrismarie person’ isn’t confusing the two. Perhaps it seems I’m over-exaggerating the AA influence, but that’s not my intention. Didn’t mean to piss off the comment section lmao
We saw Rhiannon Giddens at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville last year. That woman can play. I mean really pick it! And she’s got that angelic voice, to boot!
All the medicines were invented in Africa, the atom was first discovered and then split by Africans, electricity was invented by Africans, all foods and music were African inventions, everything is African. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The Caribbean …. In America it’s called a slave instrument . That’s who invented it slaves . Blues came from it too … yer all welcome without slaves there’s no banjos and no rock n roll 🤔
@@FuzzMasterGeneraland without slave owners there was no slaves, without slaves no slave traders/traffickers, and without traders, no tribes selling prisoners of war, without the tribes selling prisoners of war they'd either be enslaved or killed instead, there, now there's two equally useless comments in this thread. "Yer all welcome for the complete waste of breath"
I attended an elementary school as a kid that let everyone learn an instrument for free and I asked if they had banjo. They said no, so I played viola. That banjo sound though…. I love it.
It’s the same nonsense with people saying Blues, Jazz and Rock and Roll was invented by Black Americans. The instruments and musical scales, tunings and of course the language they sang in all came from Europe. It’s not one culture’s creation, it’s an aggregate of several.
Do you really think Africans or any other cultures didn't understand how to compose, annotate, describe, and perform music on their own instruments before Europeans? Western music and music theory is not inherently superior or universal. In fact it's inherently flawed and innacurate from a rhythmic and harmonic standpoint, so do Europeans want credit for that too? You're welcome. If it weren't for us you'd probably still be burning each other alive for using "magic" intervals or banning rhythm. Then again, yall still can't dance so 😂😂😂
The 4 string banjo yes but that 5 string and the style that it’s in was created by a white guy from Virginia, Africa is the origin of mankind so all instruments have an origin there but the modern banjo 5 strings with an open back is an American invention the sound and style of play is very different from a traditional African “banjo” she’s like 50% right. It’s like claiming Atlantic salmon sushi is Japanese because sushi originated in Japan ignoring that it was the Europeans who first started eating salmon sushi. It’s not wrong but it’s not right
@@notmyrealname1698Finally, someone who gets it! Just like the five-string bass: It’s not a really bass. And the electric guitar? Not a guitar. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
@@notmyrealname1698 That's not how that works. Not all instruments have their origin in Africa just because its the cradle of humanity. The first humans came from there, and then we branched out and set up shop in other places and made things. The Banjo as we know it today is a modernized version of an instrument that is African in origin. Saying it's not African because a white guy took the design, tweaked a couple things about it and then put his name on it is like saying a 7 string guitar isn't a guitar because it has an extra string. Dude, black people have made and continue to make cool shit, it's not weird.
To all the Scottish people upset they don't get to claim the origin of the banjo is from their home, know that you're at least home to the starting point of how most life is made according to some placodrem fossils.
Scottish people didn't even get the banjo until Irish Americans brought them over there from working farms with black people, America was the hot bed of multiple cultures meeting and exchanging music, and instruments
I’d say bluegrass decreased the popularity of the banjo if anything. Banjos were originally lower class and enslaved instruments, then popularity spread with minstrel shows, then it really became popular with all classes in America during the 1880s, with the biggest factories producing banjos at the time being in NYC. Syncopated 4 string banjo playing was popular on jazz record in the 20s and 30s. Bluegrass didn’t really come around until the late 30s early 40s, and metal fingerpicks on steel string banjos were really popularized by Earl Scruggs. Getting branded as a “hillbilly” instrument did a lot of damage to the popular image of the banjo, which is ironic, as a few decades prior, you were just as likely to see a banjo as an upright piano in any middle class American home. The movie Deliverance and the whole dueling banjos running joke really did a lot of long term damage that’s only just being reversed in the last few years. The image of an inbred hick fingerpicking banjo on the porch is the only exposure most people have to the instrument.
worked in Gambia for years even purchased djiba drums for music classes the nearest to a banjo i ever saw was a stick with 1 string and a hollow fruitshell on the end
She’s got that in reverse because it was first developed in the Americas in ancient times by the picts and then all over the world. That’s where we get the pick from
