Pulling Up The Rug - Reflections on the banjo and the story of its people

 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 claims and myths that have seeped into and corrupted the historical record. Contemporarily we've had a reassessment of the available data and corrections have been made; yet many myths persist and aside from banjo fanatics and ethnomusicologists most people, even many musicians, are ignorant of the instrument's origins and its importance. As if to underline this observation, the banjo currently suffers from a terrible image problem. A stigma hangs over it, leading people to prejudge its sound and the music associated with it. For many minds it conjures up images of poor, rural, white, southern US as depicted in film. The misinformation persists in spite of efforts to correct the record. From this perspective Pulling Up the Rug has the duel meaning of preparing a space for dancing and exposing a diverse and more interesting truth.

    It is worth noting that when one mentions America there is a bit of confusion as to what exactly is meant. Some writers are referring specifically to the United States of America (USA) when using the term “America's Instrument”, while others are referring to the Americas overall. To clarify the distinction between the two throughout this piece the acronym US will be used when referring to the nation. Elsewhere I'll simply use the term America for the continent in general.

    The story of the banjo can not be told without mentioning racism and racial bias, which have heavily influenced how the banjo, the music associated with it, and our collective view of the instrument, developed over time. Related yet distinct concepts, are class and geography. The intersections between urban or rural and rich or poor are in play alongside consideration of Africa American or Caucasian. These elements have been driving forces throughout the banjo's history. The banjo was created through the crucible of the Atlantic slave trade. Captive Africans brought to the Americas originated from all over the west and central African coast, each from their own respective ethnic groups. In addition, contact and proximity to Europeans, with their own varied ethnic identities, added yet more layers to the banjo's creation. Unpacking these themes will help us explore the true story, as well as dispel falsehoods.

    Through mutually exclusive forces of history, the banjo's construction, and the very sound generated by the instrument was hybridized. As a creolized instrument, or an instrument created through hybridizing various instrument building traditions from multiple ethnic groups, the banjo holds a supreme position. It's changes and innovations spanning the years are illuminating and tell an important part of the story. Also, due to certain historic events, the music played by the banjo is creolized. It's repertoire, and the very rhythms, harmonies and melodies that developed over time were ultimately influenced by various West African cultures, as well as the norms, practices and laws of the dominant colonial society.

Where to begin

    In order to accurately tell the complicated story of the banjo and its importance to the development and dissemination of American music, we have to go back to the very beginning, before its creation on American shores. The advent of the African slave trade saw a subtle, yet important shift in thinking. The various peoples of Africa, each with their own distinct culture, were re-identified by Portuguese slavers simply as black, negro and African. The continent of Africa is enormous and is home to roughly 3000 different tribes and around 2000 languages and dialects. Ashanti, Hausa, Igbo, Jola, all tribes associated with the African slave trade, became one group: African. This of course was a Portuguese distinction and would have been highly inaccurate from an African perspective. However, the shared experience, the intense horrors inflicted on enslaved peoples did eventually achieve the result, with each new world colony adapting its own pan-African identity. How this happened, and over how long a period of time is a matter of speculation, but one thing is certain; as the various peoples of West Africa coalesced into one, so too did their respective cultures. (Eltis, D. 2007)

    Previously, each tribe would have had their own musical tradition complete with distinct musical instruments, songs and cultural import. However, we must take into account the effects of sharing a continent. Historical records confirm these cultures were long exchanging with each other through inter-marriages, cross-migration, trade and rivalries between ethnic groups occurring over vast periods of time, therefore commonalities between them are expected. This would have applied to society as a whole, as well as specifically to the musical culture, and the use of plucked, spike lutes.

    In the classification of musical instruments, or organology, for all intents and purposes our interest is on the plucked, spike lute chordophones of West Africa. So, let's take some time to explore the banjo's progenitors. Since there are as many as 81 different spike lute chordophones from the tribes of West Africa, I've chosen a short list of the most likely suspects. Recent DNA studies have revealed specific ethnic groups that would have been prevalent on the plantations where we find mentions of banjos, banzas, banjers or any of the names given the emerging instrument. So first we'll look at the plucked, spike lutes that come from these groups. On another note, organologists have identified a couple West African plucked, spike lutes as likely ancestors to the banjo due to their construction, sonic analysis and the social function they occupy in the respective group. We'll take a detailed look at these as well.

    Among captive Africans some tribes were more numerous than others. These sub-groups of people were overrepresented within the overall enslaved population because more from that particular group were captured. This leads to the assumption that these groups may have been more dominant in shaping the emerging Pan-African culture in the new world. It's a logical assumption, however, history is replete with small groups of people dominating vastly larger groups, so we'll take care not to overlook this if we encounter such a phenomenon. With the data at hand, we are limited in our understanding of how enslaved Africans from different backgrounds initially interacted with each other. Therefore, we'll begin with the assumption that groups with larger numbers would have had greater influence over cultural and social development in the new world but pay attention for any exceptions. The earliest example of a plucked spike lute played by enslaved Africans occurs on the Caribbean Islands of Martinique (banza, 1678), and Jamaica (strum-strum, 1689), according to the seminal work by Dana Epstein (1975). It was on the island of Martinique where in 1678 le Conseil Souverain de Martinique in a restatement of an earlier ordinance from 1654 prohibiting "danses et assemblies de negres," only this time specifically mentioning the kalenda, defined as "a gathering of Negroes where they dance in their own style all together to the sound of a drum and an instrument they call banza (Dessalles 1847:III, 296-297). The second example is from Jamaica where in 1688 physician and naturalist Hans Sloane documented several plucked, spike lutes played by enslaved Africans which he called the strum strum.

They [the Negroes] have several sorts of Instruments in imitation of Lutes,

made of small Gourds fitted with Necks, strung with Horse hairs, or the peeled

stalks of climbing Plants or Withs. These Instruments are sometimes made of

hollow'd Timber covered with Parchment or other Skin wetted, having a Bow

for its Neck, the Strings ty'd longer or shorter, as they would alter their sounds

(Sloane 1707:I, lix)

    To be clear, Sloane seems to be referring to the lute, a European instrument modeled after the Arabic ud, and not the organological classification. Certainly, from his perspective these instruments had some resemblance to the European lute. But of course, they were not imitating European lutes as he suggested, in fact most would have never seen one. Some might have seen an ud as these were prevalent in North Africa, but it's unlikely this would have been their point of reference. The evidence strongly suggests they were imitating instruments they had known from their respective homelands. We can now examine where enslaved Africans primarily came from in Africa and compare it with the list of plucked spiked lutes by region.

    Both Jamaica and Martinique's African slave population seems to have originated primarily from the area between modern day Ivory Coast and Nigeria, and according to DNA research, an area known as Lower Guinea. The most prominent ethnic groups would have been the Yoruba, Brong, Haousa (Hausa) and Igbo. The DNA data seems somewhat incomplete as these specific tribes apply only to Martinique, the Jamaican results were more regional in nature and not specific to tribe. I'm confident that in time more data about the specific origins of African slaves will exist, but for now we'll go with the available data. In any case, the DNA data matches the documentation from the period chronicling which regions the British and French acquired their slaves for their new world colonies. Now it can be determined which plucked spiked lutes come from the region and examine specific ethnic groups to see what could have been in the collective memory of new world enslaved Africans, and what they may have been actively reproducing in the later 1600s. The area known as Lower Guinea is home to many variations of plucked spike lutes. Among them, and probably the most prevalent is the molo. This oblong bodied instrument goes by many names and is shared by several ethnic groups in the region and beyond. Under this name alone it's associated with the Djerma, Songhai, Fulbe, Soninke, Diawara and Haousa. It's also known under the names xalam, khalam, teherdent, gambare, mola and ngoni. The Haousa use the name molo or mola, and since this is one of the aforementioned ethnic groups identified by DNA I'll refer to it as the molo. It is classified as a plucked half spike, or semi spike lute. The spike doesn't go straight through the body but stops at a point in the middle where a hole allows the strings to be tied to the spike. Fig. 1

Fig. 1: Plucked Half/Semi Spike Lute

    Like so many West African plucked spike lutes, the body of the molo is composed of a hollowed-out gourd. It's often oblong in shape and has two variants with either 4 or 7 strings. The spike is cylindrical, another thing it shares with other plucked spike lutes, with the strings tied to the top end. Common tunings are C5, D4, G4, D5 for 4 string varieties and C4, C5, G4, D5, G5, E5, F5 or C4, C5, D4, G4, D5, E5, F5 for 7 the stringed varieties. There are many tunings, however. Notably, it is played in a down stroke style with the string coming off the back of the index or middle fingernail, and the thumb resting on the top string, again a common feature among west African plucked, spike lutes. (Charry, E. 1996)

Old World

    In the colonies, labor was initially provided by the indigenous population as well as imports from Europe, but as early as 1525 human cargo was being shipped from West Africa. So why is it we only hear about the banjo by the late 1600s? It can be explained by examining the two phases of the Atlantic slave trade. The first phase was dominated by the Spanish and Portuguese who had agreements and treaties, and even unified for a time. While captives were transported to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, their final destinations were likely the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of South and Central America. Africans captured into slavery came overwhelmingly from one particular region with over 5 000 000 originating from the central African nation of Angola, an area not recognized for the presence of plucked spiked lutes.

