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It Is Time To Reclaim the Banjo

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Sule Heitner: musician, music scholar and adventurous mind.   For the black community, history, culture, and tradition has always been accompanied by roadblocks and barriers. So much went unrecorded, so many artifacts misidentified, misattributed and unacknowledged, lending credence to the idea that the black community has little to no history, culture, and few traditions to uphold. This attitude can be observed from both within the black community and without, and encompasses unintentional misinformation as well as malign, deliberate disinformation. Whether deliberate or unintended, the obfuscation of history has greatly shaped the narrative surrounding one of the oldest instruments created in the Americas. The banjo has been so misunderstood and misrepresented it is almost completely disassociated with the people credited with introducing it to the world. Too often people are genuinely surprized to discover that the banjo’s origins are 100% African American.   Born on the Ca...
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Pulling Up The Rug - Reflections on the banjo and the story of its people

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  Pulling Up The Rug Reflections on the banjo and the story of its people Sule Heitner Dr. Christine Beckett March 27, 2021     Introduction      The banjo has been called “America's Instrument”, and as such holds a unique place within the traditions of American music. In the cross-pollination of music and culture ubiquitous throughout the Americas, the banjo holds an esteemed place. Its influence on many musical innovations that followed cannot be underestimated. It's typically considered to be one of the earliest instruments invented in the Americas. It can be further argued that were it not for the banjo and the music it inspired, American music, and the industry that grew around it, would have evolved quite differently.      The origins and history of the banjo have been obscured by complex forces, such as the politics of race, class and geography as well as time itself. Its murky past has led to much speculation, contradiction, false...
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Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
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