Banjo Roots

From Africa to the New World

♦ The New World Banjo ♦ African Ancestors ♦ Lute Family ♦ Related Topics ♦

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Analyzing the Evidence: The Jamaican Strum-Strum

The first description we have of plucked lutes in the New World's African Diaspora comes from Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), the British physician and naturalist whose immense collections served as the impetus and basis for the creation of The British Museum shortly after his death. In the account of his 1687 sojourn through the West Indies, A Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christopher and Jamaica (written in 1689 but not published until 1707), Sloane described the slaves' plucked lutes he saw in Jamaica:

The Negroes... will at nights, or on Feast days Dance and Sing;... They have several sorts of Instruments in imitation of Lutes, made from small Gourds fitted with Necks, strung with Horse hairs, or the peeled stalks of climbing Plants or Withs.

When Sloane first published A Voyage to the Islands in 1707, he included an illustration (see above) of three string instruments that he had observed slaves playing in Jamaica: two gourd-bodied plucked lutes, which were labeled "strum-strumps" in the illustration's Latin caption, and a wooden-bodied harp-lute (also bridge-harp), a kind of harp with an upright bridge (string holder) that's unique to West Africa. The harp-lute depicted in the illustration is very similar to seperewa of the Ashanti of Ghana. While Sloane was certainly unfamiliar with West African harp-lutes, he left us a very accurate description of the seperewa-type harp-lutes he unwittingly encountered in Jamaica:

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's comment, "the Strings ty'd longer or shorter, as they would alter their Sounds," is a reference to the highly distinctive traditional West African method for affixing an instrument's strings to its neck by means of rings or loops made of leather pieces as well as knotted string or strips of cloth. To tune the strings these rings/loops are slid into place. This stringing/tuning system is traditionally used on all kinds of lute-family string instruments throughout West Africa: plucked lutes, bowed lutes (fiddles), and harp-lutes.

Interesting to note, the term strum-strums-- nearly identical to Sloane's strum-strumps-- was used years later, around 1740, to describe the early banjo in Jamaica in an anonymous pamphlet:

On Sundays... towards the Evening... some hundreds of [slaves] will meet together, according to the Customs of their own Country (many of which they retain) with Strum-Strums and Calibashes, which they beat and make a horrid Noise with (tho' some of the Creol Negroes are esteem'd for keeping just Time, and playing very well on the Violin)....

--The Importance of Jamaica to Great Britain Consider'd.... In a Letter to a Gentleman.... (London, c.1740)

As for the two strum-strump plucked lutes depicted in the Sloane's illustration, these have been the subject of a great of speculation and debate. While the two lutes share the drum-like gourd bodies common to all the various regional forms of the early banjo, only two strings are evident. Since neither instrument has a bridge (string holder), they were clearly not properly set up for playing. Furthermore, there are two mysterious holes on the upper side of the fingerboard of the lute with the round gourd body-- perhaps for additional tuning pegs. All this taken together has led some researchers to theorize t hat these "strum-strumps" may have been originally created to have four strings: two long strings and two top short "thumb strings." (Two top short drone strings are a feature of the Portuguese viola beiroa, a traditional 12-string folk guitar with ten long melody strings arrayed in five double courses and a top double course of two adjacent short drone strings tuned to the same pitch.)

Another puzzling clue: The illustration's Latin caption described the two instruments as "Fidiculae Indorum & Nigritarum" ("Small lutes of the Indians and Negroes").

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