 

Fig. 2    Area known for Plucked Spike lutes.                               Fig. 3    Mali Empire

    It wasn't until the 1670s that dominance in the trade of enslaved peoples shifted to the British, French, Dutch and others. With the founding of the Royal African Company and the New West Indies Company the British led the charge. This is characterized as the second phase of the Atlantic slave trade. Unlike their Spanish and Portuguese counterparts, the British, French and Dutch tended to acquire captives from the region of Lower Guinea, a region that runs from the Ivory Coast to Nigeria, with approximately 4 803 000 recorded to have been shipped. In short time the region of Upper Guinea, called the Senegambia region was also being exploited for the slave trade. And unlike the ethnic groups of Angola and central Africa, the ethnic groups of both Lower and Upper Guinea are known for their plucked, spiked lutes. Fig. 2

(Eltis, D. 2007)

As we examine the role of various empires and the dissemination of ideas and concepts, there is another empire to consider, an empire that predates the activities of European powers in West Africa and helped spread the idea of plucked spiked lutes throughout the region. The Mali Empire began around the year 1225 CE and facilitated the spread of the Griot tradition. Griot, a word meaning “blood of the people”, were West African musicians, praise-singers, poets, story tellers, advisors, repositories of history and genealogy. The profession of Griot was hereditary with the honoured title being handed down from parent to child. They played an important role in the culture as a kind of living, oral library and were employed for official ceremonies and rituals. Weddings, coming of age ceremonies, funerals, both private and as a function of state would have been accompanied by a Griot. This tradition surpassed the borders of the Mali Empire tracing its influence as far east as western Sudan and spans a time predating the Mali Empire right up to today. Fig. 3

    Among all the instruments associated with the griot tradition are three plucked, spike lutes. The Kora is indeed a long neck, gourd bodied lute, but with its 21 strings and its two-handed playing style it bears more resemblance to a harp. The n'goni and the xalam (khalam, kalam, halam), both associated with the griot tradition, are gourd bodied, spike lutes and closely related to the molo (mola), sintir (guembri, gimbri, hejhouj) and many other African plucked spike lutes. (Fig. 4) All of these are examples of half or semi spike plucked lutes meaning the neck, or spike, extends only part way through the resonant body, or gourd. Thanks to the Griots and the reach of the griot tradition, these instruments would have been a part of the collective consciousness of most west Africans.

Fig. 4 Sintir

    There were other plucked, spike lutes that were not associated with the griot tradition such as the gurmi, gzopoli, kakanza, and the kologo, all from lower Guinea, and the akonting (ékonting) from Senegambia/upper Guinea. (Fig. 5) The akonting has been identified as one of the banjo's closest progenitors. It's a full spike lute, meaning the spike extends all the way through the resonant body. It bears three strings, two long and one shorter drone or chanterelle string. Like the banjo, it served the function of folk instrument in the society. Far less official than the instruments played by the Griots, it's the type of instrument the laborer will come home from work to play on the back porch. It still has a hollowed-out gourd with an animal skin stretched over its opening as a resonator and a spike neck common to all west African plucked, spike lutes. According to records, Senegambia or upper Guinea provided approximately 1 482 000 slaves for the plantation colonies in comparison to lower Guinea's 4 803 000. However, we also see that the culture of plucked, spike lutes is highly concentrated in the region. So, in spite of their fewer numbers, these people would have been deeply ensconced in a musical culture of plucked, spike lutes. The larger population from lower Guinea would have also been familiar with this culture to varying degrees. With so many features in common with its Caribbean cousin, there's no surprise the akonting excites anyone attempting to understand the banjo's origins. 

Fig. 5 Modern Akonting

    The xalam with its place in the Griot tradition, its status and reach, along with the akonting, with its construction and its role as a folk instrument, are the two west African plucked, spike lutes most associated with the banjo. Researchers consistently identify them both as the prime suspects in influencing its inception and development. They use the same downstroke playing technique common to so many west African plucked, spike lutes which later was adapted to the banjo. Although it's logical to conclude that all west African plucked, spike lutes had at least some influence on the banjo, we see through historical examination why these two stand out. Anecdotally, a photo posted online of myself playing a gourd banjo elicited a response from southern Senegal. A fan left an excited comment about how his people play the “same instrument called an Ékonting”, and indeed the resemblance is striking. It's important to note, these instruments did not leave west Africa. These people were captured, their possessions taken. They were chained together in the hold of a ship and transported to market as cargo. So only the concept or idea of these instruments made it to the new world with those who survived the trip.

New World

    Life on the plantation for an enslaved person was not easy. Consumption of sugar, coffee and tobacco created a cross continental industry long before the term globalization was coined. These high intensity crops with their demand for cheap labor were mostly centered in the Caribbean and the coasts of both south and central America. This was grueling, manual labor coupled with dangerous working conditions and brutal, even deadly tactics to control the slave population. Under these conditions an enslaved person’s life expectancy was anywhere from eight to ten years. For fear of uprisings, which were frequent, laws were created prohibiting the activities of enslaved African. Famously, drums were prohibited in the American colonies as they were recognized as a means to communicate. But many laws also prohibited gatherings, dances, language, whatever could have been used to organize revolt. It's important to note that singing and playing musical instruments was not universally outlawed and practices were not uniform throughout the various colonies. Each colony had a different strategy on how to deal with its enslaved population. It's been said the French were generally less severe in their treatment, allowing for greater reticence of African culture. Individual slave owners varied in their severity as well. Some would allow for leisure time once daily tasks were complete, encouraged music and social gatherings on regular occasions, and even had the enslaved entertain their guests. 

    Those who had a mind to recreate the instruments of their ancestors would have found materials on American shores fairly easily. The gourds and calabashes used to make the resonant body grow in abundance, there is no shortage of animal skins and material to make strings, and wood for the spike would have been plentiful. I think it's safe to say that it didn't take long before the new world was humming with the sounds of the old. Naturally we wonder how this may have sounded. Listening to modern akonting players or the Griots of today may shed some light on that question, however the writings of Dr. Hans Sloane provide the greatest clarity. In 1688 Sloane had a Mr. Baptiste notate the songs he was hearing on the strum strum as accurately as possible. In spite of the problems that arise when using European notation to notate African music, Mr. Baptiste did a good job, and we have a record of how the banjo likely sounded. (Fig. 6)

Fig. 6 Exerpt from A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados,

Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica. (Sloane, 1701)

    Sloane was the only one of this period to have notated what he heard, but not the first nor the last to document the banjo in the Americas. There was the aforementioned French colony of Martinique where the banza was mentioned in a law prohibiting dances among Negros in 1678. And later, a French monk named Jean Baptiste Labat upon visiting Martinique in 1694 described the instrument as having a calabash body covered with a skin and four strings. He didn't give a name and instead referred to it as “une espèces de guitare”. On the island of Barbados in 1704, slaves were observed playing multiple instruments including the bangil, described as a form of lute. From Jamaica in 1740 comes yet another mention of the strum strum, this from an account of the Sunday evening gatherings of enslaved peoples that had become common. The banshaw and a personal favorite, the merrywang were also mentioned in 1763 and 1774 respectively. From Maryland in the mainland colonies Nicholas Creswell writes in his journal of having attended a Negro ball; “Sundays being the only days these poor creatures have to themselves; they generally meet together and amuse themselves with dancing to the Banjo.” Writers chronicling life in pre-revolutionary US colonies speak of the bandore (Pronounced banjor or banjer). From all over the Caribbean and on the continent come further mentions of the bangil, banjer and banza, with variations such as banshaw, banjaw, banjoe, banjee, banja and more. Despite the various names, the instrument's description, the sound it makes and the people who play it remain a constant.

    Much of the reference to the early banjo is rather Eurocentric in nature. With few exceptions, most references were quite unflattering. The aforementioned Nicholas Creswell described it as such.

