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"The banjo had its first big site of growth in this country among the enslaved population in the Chesapeake Bay region, who were my ancestors," Blount says. Meet the musician teaching the banjo's ...
The story of the banjo's journey from Africa to the western hemisphere blends music, history, and a union of cultures. In Banjo Roots and Branches, Robert B. Winans presents cutting-edge scholarship that covers the instrument's West African origins and its adaptations and circulation in the Caribbean and United States.
The ngoni (also written ngɔni, n'goni, or nkoni) is a traditional West African string instrument. Its body is made of wood or calabash with dried animal (often goat) skin head stretched over it. The ngoni, which can produce fast melodies, appears to be closely related to the akonting and the xalam .
Joel Sweeney. Joel Walker Sweeney (1810 – October 29, 1860), also known as Joe Sweeney, was an American musician and early blackface minstrel performer. He is known for popularizing the playing of the banjo and has often been credited with advancing the physical development of the modern five-string banjo.
Given that the banjo was the folk instrument of African Americans before its wider spread, the clawhammer would thus be a descendant style of o’teck and related West African techniques. Although much traditional clawhammer banjo playing is highly rhythmic, it typically includes elements of melody, harmony, rhythm and percussion.
The islands' early music, however, remains little studied. In the 1780s, documentation exists for African workers participating in outdoor dances accompanied by the banjar (later bangoe, perhaps related to the banjo) and toombah (later tum tum), a drum decorated with shell and tin jingles.
The annual Banjo Collectors Gatherings also serve as the principal forums for the presentations of new research on the banjo's history and organology. Jatta's presentation, in which he performed on the akonting and showed film footage of other Jola musicians playing the instrument, made for quite a sensation.
Reflecting the cultures that settled North America, the roots of old-time music are in the traditional musics of the British Isles, [2] Europe, and Africa. African influences are notably found in vocal and instrumental performance styles and dance, as well as the often cited use of the banjo; in some regions, Native American, Spanish, French and German sources are also prominent. [3]