Banjo lessons

# Banjo lessons

![BGSU](/assets/bgsu.png)

### Christopher Witulski, Ph.D.

### College of Musical Arts

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# Diaspora

* Geographically dispersed
    * There is a homeland, but the community is not there (Palestine, Jewish communities)
* The *Black Atlantic* (Paul Gilroy, 1993)
    * Homeland is not the central defining factor
    * Instead, hybridity is the experience of the slave trade
    * Forced migration severed (or at least dramatically hindered) a connection

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# Diaspora

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# Slavery in the Caribbean

* “Diversity of the enslaved”
    * From many parts of Africa
    * Institution of slavery creates racial homogeneity
    * What does this mean? What happens?
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* Inventing “Africa”
    * Shared experience of the Middle Passage
    * Knew of music’s social and ritual importance
    * “From their diverse experiences in Africa, they fashioned something new, assembled out of past practices but repurposed in a new environment.” (DuBois, 52)

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# The Banjo

* Familiar to all
    * But not specific to any particular tradition
    * According to Dubois: “the first African instrument”
* First sightings in the late 1600s
    * Father Larbat’s descriptions of the *calenda* in Guadeloupe and Martinique
    * Legal prohibitions of dance in the colonies
    * Communities are already “creolized”: older generations, original settlers, new arrivals

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* Larbat’s *calenda*
    * Drums, violin, and a “kind of guitar”
    * Definitely “not agreeable”
* Construction
    * Half of a calabash covered with leather
    * Long (probably flat) neck
    * Four strings of silk, agave filament, or dried intestines
    * Played by “pinching and beating the strings”

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# The Banjo

* Hans Sloane’s collections
    * From his time in Jamaica and gifts from others
    * Basis for the British Museum (1753)
    * Included: 300 dried plants (including cocoa), a bullet from the maroons, “some tissue from the vagina of a slave girl” (60)
* Transcriptions from “Mr. Baptiste”
    * <http://www.musicalpassage.org/>
    * Koromanti: from modern-day Ghana
    * Angola: Central Africa
    * Papa: maybe Benin?

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## 1701: “Strum strumps”

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# In North America

* 1736: Banjo taken for granted in writing from the North
    * The “shocking” holiday celebration
    * 1756: Rhode Island electioneering
* Runaway postings
    * Newspaper advertisements
    * Often mention instruments
    * Violin, banjo, fife, drums
    * Clothing, especially suits
    * Irony of “human” descriptions
* Legal cases
    * Dread Scott, 1857: slaves residing in free states were not entitled to freedom, African Americans could never be US citizens

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## John Rose (SC slaveowner): “The Old Plantation”, late 1700s

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## Eastman Johnson: Negro Life at the South (1859)

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* Minstrelsy
    * Became the central instrument for blackface minstrelsy and other popular musics
* Joel Walker Sweeny
    * Lived 1810-1860
    * Added a fifth string
    * Hugely popular

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* Frank B Converse
    * Made the banjo… “scientific”
    * And analytical!
* Wide popularity
    * Cheaper than a piano!
    * Civil War era publications including methods “without a master”
    * Continued through late 1800s

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### Carolina Chocolate Drops: “Brigg’s Corn Shuckin’ Jig”

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# History/Sources

* Thinking about your sources
    * *Brigg’s Banjo Tutor*: read preface

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## Excerpt from *Briggs Banjo Tutor* preface (1855)

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# History/Sources

* Thinking about your sources
    * *Brigg’s Banjo Tutor*: read preface
    * Converse: consider what “Analytical” means here
    * This is not a case of cherry-picking race issues to rewrite history: it’s about recognizing what was there and what has been missing from the story
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* Soon after, we start to see recordings
    * Was just paintings and descriptions
    * Hillbilly, jazz, (white) gospel, bluegrass, folk revival, old time… 
    * But what gets recorded and what is left out?

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### Aaron Jonah Lewis, "Banjo Frolic"

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### Johnny St. Cyr withThe Hot Fives: “Muskrat Ramble” (1926)

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### Uncle Dave Macon: “Take Me Back to my NC Home”

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### Dom Flemons, "Milwaukee Blues" (2013)

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### Stanley Brothers: “Worried Man Blues”

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### Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs: “Roll in my Sweet Baby’s Arms”

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### Pete Seeger: "What did you learn in school today?" (1964, written by Tom Paxton)

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### Pete Seeger: “Little Boxes”

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### Joe and Odell Thompson: "Roll in my Sweet Baby's Arms" (1983)

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### Dink Roberts: "Roustabout" (short clip, 1983)

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# So what happened?

* Access to the music industry
    * Widespread entertainment
* Commercialized instruments
    * Different eras of fads
* Politics
    * Especially in the 40s-60s, these white artists were on very different political paths…
* Changing styles
    * Cheaper guitars, the blues, and race records leave the banjo behind for many African American artists

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# Old time (plus some) banjo styles

- Blue ridge
- Round peak
- Three-finger
- Ragtime
- Jazz
- More contemporary stuff

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### Tommy Jarrell, "Reuben" (1983)

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### Jake Blount, "The Downward Road" (starts at 3:50), "Give up the World" (starts 14:30) (2023)

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### Noam Pikelny, "Waveland" (2017)

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# Banjo lessons

![BGSU](/assets/bgsu.png)

### Christopher Witulski, Ph.D.

### College of Musical Arts