“This musical instrument (if it may be so called) is made of a Gourd

something in the imitation of a guitar, with only four strings and played

with the fingers in the same manner. Some of them sing to it, which is

very droll music indeed.” (Creswell 1924:18-19)

Others describe it as a “rude musical instrument, made of the shell of a large gourd, or pumpion, and strung somewhat in the manner of a violin; it is used by Negroes.” “It’s sound is a dull, heavy, grumbling murmur; yet it is not without something like melody, nor incapable of inspiring cheerfulness and mirth. Negroes are almost always fond of music: it is rare to meet with one, w ho cannot sing, play and dance; and dull as they often are in other respects, they are always awakened and alive at the sound of the banjer. My memory supplies me with a couplet of one of their songs, which are generally of the improvisatori kind; nor did I use to think the poetry much beneath the music.” (Boucher 1832:xlix). Or “Negroes are very fond of the discordant notes of the banjar” (Luffman 1789:135-136). “...Its wild notes of melody seem to Correspond with the state of Civilization of the Country where this species of music originated.” (Fairfax 1936:2).

One of the more flattering description sounds like this:

They are by far the most musical of any portion of the inhabitants of the

United States, and in the evening I have seen them reclining in their

boats on the canal at Richmond, playing on the banjo, and singing in a

style-I dare say, equal to a Venetian gondolier (Paulding 1835:I, 96-97)

Many commentators make note of the musical acumen possessed by the African population but characterize these musical gifts as further evidence of inferiority. Still this recognition of musical ability brought enslaved persons into the homes of their masters on festive occasions to entertain the master's guests. And of course, learning European songs and dance music was expected.

Fig. 7 The Stedman Creole Bania

    While notation of the music from this period is limited to the Sloane document, there are several artifacts in the form of instruments crafted by enslaved Africans in various museums. Three such artifacts are particularly pertinent in regard to the banjo. The Stedman Creole Bania is the first of these artifacts. It's currently on display in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnology; Leiden, the Netherlands), and is considered to be the oldest example of the early gourd banjo. (Fig. 7) It was collected in the northeastern South American country of Suriname (formerly known as Dutch Guiana) by Captain John Gabriel Stedman sometime between 1773 and 1777. During this period, Captain Stedman served with Colonel Louis Henry Fourgeoud's military expeditionary force, made up of foreign volunteers, sent from the Netherlands to subdue "revolted Negroes" during the Dutch colony's First Boni-Maroon War (1768-1777). Other early banjos that have survived from this era are the Schoelcher Banza collected in Haiti In 1840-1841 by French abolitionist Victor Schoelcher. It now sits in the Musee de la Musique, Cite de la Musique in Paris, France. (Fig. 8) There is German musicologist and collector Carl Engel's banjo, currently housed in the Victoria and Albert museum in London. (Fig. 9) Correspondence from the museum places the date roughly around 1830-1840. And lastly the Joel Sweeney banjo, considered to be the prototype for the first commercially manufactured banjo, and the first documented departure from the gourd resonator. It is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum. (Fig. 10)

               

Fig. 8 The Schoelcher Banza                                        Fig. 9 Carl Engel Banza                                        Fig. 10 Joel Sweeney Banjo

    Although the first three artifacts all fit the criteria for early gourd banjos, it's only the Stedman that dates back to the 1700s. This period saw a parallel to the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the intra- American slave trade. Enslaved peoples would have been sold among slave holders and shipped to various locations within the Americas. The banjo, under any and all of its names, moved around the Americas this way. Anywhere one transported a banjo player that player would recreate the banjo using whatever materials were available, further spreading its influence and exposing more people to its sound. The watercolor “The Old Plantation” depicting plantation life in South Carolina dates between 1790 and 1800, and clearly depicts an early gourd banjo. (Fig. 11) During this time some jurisdictions allowed the enslaved population to gather and hold dances on Sunday evenings. One can imagine how a pan-African/Caribbean culture could begin to coalesce in this environment, with each island or region creating its own unique variety. Caucasian slave owners would host their own parties and balls and would have enslaved Africans perform for their guests. Of course, it was expected of them to learn and play European dance music and popular songs, which enslaved Africans reportedly did well. It was a common observation that the African population had an affinity for music, and it became the vogue among Caucasians to have African American entertainers perform for their gatherings.

Fig. 11 Watercolor “The Old Plantation”- Sounth Carolina (1790-1800)

Creolization

    Exposure to European music had a profound effect on the banjo's sound. One of the many ways music innovates and develops is through cultural appropriation, a term with negative connotations today, but it's a phenomenon that's been a constant for thousands of years and is not inherently negative. In any case we see and hear the results. African American music doesn't sound like the music from Africa. It's been creolized, mixed between the various African cultures between them, then again with the music of slave owners from Europe who themselves have various cultures, and again with the indentured servants from places like India and Ireland. Parallel to the creolization of the music was that of the instrument itself. Banjo makers quickly began to incorporate some of the characteristics of European spiked lutes, in particular the flat fingerboard and violin style tuning pegs. Banjo builds varied, but the configuration of three long strings and one short drone string, or chanterelle, seems to be the most common. (Fig. 12) By the early 1800s, the sounds of this instrument we've described could be heard all over the Americas with areas of influence spanning the continent. The banjo's influence extended from the northern shores of south America, throughout the Caribbean, the south and east parts of the north American continent all the way up to Canada. The consensus of the time, that the instrument was squarely within the domain of Afro America, is underlined by its frequent description as the principal instrument of the African American population. This however was beginning to change. Born in Virginia in 1810, Joel Walker Sweeney began to play the banjo as a young boy. He was apparently taught by African American musicians enslaved near his father's farm in Appomattox County, VA. He is the first documented Caucasian player of the instrument. By this time the music was thoroughly creolized having conformed to the reality of European dominance while still retaining important aspects of its African origins. Characteristics like rhythm, playing technique, the use of call and response and the traditional, griot hoot and holler quality to the singing, merged with a repertoire that was mostly comprised of folk songs and recycled melodies from western Europe and the British Isles. Lyrics were often changed to reflect American experiences, including a highly sanitized depiction of plantation life.                                

                         

          Fig. 12 Modern Gourd Banjo                                                                Fig. 13 William Esperance Boucher, Jr.

    Sweeney is indeed the first documented Caucasian player of the instrument, but there are other contributions to the banjo's development for which he's credited. While some of these claims are somewhat spurious, they are nonetheless a part of the history of the banjo and deserve proper attention. Sweeney is credited with certain innovations to the banjo itself, namely the wooden hoop or drum shell replacing the gourd body and the chanterelle string. It is reported that while building a banjo for his sister, and unsatisfied with the melodic range of the instrument, Sweeney added the 5th string.

    We have seen 4 string banjo configurations with the chanterelle dating back to at least the 18th century. However, a 5th string was added at some point before the first commercially manufactured banjo in 1845. The truth is, Sweeney likely added the lowest pitched long string, consistent with extending the instruments melodic range. Since, as previously stated, banjo configurations varied, it is possible he may have seen a 5-string banjo and copied its design. The same could be said about his involvement in replacing the gourd body with the wooden hoop. We know that banjoists were crafting banjos using various materials to fashion the body. Many used modified cylindrical containers like meal sifters or peck baskets to replace the gourd. Were they inspired by his prototype, or did he create his model from having seen the innovation? (Meredith, 2003 pp. 17). The impulse to question these assertions stems from the fact that, in spite of its persistence, the allegation he invented the chanterelle is patently false. Also, during the push to gentrify the instrument in the latter part of the century, he was given credit for inventing the banjo outright. He made the claim himself on occasion, and once put forth it was repeated as fact. This last assertion is so absurd it begs for a reexamination of the available facts and further discovery.

The claim that he taught many of the minstrel performers to play is corroborated by many of his former pupils. He himself toured in blackface as a member of a minstrel troupe, allowing him to be in position to impart his skills on the banjo. That he helped influence the design of the first commercially manufactured banjo lacks solid verification but seems likely as the Boucher company's design greatly resembles Sweeneys. He was known for his skill on the instrument and became the benchmark to which others were compared. The innovations he advocated, whether he invented them or not, became

standard for the banjo and improved its playability. Furthermore, an instrument that had been associated with enslaved and lower-class segments of the population began to make headway among middle-class European Americans. He pioneered the kind of advocacy that saw the banjo's ascent among mainstream society, and he wouldn't be the last to do so.

