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From Africa to the New World ♦ The New World Banjo ♦ African Ancestors ♦ Lute Family ♦ Related Topics ♦ Please note: This site is currently under construction. For the latest in modern banjo roots research, please visit: http://www.myspace.com/banjoroots
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The Early Gourd Banjo by Our knowledge of the early New World banjo comes from mostly cursory observations, noted down in diaries, journals, travelogues, and other contemporary published accounts as well as period graphic illustrations. Much of that documentary evidence can be found in Dena Epstein's seminal work Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk Music to the Civil War (1977), as well as her ground-breaking article The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History (Ethnomusicology, Volume 19, Number 3, September 1975). All the vital information that Epstein unearthed she culled from more than twenty three years of painstaking, exhaustive research of period documentation. Dena Epstein was the first scholar to seriously research and document the evidence of the banjo's African Diasporic origins and African heritage in the historical record. Our estimable gratitude and appreciation to Dena Epstein for blazing the trail that we follow as we search out and explore the roots and history of the banjo.
As Dena Epstein points out in The Folk Banjo: A Documentary History (Ethnomusicology, Volume 19, Number 3, September 1975), the banjo was closely associated with the African-rooted social dancing of the slaves right from the start: The earliest report found thus far of a banjo-like instrument in the Western hemisphere, 1678, appeared in the Histoire Generale des Antilles, of Adrien Dessalles, based on material found in the Archives Coloniales of the Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies in Paris. As early as May 4, 1654 the Conseil Souverain de Martinique issued an ordinance prohibiting "danses et assemblees de negres," a prohibition restated in 1678, 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 1847:111, 296-297). It seems at least possible that the banza had been known earlier than that date, accompanying the dances of the Negroes, but no earlier document mentioning it has been found. Banza was the preferred term for the instrument in the French and Spanish colonies. Yet, it certainly wasn't the only name for the early gourd lute of the African Diaspora. Many other different ones appear in the historical record: Strum-strump (Jamaica, 1687); Strum-strum (Jamaica, 1740); bangil (Barbados, 1708; Jamaica, 1739); bangar (New York City, 1737, the earliest report of the banjo in North America); banjo (Pennsylvania, 1749; Maryland and Virginia, 1774; North Carolina, 1787); banshaw (St. Kitts, 1763); Creole Bania (Suriname, 1773-77); banjar (Virginia, 1781; Antigua, 1788; Barbados, 1796); bonjaw (Jamaica, 1823) and so on. Though they differed in what they were called, these early banjos all shared certain structural characteristics:
The Physiology of Early Banjos Incredibly enough, two actual early banjos have survived to this very day in museum collections in Europe: the Stedman Creole-Bania (Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde [National Museum of Ethnology], Leiden, Holland) and the Schœlcher Banza (Musee de la Musique, Paris, France). The Creole Bania-- considered to be the oldest example of an early gourd banjo-- was collected in the northeastern South American country Suriname (also formerly known as Dutch Guiana) by Captain John Gabriel Stedman (1744-1797), sometime between 1773 and 1777. Captain Stedman served with Colonel Louis Henry Fourgeoud's military expeditionary force, made up of foreign "volunteers," sent from Holland to subdue "revolted Negroes" during the Dutch colony's First Boni Maroon War (1768-1777). French abolitionist writer Victor Schœlcher (1804-1893) acquired the Banza (above) in Haiti during his 1840-41 sojourn through the Caribbean. As we can see in these two extant instruments as well as in descriptions and depictions in the historical record, the earliest forms of the banjo had:
It should be noted that in all the various period references to the early banjo, there's only one mention of wooden bodies. This comes from Sir Hans Sloane in a follow-up to his description of the gourd-bodied strum-strums quoted above: "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."
However, Sloane's cryptic reference to "instruments... made of hollow'd Timber... having a Bow for its Neck" may not be a description of plucked lutes at all. In the 1707 publication of Sloane's travelogue from which these quotes are taken, there is an illustration of three string instruments (above). The two instruments in the foreground are the gourd-bodied plucked lutes, labeled "strums-strums" in the illustration's Latin caption. Behind them, instrument #3 is distinguished from the gourd-bodied strums-strums in the caption as being a string instrument with an oblong, hollowed-out wooden body.
While Sloane failed to identify instrument #3, it is unmistakably a harp-lute (also bridge-harp),
a type of harp found only in West Africa. Most harp-lutes have round gourd bodies like the Mandinka/Mande kora, the Jola furakaf,
and the Manding
donsonkoni. However, the harp-lute depicted in Sloane's illustration has an oblong wooden box
body as well as a very pronounced bowed stick neck. It's very similar to the Ashanti
seperewa of Ghana (above) and the Guere duu
of Cote
d'Ivorie (Ivory Coast).
Evidence of the Banjo's African Heritage Looking at the early banjo of the New World as described and depicted in the historical record, the instrument's African heritage is very evident in its design elements. The early banjo's drum-like body, made from a hollowed-out dried gourd topped with an animal skin head, is clearly akin to those of traditional gourd-bodied plucked lutes found throughout West Africa. Likewise, another telltale West African feature is the early gourd banjo's fretless spike neck. The many different kinds of plucked lutes that make up the West African lute family all have fretless stick necks which come in two basic forms:
At this point, it's important to note that the West African lute family tree consists of two main branches: griot lutes and folk/artisan lutes. The former are those instruments that are exclusive to specialist members of the griot castes, while the latter are lutes played by vernacular folk musicians and non-griot music/word artisans. In terms of lute physiology, standard griot lutes typically have semi-spike necks with fan-shaped bridges that slip unto pointy end of the neck through a hole in the instrument's skin head. Conversely, the rich diversity of folk/artisan lutes encompasses both full-spike and semi-spike instruments . Aside from its gourd body and fretless full spike neck, the single most defining characteristic shared by all the various regional forms of the early 4-string banjo documented throughout the New World is the top short "thumb string."
Notes 1. Pinkster is a traditional Dutch celebration of the Christian holiday Pentecost and springtime. It was adopted by African American communities in New York and New Jersey in the early 18th century and evolved into a unique local festival that reflected a mix of African, European, and Amerindian influences. Pinkster was akin to Mardi Gras in Louisiana and Carnival in the Caribbean and Latin America. The festival was celebrated on through the early 19th century. 2. New-York Weekly Journal, March 7, 14, 21, 18, 1737. Graham Russell Hodges, Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 1613-1863 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), page 88. 3. Pennsylvania Gazette, July 7 1749, November 2 1749, and November 17 1757. Philip F. Gura and James F. Bollman, America's Instrument: The Banjo in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pages 13-14.
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