Blogs

Open your eyes and ears to the rich—and surprising—cross-cultural history of the banjo with GRAMMY®-Award winning artist, Rhiannon Giddens. Stream "The Banjo: Music, History, and Heritage" on Wondrium now!
https://www.wondrium.com/the-banjo-mu...
-------
Join renowned musician Rhiannon Giddens as she delves into the fascinating and complex history of the banjo. With her signature blend of musical expertise and historical insight, Giddens explores the African roots of the instrument, tracing its evolution through the centuries to its role in contemporary American music.

Through her engaging storytelling and masterful playing, Giddens reveals the banjo's rich cultural heritage, highlighting the instrument's significance as both a symbol of oppression and a source of empowerment. She draws on a wealth of historical research and personal experience to offer a thought-provoking exploration of the banjo's complex legacy, shedding light on the ways in which music can serve as a powerful tool for resistance, resilience, and transformation.

Whether you're a music lover, a history buff, or simply curious about the banjo's fascinating past and present, this video is not to be missed. Join Rhiannon Giddens as she takes us on a journey through the vibrant and multifaceted history of this iconic instrument, and discover the enduring power of music to inspire, challenge, and unite us all.

The music that came out of southern Appalachia developed into bluegrass and country music. It is heavily influenced by Black Appalachian musicians of the past.
 

Introduction to Early Banjo History: a survey of the gourd banjo in early American folk culture
by Clifton Hicks

Robert Hicks, better known as Barbecue Bob, was an early American Piedmont blues musician. His nickname was derived from his working as a cook in a barbecue restaurant. One of the three extant photographs of him show him playing a guitar and wearing a full-length white apron and cook's hat.

Hicks was born in Walnut Grove, Georgia. His parents, Charlie and Mary Hicks, were farmers. He and his brother, Charlie Hicks, together with Curley Weaver, were taught how to play the guitar by Curley's mother, Savannah "Dip" Weaver. Bob began playing the 6-string guitar but picked up the 12-string guitar after moving to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1924. He became one of the prominent performers of the newly developing Atlanta blues style.

In Atlanta, Hicks worked at various jobs, playing music on the side. While working at Tidwells' Barbecue in a north Atlanta suburb, he came to the attention of Columbia Records talent scout Dan Hornsby. Hornsby recorded him and used Hicks's job to publicize his records, having Hicks pose in chef's whites and hat for publicity photos and dubbing him "Barbecue Bob". Before his death in 1931, he married a woman named Claudine and lived off Hillard Street in Atlanta.

Read More...

Chandler showed an early interest in music and began playing piano at age 8. Studying classical music in his early teens, he learned to play the oboe so he could join the high school band, and during his senior year joined the Akron Symphony Orchestra. He eventually earned his B.A. in Music Education from the University of Akron, moved to New York City, and received an M.A. from Columbia University.

By the early 1960s, Chandler began to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement. He sang at demonstrations and rallies and won a reputation as a protest songwriter. One of his most famous songs was "Beans in My Ears", which was covered by the Serendipity Singers, as well as Pete Seeger. He also served as one of the original crew members of Seeger's CLEARWATER organization, working to save the environment around the Hudson River Valley. One of Chandler's songs entitled "Run Come See the Sun", was sung by Pete Seeger at the Sanders Theater in Boston in the year 1980. This song had a repeated phrase, which built up the harmony as well. (Source: Pete Seeger concert at the Sanders Theater, released on Smithsonian Folkways Records.)

Read More...

The different genre exhibitions feature everything from more interactive exhibits with timelines to cases containing such items as one of Louis Armstrong’s trumpets, one of B.B. King’s “Lucille” guitars, or costumes worn on key nights by performers like Billie Holiday, Nat “King” Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, or Aretha Franklin. The museum doesn’t neglect any area of Black music, going from the earliest spirituals to pre-jazz, traditional and modern jazz, blues, R&B/soul, funk, disco, and into contemporary hip-hop and EDM. There’s also a detailed storyboard for every idiom.

The greatest examples of Black music influencing other idioms that are sometimes mistakenly assumed not to have any links with African Americans can be seen in the Crossroads section. It includes an essay that traces how country founding fathers like Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams were influenced by the blues, and how the acoustic guitar playing of people like Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the gospel-tinged shouting of Odetta in turn influenced white folkies like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.

Read More...

“Instrument Interview” posts are a chance to sit down with the instruments of traditional, country, bluegrass, and roots music – from different types of instruments to specific ones related to artists, luthiers, and songwriters – and learn more about them. Ten questions are posed, and the instruments answer! Today we talk with the Creole bania.

What ARE you?

I’m a banjo! I know I don’t exactly look like the banjos you think of today, but I’m actually the earliest known banjo that still exists. I was made sometime before 1777, and at that time, banjos were made of gourds and calabashes.

Since you’re so different from the banjos we know today, describe yourself to us.

My body is a calabash, and my drumhead is made of animal skin held on with wooden pins. I have two S-shaped sound holes (kind of like a fiddle). I also have three long strings and one short string and a very nicely carved peghead. My neck is thinner than banjos today, and it is made of wood.

Read more

The banjo and African Americans have traveled from Senegambian roots to Caribbean birth, to North America, and then to the world. Don Vappie (b. 30 January 1956), the New Orleans-jazz master of the tenor and guitar-banjo, and also a renowned bassist, guitarist, and mandolinist, epitomizes that journey. Vappie has revived the music of King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton and created his own compositions that range from Creole folk music to modern jazz and funk. A regular guest with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center, Vappie has collaborated with master West African lute players like Cheick Hamala Diabate and Bassekou Kouyate of Mali and Demma Dia of Senegal. His compositions, recordings, and performance link the New Orleans banjo to the music of the Caribbean, where the banjo was born.

Banjos arose as a folk instrument powering the dances of New World Africans, but as American stages were gradually opened to black performers after the Civil War, black banjoists became national and international stars, occasionally even giving banjo lessons to British royalty. Banjo rhythms inspired ragtime, and in the second decade of the twentieth century, James Reese Europe led New York's orchestras with scores of black banjoists. Rural banjo dance traditions continued into the mid-twentieth century in banjoist Gus Cannon's blues recordings, and from the 1910s to the 1940s, jazz banjoists swung bands that brought jazz to the world.

However, twentieth century musical styles such as the blues, which were often accompanied by singing and slower-tempo dancing, came to require instruments with more sustain and bass than the banjo in all of its varieties can provide. As a result, the banjo receded from African American music of all kinds across the twentieth century. Recently, though, a twenty-first century revival of interest in the African antecedents, Caribbean birth, and African American history of the banjo brought a renaissance of black banjo playing, returning African American banjoists like Don Vappie to prominence within both African American music and the banjo world.

Read more

(Photo courtesy of Skye McFarland.)