    In 1845, William Esperance Boucher created the first commercially manufactured banjo and from this point the banjo becomes familiar to our modern eyes. (Fig. 13) It has 5 strings, 4 long and one short chanterelle, and the drum shell body we're accustomed to on modern banjos. However, it still lacks the tone ring, the resonator, and it remains a fretless instrument. This most recent variation of banjo, popularized by Sweeney and mass produced by Boucher, was a main feature in the minstrel show, and helped to shape the content therein. A look at the music composed and published for black face minstrelsy, along with handbills and promotional material confirms the banjo sat at the core of the minstrel ensemble.

Let's go to the Minstrel Show

    The minstrel show represents one of the most profound developments in the history of the US entertainment industry. It's importance to American history in general is paramount, and yet it is so often overlooked. It represents the first uniquely American art form to be expressed in mass entertainment and pioneered the tendency of the US to export culture globally. It is the first iteration of an organized entertainment industry in the Americas and led directly to the modern industry we know today. The minstrel show marked every sector of the industry that succeeded from it. From music, theatre, dance and comedy to film, radio and television, there is truly no sector of the entertainment industry untouched or unaffected by the lingering legacy of minstrelsy. This spectacle, which so indelibly left its mark on every American entertainment form, was itself deeply influenced by African American music and the culture of the southern plantation, and particularly northern, working class European Americans perceptions of how enslaved southern plantation workers lived.

    It's a difficult and paradoxical history to parse through. It is replete with the ugliest stereotypes of African Americans, it codified blackness in a sickeningly familiar way to any who know the proceeding history, and yet embodies a bizarre kind of admiration of and for African American culture. Echoing their colonial forbearers' perception that any musical ability possessed by the slaves was somehow evidence of their intellectual inferiority, minstrelsy additionally portrayed African Americans as primitive, clownish, prone to vice and violence, sexually rapacious, lazy and incapable of self determination. It's these exact traits that greatly influenced the creation of segregation laws throughout the south beginning just before the 20th century. Known collectively as Jim Crow laws, these “black codes” took the name directly from one of the minstrel show's main characters. Such was the awesome influence of the minstrel show on society. And yet, the entire spectacle is a depiction of plantation life borrowing heavily from African American musical traditions. So where and how did minstrelsy begin? Who invented this new performance art form, and for whom? What was the minstrel show portraying and how did it do so? What effects did the minstrel show phenomenon have on the greater society and finally how did the banjo figure in all this.

    By the time struggling New York actor Thomas Dartmouth Rice is credited with the inspiration for the minstrel show, there had already been significant use of blackface in American theatre. Many of the archetypal characters had already been created, such as the dark skinned country buffoon and the slick city dandy. However, Rice was the first to build an entire act around blackface performance. As the story goes, during a trip to Louisville in 1828 he encountered an elderly enslaved man suffering from a physical impediment that made walking and moving difficult. During this encounter the man sang a song while dancing in a hopping fashion. The song went “Weel about and turn about and do jis so, Eb'ry time I weel about and jump Jim Crow.” From this, Rice created the Jim Crow character. He wore tattered clothes and blackened his skin with burnt cork, and in 1830 performed the song and dance he claimed to have learned from the African American man. We don't know how much of this story is true and how much is promotion for the act itself. In some tellings the city is Washington DC and in others the enslaved person Rice observed is a young stable boy. True or false, the story has historical value either way. The spellings and punctuation are revealing in their reinforcement of racial stereotypes, also revealing is the use of such a story as a promotional tool. Oddly, the lyrics to Jump Jim Crow, first published by Firth and Hall in the late 1820s, credits no author.

    Rice became known as the father of minstrelsy and enjoyed great success with his new act. It was this success that inspired other performers to follow suit, creating a cast of characters and forming troupes. By the 1840s, with the emergence of Dan Emmett's Virginia Minstrels, the iconic minstrel format began to emerge. The basic format consisted of four performers, a tambourine player, a banjoist, a fiddler, and a pair of bone clappers for the last man. They sat in a semi-circle, played popular songs and made wisecracks. The show featured a stump speech, a monologue exaggeratedly lampooning the perceived dialect of southern African Americans. The subject matter could be about politics, society or current events, any subject would do. The character, buffoonish and dim-witted, would attempt to recite his speech with eloquence only to end up delivering unintended jokes and puns, while displaying his clownish inability to fully grasp the issues of the day. This became the basic blueprint of the minstrel show. Edwin Pierce Christie founded Christie's Minstrels in 1846 and further refined the minstrel show. Under Christie, the format evolved to include a parade to the venue, three acts and a larger cast of characters. There was an interlocutor who acted as both the master of ceremonies and straight man to Brudder Tambo and Brudder Bones' absurdities. These two characters were played by the actual tambourine and bones players of the group. In addition to Tambo and Bones, archetypal characters such as Jim Crow or Gumbo Chaff played clownish plantation slaves, Zip Coon, the equally dim city dandy and Old Uncle Ned as the dark-skinned patriarch. Aunt Dinah Roe, the mammy, and Miss Lucy Long the wench, rounded out the female characters. Names for these characters may have varied, but the archetypes they represented became the minstrel show's stock characters, and each one had a dedicatedsong. (Hughes, R. L. 2006)

    The minstrel show's reach can be traced far and deep into the collective western psyche affecting everything from advertising, trademarks, politics, law, justice and of course the entire spectrum of the entertainment industry. It's a complicated history and is worthy of being fully accounted and detailed. However, we now have the basic understanding of minstrelsy required to explore its effects on the banjo's development. The music of the minstrel show was primarily composed on and for banjo and written by many of these early performers. Joel Sweeney, mentioned previously for his innovation and popularization of the banjo, penned his most celebrated tunes, “Jenny Get Your Hoe Cake Done” and “Knock a Nigger Down” in 1840. Dan Emmitt of the Virginia Minstrels contributed at least 50 tunes for banjo during the span of his career, including “Old Dan Tucker” and possibly “Miss Lucy Long” for the wench, allay gal, prima donna character. The other possible writer for “Miss Lucy Long” is Joel Sweeneys protege Billy Whitlock who played for both Emmitt's Virginia Minstrels and Christie's Minstrels. Contributors to the catalogue of music were many, but none were more prolific than American composer Stephen Foster with over 200 songs credited to him. Among them are classics such as “Oh! Susanna”, “Camptown Races”, “Old Folks at Home” (“Swanee River”), and “My Old Kentucky Home”. In addition, it was still a common practice to adapt new lyrics to old melodies. Christie's composition “Goodnight Ladies” (Farewell Ladies) was eventually reinvented as the “Dinah” chorus of “I've Been Working On The Railroad”, and the melody for “Zip Coon” came to American shores from the British Isles under the title “The (Old) Rose Tree”. Rewritten first as “Turkey in the Straw”, then “Zip Coon” and then “Nigger Love A Watermelon”, it's best known today in its instrumental form as the ice cream truck song. (Shryock, R. H. 1931)

    The music of the minstrel show, and music written for banjo were generally the same and with a popular repertoire being built up around the theatrical show, it wouldn't be long before printed music for the banjo was published. The Complete Preceptor for the Banjo was the first to be published around 1851. It was also known under the title Gumbo Chaff, after one of minstrelsy's main characters, and consisted mostly of tunes from Christie's Minstrels. 1855 saw the publication of first banjo method book. Briggs' Banjo Instructor used many of the songs popularized by the minstrel show and included detailed playing instructions. The method instructs the student to use the down stroke playing technique which some claim Briggs learnt directly from enslaved African Americans. Although its veracity is unconfirmed, upon observation, one can see the technique is almost identical to that which is used by players of plucked, spike lutes of West Africa. Furthermore, In his notes, Joseph W. Ayers, who published the 1992 edition, wrote, “many of the selections can be played without the use of the fourth string, (lowest pitched string) implying their origin in the preceding era of the gourd three string...It is perhaps as close a documentation as one can get to the music of African-Americans who played upon its prototypes.” (Fig. 14) (Fig. 15) The data suggests that Briggs did indeed learn his craft from African American sources.

