The Truth About Banjo History 

The best book on the subject is _Banjo_ _Roots_ _and_ _Branches_ by Dena Epstein. You might also watch my short documentary "Introduction to Early Banjo History" here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SClwUgvcZEo.htmlsi=n8Ij9DtpcdyAuwGn

That would be cool

@@jacobdiejude124 would be cool and kinda eerie lol

Can confirm. My deer guts are gone. Left them out last night and heard a dark tune.

Listening to this as someone with a degree in history, I like his use and interpretation of primary sources. He not only notes how early the first references were, but the significance of the fact that the authors felt no need to explain what they were talking about. That's always significant, because it captures the fact that something was so widespread that no reasonably aware person would have any questions about what a frankly pretty unusual term means ("banjo" is a term that sounds unlikely to be native to the English language). It means something isn't new, and without seeing a transition period where people *did* feel the need to clarify, it means that it became common quietly and without deliberate adoption. Which, with something like the banjo, makes sense. It's not so unusual that it would have ever felt like a bizarre novelty, but it can be used to produce a unique and recognizable sound that people enjoyed just as much in the 18th and 19th centuries as we do today. Unfortunately, prejudice (against Black musicians at first, and against poor artists from Appalachia even now) has delayed its acceptance by "high society". People are only now, and only to a limited extent, coming to embrace the idea than an instrument popular for centuries can be used to produce complex, beautiful, and even haunting musical arrangements. I feel like distribution through online channels is helping in that process, since it can bypass traditional gate keepers like record labels and radio stations, to reach people directly with music that doesn't play into the stereotype of what banjo playing "should" be.

I started playing the banjo a couple years ago, and I try to learn all I can. While there are many good sources, Clifton is one of, if not, the best!

That is what I always thought, african roots are so obvious(besides all other native storytelling ,from all over the world!)almost disappeared in one way to use it( which I never was interested in ) and is still soo present in the other way(which I love).Whole wide World...

For sure, the first time I saw a Gnawa band playing I thought ... wow, that looks a lot like clawhammer banjo playing from the United States. There's a lot of reason to suspect that banjo-like instrument designs (stringed lutes with a stretched skin head) came into West Africa from Arabic traders in the north. In coastal areas like Ghana and Nigeria most of the really traditional music focuses around different kinds of drums and polyrhythmic music, but as you go farther north into the Sahel region (for example, Mali, but also north Ghana) where the Arabic/Islamic influence is much stronger, you start to see a bigger diversity of skin-head stringed instruments. For sure some of the earliest lutes came out of north/northeast Africa, Iran, Turkey, etc.. that then came to influence Southern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa.. I've even seen some Egyptian art with images of banjo-looking instruments.

I'm glad to have read this! It's awesome you're clearly interested in the instruments origins and have a passion for it

The Gnawa people are descendants of enslaved West Africans who were brought to Morocco via the Trans-Sahara slave trade. If the parallels to Afro-Americans aren't striking enough, the Stambeli music of Tunisia, played by a related West-African descended group in Tunisia, employs a "gombri" (a variation of "gombri" or "guembri") that is built with a (deep) drum body rather than a more traditionally Sub-saharan African gourd body. They also play it with that clawhammer style. It's uncanny that a similar adaptation to the West African lute occured with Afro-descendants in the Americas.

​@@theoldkid5725African roots? Aryan roots... not African per se. The Aryan/Blanc has long existed all across North Africa (from today's Morroco all the way through Egypt). The origination of stringed instrumemtation emanated from Europe/Aryans.

P r e a c h

College was the best.

Yeah, dumb ass kids and their dumb ass colleges. This is a whole year's education in ten minutes 🤘🤘 screw those lazy youngsters Real talk though, this history isn't banned. You can take a course on Appalachian history at many colleges in the region

Wow. Thank you for this info. I'd love to know your resource .

Nonsense.

@@Blenduu Thanks. Not quite sure what you mean by 'resource'. If a keen interest in the history of the banjo going back to my distant relative Alfred Glanville Vance aka 'The Great Vance (d.1888) is a resource, then I certainly have that. Clifton Hicks, Rhiannon Giddens and Jim Carrier are good sources, and well worth looking at. BJ.

@@jeffhildreth9244 Ah, clearly a gentleman and a scholar. Thanks. Can you be a little more specific?

Is that a Slayer reference? maybe not.. But truth nonetheless

I think people were using heat and water to bend wood long before Thonet; for example, the Windsor chair was developed before 1800. I'm guessing that Thonet merely perfected the process. Either way, it's apparent that virtually all banjos described in the historical record before Sweeney/Boucher are gourd-bodied instruments, and that gourds all but disappear after circa 1840; replaced by wooden, steam-bent sound chambers.

I know little on this subject, but I looked up history of old baskets, since I inherited a single basket as my grandma's dying request....no inheritance to leave, but she kept saying I had to have the basket. I looked up old baskets and found it was as common if not more common in some places to make wooden baskets than reed baskets, and nearly everyone knew how to make baskets, choose wood, soak, bend and weave until about the 1940's. The more common competence and knowledge base in older days, even of making baskets would possibly, have contributed to making banjos at a very early stage, methinks. Edit: barrel making was also common and could easily have contributed to the early banjo. Anyone that could make a wood basket or barrel could have made an early banjo too.

@@CliftonHicksbanjo Foxfire 3 has a section on traditional methods of constructing banjos and dulcimers. One uses a bent hickory hoop, others use rings cut from hardwood.

Banjo History Reading List 👉 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SWzp9tbR64k.html

@@CliftonHicksbanjo Thank you I will

I am by no means an expert on traditional Celtic music. My guess would be that, like American trad, most of the stuff one hears at festivals or on recordings probably stems from the 1960s folk music revival. That being said, various forms of flutes, violins, drums, and bagpipes have been played continuously in Britain and Ireland for thousands of years. I think most folk music in that area wasn't documented until the 18th century, whereas American folk music went largely undocumented until the late 19th century.

Too right, mate!

The earliest accounts of what can be positively identified as a "banjo" come from the Caribbean--not West Africa. Recent organological studies of early gourd banjos indicate that they are a hybrid instrument, borrowing heavily from both African and European lutes. By 1740 the gourd banjo had spread across the east coast of what would become the United States, and by 1780 it occupied a central role in both black and white folk culture--especially in the South.

@@CliftonHicksbanjo Thanks for the reply! I'll look more into the origins.

I was raised hearing that the banjo came from Ireland, but this isn't the case. The earliest known banjos (dating to the late 1600s/early 1800s) were played in the Caribbean--places like Haiti and Jamaica. My understanding is that the banjo was later popularized in Britain during the 1840s by entertainers from the United States. As far as I know, the 4-string Irish banjo did not emerge until circa 1900.

"... from my cold, dead fingers."

“CuLtUrAl ApRoPiATiOn”

🤣 Thanks, I hadn't heard that one.

@@CliftonHicksbanjo do you even realise how america was founded