Fig. 14 Briggs' Banjo Instructor pg. 8, 9 (1855)

Fig. 15 Briggs' Banjo Instructor pg. 10, 11 (1855)

    Before the emergence of the minstrel show, the banjo, fiddle, tambourine and the bones had already become closely associated with Afro American folk music. The four instruments made up the definitive African American ensemble as heard at enslaved gatherings and balls. As with many aspects of the history, the instrumentation did vary, but these four stood out as the more traditional of the typical ensemble. The fiddle was an early adaptation. There are numerous sources detailing the popularity of the fiddle among African American peoples throughout the Americas. With bowed, spike lutes as much a part of West African heritage as the aforementioned plucked, spike lutes, along with demands on enslaved musicians to play European music, adapting to the European fiddle might have been an inevitability. There are some examples of gourd fiddles being constructed in the same manner as the early gourd banjo, however, they likely had four strings tuned in the European fashion. Today, artisans have recreated the gourd fiddle for a niche of traditional musicians. Tambourines and clappers have been around since ancient times having appeared in the Old Testament and depicted in artwork from Mesopotamia. Considering how drumming was a prohibited activity, the rhythmic element to the music consisted of foot stomps and hand claps highlighted by the tambourine and a pair of bone clappers.

    It's clear that the early makeup of the traditional African American ensemble eventually evolved into the minstrel show, but evolution being ongoing, it did not stop there. With the addition of more characters came the additions to the musical instrumentation. Bass, cello, guitar and mandolin began to appear heralding the emergence of the typical American string band. We witness the same phenomenon occurring among African American musicians, who after the Civil War began participating in minstrelsy as well. For an African American performer, this would have represented the only opportunity to acquire gainful work in the entertainment field. It also afforded them some opportunity to push back against the casual racism and denigrating portrayal associated with minstrelsy. African American minstrels made clever use of satire challenging the reinforcement of common stereotypes. However, this didn't amount to much as the legacy of minstrelsy remains deeply rooted in racism. African American minstrelsy did contribute to what became a tradition of string music in the community by the late 1800s.

    What rock music did for the guitar and guitarists in the late 20th century, so too did minstrelsy for the banjo and banjoists in the late 19th. As the principal instrument in the minstrel orchestra and the vehicle for reproducing minstrelsy's popular songs, it's clear to see the cause and effect. Troupes toured urban centers all over North America, Western Europe and Great Britain. It seems as though everywhere the banjo was introduced; it was quickly adopted. The Irish in particular adapted a short scale, four string tenor version for use in traditional Celtic music. It can be said that British enthusiasm for the banjo led to the instrument's global appeal as it was transported throughout the Empire. 

    Of course, British North America was no exception. Canada may have been introduced to the banjo through the slave trade before its abolishment by the British, and it is highly likely to have been introduced through the underground railroad. Indeed, a suit filed in the Chancery Court of Louisville, Kentucky, asked for damages as compensation for three runaway slaves who were professional musicians. These men, after several years of moving between engagements by themselves and sending their earnings to their master, had taken their instruments, and clothing and boarded a steamboat that would take them from the slave state of Kentucky across the Ohio River to the free state of Ohio. From there they escaped to Canada. (Epstein,

D. J. 1976). However, we only find undeniable documentation of the banjo in Canada in 1858 in the form of a Toronto minstrel show handbill. A banjo solo is but one of the acts featured in the handbill. Canada's oldest theatre, the renowned Theatre Royal in Montreal, or Molson Theatre, hosted boisterous nights billed as “Les Soirée Etheopienne” featuring minstrel acts from across the border as well as local troupes. Accounts of minstrelsy from across Canada abound in the late 1800s, but probably the most striking is that of the African Canadian Bohee Brothers from New Brunswick. Born in 1844 and 1857 respectively, James and George were raised in Indiantown, NB. The family moved to Boston where the brothers became adept banjoists. They sailed for London, England in the 1880's and set up their act, at times performing as a duo or leading an all-black troupe. They gained such notoriety that they were highly sought after by London's elite, even tutoring Queen Victoria's son Edward, the Prince of Wales, on the banjo. Such was the popularity of the instrument. (Fig. 16) As a final note on Canadian minstrelsy, Calixa Lavallée, composer of Canada's national anthem O Canada, spent 10 years touring and performing in blackface as a member of a minstrel troupe. Interestingly, Lavallée made later efforts to obscure any knowledge of his involvement in minstrelsy.

Fig. 16 The Bohee Brothers

    Minstrelsy reached its zenith between 1850 and 1870 spanning the entire four years of the American Civil War and well beyond. Before and during the war audience attendance was chiefly lower, working class, masculine, and quite a boisterous affair. Sold out shows were accompanied by copious amounts of hollering, stomping and alcohol consumption and crowds participated inunrestrained manner. This less affluent Caucasian audience may have had a list of reasons why this form of entertainment appealed to them; however, historians single out two specifically. By speaking in the voice and wearing the mask of the enslaved African, performers could make biting political and social commentary they may have otherwise avoided speaking out loud. This is a device even African American minstrel performers availed themselves of. Darker in nature, yet no less appealing, was the impulse of poor Caucasians to prioritize skin color over class, thereby attaining a certain status along with more affluent counterparts over non-Caucasians.

    After the Civil War there were attempts to make minstrelsy more appealing to the middle classes. The traditional venue began to shift from the tavern to the theatre, performances were more organized and professional and less like an uninhibited party. Performers, most of whom were also banjo players, began edging the banjo into high society by holding weekly banjo socials, founding academies, developing new playing techniques and publishing method books in an effort to elevate it more to their standards. It was the popularity of the minstrel show that initiated the manufacturing boom, but these later efforts propelled it a great deal farther. Manufacturers innovated the mechanics of the banjo bringing it closer in appearance and playability to other manufactured instruments. In this period before electricity, modifications allowing the banjo to achieve greater projection in louder settings were a priority; craftspeople and manufacturers spent fair amounts of energy obtaining the result. Prompted by the emerging fashion of classic banjo and its place in high society parlors, banjo manufacturers began releasing new models and created compelling ad campaigns to sell them. By the late 1880s and 90s blackface minstrelsy was in decline as professional troupes were turning more and more towards the new vogue of vaudeville, and ragtime was becoming the new musical trend. However, minstrelsy remained a force among amateur groups well into the 20th century, right up to the late 1950s.

Classic banjo and more

    In spite of the popularity of the banjo during minstrelsy's heyday, it remained associated with less affluent, poorer classes. Among some Caucasian players, initiatives were made to raise the banjo up from its low-class origins and endear the instrument to higher society. Classic banjo, which uses a finger or guitar style technique began replacing clawhammer as the more dominant technique. William A. Huntley made an effort to "elevate" the instrument or make it more "artistic," by "bringing it to a more sophisticated level of technique and repertoire based on European standards." Huntley was first documented Caucasian performer to successfully make the transition from performing in blackface to being himself on stage, a fact he was quite proud of according to reports (Boston Herald, November 1884). He received support from banjoist and former blackface performer, Samuel Swaim Stewart, who featured talented players in his magazine Banjo and Guitar Journal (Schreyer, 2007).

    Punctuating these efforts were manufacturers who advertised their banjo models, and each new innovation with alluring print ads. (Fig. 17) In the late 1860s manufacturers began introducing the banjo as a parlor instrument in an attempt to reach a more affluent market as well as attract more female players to the instrument. Victorian gender ideology identified women as a civilizing force in society, and hence their involvement in the gentrification of the banjo (Meredith, 2003). In 1878 Henry C. Dobson produced the first fretted banjo for the Buckbee company. Dobson is also credited with creating the first banjo resonator and in 1881 he patented the first tone ring. The tone ring and resonator are both innovations designed to make the instrument louder allowing it to compete in volume with horns and drums. Playing alongside horn instruments precipitated other changes. The chanterelle, or drone string, impeded players from accessing certain keys common to horn players and even when not played it created undesirable overtones. Its removal created the four-string variant we recognize from ragtime ensembles and early jazz bands. The banjo became more acceptable as an instrument of fashionable, genteel society. Part of that change was a switch from the stroke style to the guitar playing style. (Reese, B. 1998)

Fig. 17 Print Ad for Lyon & Healy

    During this period as the banjo was rising in popularity its influence on the surrounding musical culture also grew. It would appear that the development of ragtime owes much of its inspiration to the banjo's natural rhythms. During his time living in New Orleans essayist Lafcadio Hearn wrote in 1881, “Did you ever hear negroes play the piano by ear?... They use the piano exactly like a banjo. It is good banjo-playing but no piano-playing.” Eighteen years later musicologist and uncle to billionaire Howard Hughes, Rupert Hughes used the term “banjo figurations” to describe the piano ragtime that he had heard. (History of Ragtime. [Web.] ) While the banjo's connection to ragtime at its very roots is fascinating to say the least, it also illustrates another historical shift. It would seem that as the banjo gained more respect and acceptance among Caucasians, African American musicians were discovering and gravitating towards other instruments such as the piano. This process may have acted as the catalyst for the inception of ragtime and perhaps other new styles. The termination of the civil war brought access to brass instruments once used in military marching bands and the guitar, closest of all to the banjo, was a natural alternative. One can easily imagine the initial inception and subsequent incubation of blues and jazz in much the same manner as Hearn and Hughes described ragtime. The banjo would remain a force within the African American community for yet some time, but it would appear the gradual move away from the instrument had begun.

    Additionally, from within the banjo world players were making efforts to put some distance between minstrelsy and the banjo. As a feature of this effort preeminent banjoists strived for greater virtuosity on the instrument and a pugilistic approach briefly took hold. For a time, it wasn't uncommon for banjoists to issue challenges to other banjo players, a phenomenon that from our modern perspective resonates in the song Dueling Banjos and the soundtrack for the 1970s film Deliverance. Unlike the film's backwoods Appalachian setting, these challenges would have taken place in the context of traveling tent shows and circuses, and banjoists of African American, European American and European backgrounds all actively participated. Using terminology such as “Champion Banjoist of the World” or “Colored Champion”, the press invoked the persona of the prize fighter as a device for public relations and promotion. For many professional banjo players this device would promote their banjo playing, create greater public demand and allow them to perform as banjo soloists sans blackface. In 1890, S.S. Stewart's Guitar and Banjo Journal, the predominant banjo publication of its time, declared the age of the pugilistic banjoist over and done, yet this didn't deter prominent African American banjoist Gus Cannon from offering $1000 to anyone who could be his equal on the instrument as late as 1919. (Winans, 2018 pp. 273).

Meanwhile

    In the 1800s, the banjo was intimately linked to the African American community as we see reflected in the writing and imagery of the time. However, in the early 1700s, banjo playing was concentrated in the enslaved populations of Virginia and Maryland and was not universal among African Americans throughout the US. The century played witness to the forced migration of enslaved persons from the east to new cotton plantations of Mississippi and Appalachia, facilitating the spread of the banjo and its influence among the African American population (Thomas, 2012). By the later part of the 1700s the banjo was geographically connected to the upper south and the Mississippi Valley (Meredith, 2003 pp. 13). The Louisianan purchase in 1803 yielded yet another connection to the banjo rooted in the French Caribbean. The banjo's reputation as the instrument of the African population had begun to emerge, even though the instrument wasn't entirely integrated into the African American population. Civil war reports from union soldiers during their campaigns in the south support the idea that banjo playing was concentrated in certain regions unlike the fiddle, which seems to have enjoyed wider used among African American communities. (Meredith, 2003 pp. 13)

    As the banjo was enjoying a surge in mainstream popularity, the instrument was gradually losing appeal among the people credited with its very existence. Predictably, minstrelsy was unpopular within the African American community. In spite of involvement from African American performers, the overall consensus from within the community was that it was denigrating, insulting and generally harmful to the community. The image of the happy, carefree slave, underscoring the premise that slavery was the preferred way for blacks to live was particularly objectionable. According to Epstein (1975) in 1825, while still in bondage, an enslaved man named Aaron wrote:

... we are ... told that slaves show by their actions that they are happy.

They sing, laugh, dance and make merry. He is a shallow

smatterer in human nature, who does not understand this, that mirth is

often rather the effort of the mind to throw off trouble than the evidence'

of happiness. It shows that a man wishes to be happy, and is trying for it,

and is oftener the means of use to get it than the proof that it exists; and

as to singing, why do prisoners sing in jails? ... They sing to make

pleasure for themselves, not to give vent to it (Aaron 1827:17-18).

In response to the editor of a local Rochester paper whose biased review of a certain musical group left him wanting, the esteemed Frederick Douglas wrote:

We believe he does not object to the "Virginia Minstrels," "Christy's

Minstrels," the "Ethiopian Serenaders," or any of the filthy scum of white

society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in

which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellowcitizens.

(Douglass, F. 1848)

North of the border was no exception. For four consecutive years, from 1840 to 1843, African American Torontonians petitioned city council to ban minstrel shows to no avail.

Your Petitioners would humbly pray that Your Worship would be pleased to

prevent the occurrence of such annoyances and insults, as Your Petitioners

believe that such attempted Exhibitions of the African Character are not at

all relished or approved of by the sensible and well thinking Inhabitants of

this Community. (Garel, B. 2019, October 15)

These attitudes towards minstrelsy from within the African American community may have had a hidden byproduct; tainted by association to the minstrel show, one might speculate how this affected attitudes toward the banjo.

    Compounding this, the 1800s saw a religious awakening that had deep implications for the entire society, including the African American community. What begun in the late 18th century intensified in the 19th in what would be known as the second great awakening. It was the impetus for a renewed religious fervor, a revival movement that saw many new protestant denominations. It also caused fractures within communities between adherents and non-adherents. This added yet another element to discussions surrounding abolition, suffrage and temperance. Characterized by the term “Muscular Christianity” it affected attitudes towards all aspects of life, including food, drink, dancing, entertainment and music to name a few.

    It was under this atmosphere that missionaries founded schools to educate former enslaved persons who had been previously prohibited from learning. In 1866 and 1868 respectively the institutions Fisk University in Tennessee and Hampton University in Virginia began to operate. Desperate for funds and in danger of defaulting on debts, the Fisk Jubilee Singers became the means by which the school bought the land on which it now stands to this day. Hampton University quickly followed suit assembling a chorus of its own. Among religious adherents within the black community hymns and sacred music all but completely replaced secular music. The corn-shucking songs and boat songs of the past were now regarded as sinful, wicked and gateways to temptation. In 1874 two instructors from the Hampton school in Virginia, while searching for musical content for the Hampton Singers, had this exchange with a local man named Mr. Jarvis.

“Mr. Jarvis, we won't keep you up any longer now, but we are anxious

to get a hold of some plantation songs of a different kind from the spirituals;

some of those you used to sing at your work, you know; at corn-husking or on

the water. If we come some other day, can you sing us some?”

“Not o' dem corn-shuckin' songs, madam. Neber sung none o' dem

sence I 'sperienced religion. Dem's wicked songs.”

“I have heard some of your people say something of that sort, but I

didn't suppose they could all be wicked songs. Are there no good ones?”

“Nuffin's good dat ain't religious, madam. Nobody sings dem cornshuckin'

songs arter dey's got religion.”

“So you have got religion, Mr. Jarvis. Well, that is a great thing to

have.”

“So it am, madam. 'Twar a missionary lady a teachin' yere jes' arter de

war dat led me to 'sperience it.” (Armstrong & Ludlow, 1874 pp. 113)

    The latter part of the 19th century was a time of general upheaval in the African American community. After the Civil War formerly bonded people had new options they lacked before. Staying under the employ of your former master was one such option, but sharecropping, hiring oneself out for field work were also common choices. Renting and buying land to farm or homesteading were alsonew options, but requiring financial resources, not many could avail themselves of these. Some continued the trade work they had become adept at under slavery while others found jobs in the lumber industry and the railroads. There would eventually be a great migration to urban centers in the north and west, but for now the community's livelihoods remained centered in farming and rural activities.

    For African American musicians, instruments that were once difficult to access became viable options. The piano began to rise in significance, especially among those inclined to religious adherence. Brass and woodwind instruments became available due to the end of the civil war and the disbanding of military marching bands. One might categorize this period before the emergence of blues, jazz and gospel music as a kind of musical primordial soup. We see the results in the 20th century and can identify some of the causes, however; more data and research is needed to illuminate a somewhat murky period of history. Mixing European traditions, marches and dances, with African American folk traditions such as syncopation, call and response, blue notes and use of the pentatonic scale would bear fruit in coming years and decades. Meanwhile, in the banjo community the effort to “elevate” the instrument, (in many instances divorcing it completely from its African heritage), was all encompassing. Well known performers, manufacturers, magazine and music publishers all participated in the flurry of activity during the hight of the banjo's popularity. Whatever turn the musical fashion of the time would take, the banjo was sure to be involved. We come back to the data suggesting a strong connection between the banjo and ragtime, many of ragtime's chief characteristics were adapted directly from the banjo.

    Born out of African American musical traditions, jigs, marches and the rhythmic, syncopated beats of the banjo, ragtime owes its inception and development in part to the instrument. On the banjo, the melody is commonly broken up into syncopated beats while a steady rhythm is implied. In ragtime, the piano breaks up the melody into syncopated beats while a steady rhythm is played. The rhythmic device known as the secondary rag; a repeated three note motif over a series of duple meters, is a common feature of both fiddle music from northern Europe and African music. (History of Ragtime, Web). This common rhythmic feature between African and northern European folk traditions is believed to have facilitated the creolization that occurred in the 18th century, and later, near the end of the 19th century it was being incorporated into ragtime. (Fig. 18)

Fig. 18 Secondary Rag

    Ragtime was born in taverns, backrooms and brothels in the African American communities of St. Louis and New Orleans. Former African American blackface performer Ernest Hogan is credited with being the first to put the new music to paper, as well as coining the name ragtime with his song La Pas Ma La. He had honed his craft traveling as a dancer, musician and comedian with a minstrel troupe called the Georgia Graduate, which suggests he played both banjo and fiddle. There are accounts of him having learned the piano at a young age, but details of his early life are somewhat cloudy. The second song he penned, called All Coons Look Alike To Me was a huge success for him, selling over a million copies. He freely admitted to lifting the cakewalk rhythm from an unknown performer in Chicago, and had appropriated the lyrics from a song he had heard called All “Pimps” Look Alike To Me. He had a knack for knowing how to be acceptable to Caucasian society, and ironically the word “coon” was more accepted than “pimp”. He would later regret the use of this derogatory term, feeling as though he had betrayed his own, but not before the success of his song inspired a string of imitations called coon songs. Underscoring the nuanced nature of the situation, he also expressed gratitude for the revenues these songs provided at a time when money was sorely needed (Lefferts, 2016). Hogan would go on to become the first black Broadway producer and performer, but his accomplishments would always be overshadowed by his part in the legacy of coon songs.

    Due in part to the success of the coon song sub-category, ragtime passed from being an expression of the African American underclass culture to the mainstream. By 1897 ragtime dominated the entertainment industry bringing new employment and career opportunities to African American performers and musicians. The nascent industry, born out of minstrelsy, was fraught with systemic racism characterized by the suppression of African American cultural expression while simultaneously sanitizing it for widespread exploitation. It's was this atmosphere that saw the rise of what some call the first pop star in the career of the King Of Ragtime, Scott Joplin. The son of a railway worker and a domestic, both former slaves, Joplin had learned banjo from his mother and fiddle from his father at age seven. He apparently had access to a piano via a Caucasian family his mother worked for, and eventually attracted the attention of German-born music teacher Julius Weiss. Weiss further instructed him with an emphasis on classical piano, opera and other European musical forms and had a continued influence on Joplin well into his career. He not only composed the ragtime cuts that would influence many of the genres future hits, but Joplin also penned an opera called Treemonisha credited as the precursor to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

    Ragtime and its subsequent offshoots, such as the barbershop vocal quartet, borrowed many African American folk music traditions attributed to the banjo. In addition to the syncopated melody and disjointed rhythms, there were chromatic attributes. Where possible the melodic line would move in a half step, chromatic fashion, effectively adding dissonance to break up the typical tonic/dominant nature of the form. Furthermore, the banjo was a part of the accompaniment associated with the new musical forms. While the piano was the principal instrument of ragtime, the five-string banjo nonetheless enjoyed an honored position in the ragtime ensemble. The four-string plectrum banjo became the instrument most associated with barbershop vocal ensembles as seen today with the Dapper Dans of Disney fame. This variation of banjo was not a return to the four-string variety of the early gourd banjo, but the new configuration eliminating the chanterelle. Without the short string, players could retain the original open tuning, or tune like a mandolin, and access chord voicings without the nuisance of the chanterelle getting in the way.

    The four-string variant, having come into being to facilitate playing with horn instruments, is heavily linked to the jazz bands coming out of New Orleans. Having also been derived from European marches and dances mixed with the rhythms of African American folk traditions, jazz first emerged as an iteration of ragtime. The same is true for the blues. The story of William Christopher Handy encountering blues music for the first time is fascinating. Handy was born in Alabama to a religious household. He had grown up in the church singing negro spirituals, learning to read music and play the piano before alternating between a music career and teaching. Incidentally, he found wages better as a touring musician than as a teacher. It was in 1903 on one such tour, in Tutwiler Mississippi, that he first encountered the blues. While napping at Tutwiler train station, Handy overheard a “lean, loose jointed Negro” guitar player pulling the edge of a knife over the strings to produce a slide guitar sound while singing “Goin’ where the southern cross’ the dog.” He later penned a song for Edward Crumps Memphis mayoral campaign Mr. Crump’s Blues in 1909, which became known as Memphis Blues winning him the title Father of the Blues. Handy later adapted the song he heard in Tutwiler into Yellow Dog Blues.

The Break

    The banjo has been so thoroughly divorced from the people who originated it that today, outside of musicologists and banjo fanatics, few are aware of its origins. The break is so complete, many African Americans, including musicians from the southern US, are shocked by revelations that before 1830 the banjo was considered the exclusive domain of Afro America. By 1920, the banjo had been in decline among the African American community. In conversation with banjo scholar Tony Thomas, coauthor of Banjo Roots and Branches, the question was asked; what forces caused this in his opinion. He identified three.

    As mentioned before, the minstrel show was difficult for many to stomach. Before the civil war minstrelsy was a Caucasian only affaire, both for performers and attendees. African American participation only truly began after the civil war. When considering the early period of minstrelsy, it's difficult for us today to completely grasp the brutality and violence depicted therein. An endeavor in the early 1990s to re-enact the minstrel show as authentically as possible produced interesting results. Due to the sensitive nature of the material, the show was only performed for academics and scholars in related fields of study. Thomas recounts how the performance left many in the audience so shaken they still spoke of the experience more than ten years removed, reinforcing the written accounts from critics of that time.

    The popularity of the banjo created opportunity for some. The effort to “elevate” the instrument from its affiliation with African American and poor Caucasian communities was driven by sheet music publishers, banjo manufacturers and those who had a stake in the popularity of the instrument. At this time near the end of the Victorian period, parlor music was regarded as a laudable pastime for middle and upper class men and women. Making the banjo more attractive to those with greater financialmeans, was in essence an effort to increase sales. Initially S.S. Stewart, recognized as a leader of this movement, would write about the banjo's African American origin. He soon realized in order to attract the upper class demographic a new origin story would have to be invented and his contemporaries, motivated by financial gain, followed suit. They took an earlier claim by Joel Sweeney and expanded on its premise.

    Like Stewart, Sweeney clearly stated that the banjo came from African Americans and credited enslaved banjoists near his boyhood home as those who initiated him on the instrument. However, he occasionally made the contradictory charge that he had invented the banjo. To put this in context, consider the traveling tent shows, replete with carnival barkers lauding the strongest men in the world, who fight mountain lions barehanded, and traveling medicine shows selling cure all elixirs. Hyperbole was part of the act. In this context Sweeney's claim comes across as a form of self-promotion. Nonetheless, Stewart and others seized on this to create their new origin myth that the banjo was invented by Sweeney in 1831. To reinforce the myth, the gourd banjo was classified as a distinctly different instrument, so primitive it is practically unrelated to the banjo. An advertisement for manufactured banjos invoked imagery from Darwin's theory of evolution, depicting a monkey and a gourd banjo with a man and the manufactured banjo with captions that read, “Our banjos have as much in common with this primitive instrument as the man has with the monkey.” What the ad is inferring needs no further clarification.

    Depicting the gourd banjo as primitive and its creators as too simple to achieve anything like virtuosity became the two thrusts of the propaganda campaign. The Dobsen Brothers, known for their innovations such as the fretted fingerboard and the resonator, parroted the myth as did Joel Chandler Harris, author of the Uncle Remus stories. Frank B. Converse, who published instructional manuals and method books, assured his readers “There were no players among the slaves capable of arousing its slumbering powers,” insisting that only “white admirers in the North” could awaken the instrument’s “inherent beauties” (Marks, October 4, 2016). These men all made very real contributions to the development of the banjo, the effort to unmoore the instrument from its true history, however, would produce long lasting negative results.

    These efforts to de-Africanize the banjo were deliberate and quite effective. The banjo did become very popular with the well to do set for a time. It had become a star of the parlor music movement, with some purchasing the instrument only to display as a status symbol. Queen Victoria's son Edward took courses to learn to play, and it's even rumored that after her husband's death she had favor for a certain banjoist in her entourage. The propaganda campaign had achieved its mission, perhaps with greater success than expected. But there is another driving force to the decline of the banjo in the Afro American community as identified by Thomas.

    The 19th century was a time of unprecedented technological advancement, a time of inventors and innovators. Electricity, the telephone, the automobile, radio and film have completely altered our world, and they all come to us from the later part of the 1800s. One new technology would transform the way we consume music forever; the ability to record and play back sound. Experiments with recording sound go back to 1857, but it was Thomas Edison's phonograph in 1877 that would bring the technology to market. Initially intended as a business communication device, the record industry was still a little way off. Some thought perhaps the public might enjoy listening to something uplifting, for example a speech from the president, an address from the queen, or a sermon. Once the idea to sell sound recordings publicly circulated the logical next step was to sell music. To produce copies in both quantity and quality the technology needed improvement and was slow to take off. Sheet music would remain the dominant form of publishing music for yet some time. No one would think about recording African American musicians until 1891 when George W. Johnson recorded The Whistling Coon.

    Before the advent of what we've come to know as the recording industry, various regional styles and music traditions seemed to be percolating simultaneously. We're aware of ragtime, negro spirituals, proto jazz and blues, but too often forgotten is the traditional Afro American string band. The fiddle long enjoyed widespread use among African Americans and the banjo was directly linked to their African heritage. By the late 1800s the typical string band consisted of guitar, mandolin, banjo and fiddle, playing the familiar music of the minstrel show along with songs from other traditional sources. String music could be heard all over the continental US with participation from both Caucasian and African American musicians. By the early 20th century, when records began to be sold to the public, the nascent companies noticed a trend. They were selling more records per-capita to the African American community than anywhere else. Even those who couldn't afford to own a record player routinely bought records. All that was required was to know someone in your entourage that did own a player. The Okeh recording company coined the term race records to describe and categorize sound recordings marketed to the African American community.

    Early African American recording artists were often multi-genre musicians who played various styles of music. They could be required to play for a European American, or a African American dance and would change the manner of playing accordingly. Musical traditions and ideas were in a state of flux. For example, before W.C. Handy published Memphis Blues there were two songs published that used the term blues in the title. The first, Dallas Blues, was written by Hart Wand, first published in 1912 and followed the classic 12 bar blues form. In spite of a heavily segregated society, musicians both African American and Caucasian found opportunities to cross color lines. A fact highlighted when we consider that the first published song to use the term blues in the title was written by a Caucasian composer.

    The Okeh label that had coined the term race records also invented hillbilly and later old-time to delineate southern fiddle-based and Appalachian music. While musicians found opportunities to cross color lines, labels conformed to the society's norms of segregation. Race records were marketed towards African American audiences while hillbilly and old-time music was intended for poor, rural, Caucasian audiences. It wasn't uncommon for African American musicians to be hired to play on these old-time music records, but when recording race records, labels overwhelmingly stressed the blues.

    By the 1920s, labels had dropped the hillbilly moniker and its derogatory connotations for the term “old-time”. The term is somewhat erroneous. The music it refers to dates back to the 19th century, but it was very much a contemporary style. The use of this term is a time tested marketing technique of invoking nostalgia. Appealing to a sense of the past as the good ol' days has been used to promote everything, however; it's a promotional device that excludes groups for whom the old days were anything but good. This is a device that appealed mainly to Caucasian audiences, just as the previous term “hillbilly” was intended. There seems to be this tendency to use nostalgia to engage with a certain US demographic. Almost a hundred years later we see this same tactic used in political campaigns with much the same result. Conversely, there appears to be a trend with African American music to stay current, leaving behind old traditions while creating new ones. We see strains of this trend through hip hop, disco, Motown, jazz and blues, each generation leaves behind the traditions of the former generation. String music inevitably became a lost tradition among African American communities, while becoming deeply entrench in poor rural Caucasian communities, linked to a sense of the good ol’ days. Jim Crow laws effectively prevented African American and Caucasian from performing together further dividing the two communities in spite of occasional defiance. A main instrument of the string band since the 19th century, the banjo remained at home in this environment of old-time music, even as African American participation declined.

    It would appear there was another effect on the African American music consumer. The record industry saw an opportunity to exploit the popularity of the blues among the African American community, and just as Afro American string music didn't fit well with hillbilly and old-time, it also wasn't blues. Multi genre African American musicians were hired to record blues cuts. Banjo players like Gus Cannon did record cuts released under the race records category and included blues on the banjo, but the new sound was dominated by the guitar (Winans, 2018 pp. 277). The electric guitar with its ability to be amplified filled the volume requirement to play with louder percussion and horn instruments. Jazz, the music that had supplanted ragtime, grew in popularity throughout the 1920s, and yet the tenor banjo waned in use over the next 20 years. With the banjo firmly entrenched in old-time music and declining in blues and jazz, the whitewashing of the instrument was all but complete. Banjo playing among African American would continue, however obscured and marginalized, but the banjo became overwhelmingly associated with Caucasian, rural populations of Appalachia.

    The long shadow of minstrelsy extends from the mid 19th century arguably up to the present day. For most African Americans it soured everything it touched far beyond ragtime and its coon songs or the banjo. The parlor music movement had run its course, but not before executing a highly effective, all points propaganda campaign to distance the banjo from its origins. Finally, the record industry, who were in business to sell a cultural product, not conduct a cultural survey, and doing so within the confines of segregation and Jim Crow, marketed the music associated to the banjo to rural Caucasian audiences. According to Thomas, these three driving forces help explain how an instrument that was once considered the exclusive domain of Afro America could be so completely stripped of its identity, pulled up by its roots and replanted in the mountains of Appalachia.

Conclusion

    Aspiring to address the true origins of the banjo is daunting to say the least. Its impact on the musical culture and society, the overlap with so much important history, as well as the attempt to answer the question as to why the banjo became so divorced from the people who created it, those with whom it was most associated, each merit in depth study. There is much yet to be explored. The story continues throughout the remainder of the 20th century leading to the present day. We have not surveyed the full extent of banjo variants, nor have we looked at many major players and their contributions. We have yet to explore the role of film, television and Hollywood on perceptions of the banjo. Events like the Civil Rights movement or the folk revival movement invariably influenced the banjo as well. So much recent data has to be integrated, more archives need to be perused and more research must be done. There are many gaps in what we know about Afro American folk music traditions in general, and the banjo plays such an important role, it is only natural that the work must continue.

    We have successfully pulled up the rug on several key points, however. We know the idea for the banjo originated among enslaved persons from west Africa, in particular those from the Sene-Gambia or upper Guinea region. We know they did not bring the banjo from Africa but derived its creation from a new Afro Caribbean identity, memories of similar plucked spike lutes from Africa, and creolization with European instruments. We have tracked the instruments movement throughout the colonies as best as possible and identified specific regions where the banjo was common, however; new research in this area may produce better results. For certain, the banjo's African lineage and Caribbean birthplace is fixed. The more egregious mis-conceptions about the banjo have been clarified and corrected. It may take time and effort for the facts to replace the distorted perception among the general public, although with advocacy there is some incremental change.

    A substantial place was given to discuss the minstrel show and its impact. To be clear, the subject of the minstrel show could fill a book, or several. Staying within the confines of how minstrelsy pertained to the banjo and questions surrounding its cultural impact and creators proves difficult considering how overlapping they are. A far reaching, global phenomenon that took the English speaking world by storm in a manner comparable to rock and roll, minstrelsy truly merits an examination all its own. An effort was made to bring to view a Canadian perspective on banjo. As with so much of the material, Canadian connections tend to be overlooked, with further study it is likely there is more to discover. The banjo's connection to ragtime, not only as a part of the standard ensemble, but as the inspiration behind the music has been established. It is a significant connection considering ragtime's relation to the music emerging at the beginning of the 20th century.

    Far too many people, including those of the African diaspora, are shocked to find out the extent to which the banjo was a part of African American heritage. It's difficult to grasp how integral the banjo was to African American culture considering its near complete absence from the culture today. The final question as to how and why the banjo became all but forgotten by its originators is elusive to answer. This work presents an argument on the matter, it is by no means conclusive. Rather, it offers up an invitation for deeper analysis. It is expected that as further study is done in the field more light will be shed on the subject. There has been much to speculate and much to ponder. Following the evidence produces both solid fact and acts as a springboard to more questions. The work to be done is immense, but passion for history and music, it is with gratitude, a sense of honor and privilege that the task is undertaken.

Acknowledgments

Many people have been instrumental in aiding me in my work. I would like to express my

deepest gratitude to the following people:

- Dr. Cyril Heitner. Considering the amount of research, and academic papers you’ve written,

your guidance was priceless.

- Denise Stuempfle. Your writing, editing skills and diligence were essential to this work.

- Tony Thomas MFA for generously giving your time and sharing your wealth of knowledge.

- My friends and colleges whose ears I've talked off about the banjo. All our conversations have

been incredibly valuable to me.

- Teilhard Frost for your amazing craftwork with gourd banjos, and the generous loan of one of

your prototypes.

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