The Banjo: America’s African Instrument

From the earliest days of American history, the banjo’s sound has allowed folk musicians to create community and joy even while protesting oppression and injustice.. Providing a much-needed sense of rootedness, solidarity, and consolation, banjo picking became an essential part of black plantation life. White musicians took up the banjo in the nineteenth century, when it became the foundation of the minstrel show and began to be produced industrially on a large scale. Attuned to a rich heritage spanning continents and cultures, Laurent Dubois traces the banjo from humble origins, revealing how it became one of the great stars of American musical life.In the seventeenth century, enslaved people in the Caribbean and North America drew on their memories of varied African musical traditions to construct instruments from carved-out gourds covered with animal skin. The banjo has been called by many names over its history, but they all refer to the same soundstrings humming over skinthat has eased souls and electrified crowds for centuries. Even as this instrument found its way into rural white communities, however, the banjo remained central to African American musical performance.Twentieth-century musicians incorporated the instrument into styles ranging from ragtime and jazz to Dixieland, bl

Laurent Dubois is Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History at Duke University.

"The Banjo–Perhaps" according to James T. Jones. Begin reading this book with the acknowledgements pages (The Banjo–Perhaps Begin reading this book with the acknowledgements pages (351-355), where you will find the most succinct statement of its thesis: "Banjos have an amazing capacity to bring people together, in laughter and song." The trouble with this thesis is that it is not only too obvious, but that it also applies to all other musical instruments, dance, and song, as well as to many other cultural phenomena, such as games. In the context of the book, it also requires the author, an eminent historian of the Carribean, to speculate about the gathering capacity of the banjo on the ba. 51-The Banjo–Perhaps Begin reading this book with the acknowledgements pages (351-355), where you will find the most succinct statement of its thesis: "Banjos have an amazing capacity to bring people together, in laughter and song." The trouble with this thesis is that it is not only too obvious, but that it also applies to all other musical instruments, dance, and song, as well as to many other cultural phenomena, such as games. In the context of the book, it also requires the author, an eminent historian of the Carribean, to speculate about the gathering capacity of the banjo on the ba. 55), where you will find the most succinct statement of its thesis: "Banjos have an amazing capacity to bring people together, in laughter and song." The trouble with this thesis is that it is not only too obvious, but that it also applies to all other musical instruments, dance, and song, as well as to many other cultural phenomena, such as games. In the context of the book, it also requires the author, an eminent historian of the Carribean, to speculate about the gathering capacity of the banjo on the ba. The cultural history that gave us the ?American Banjo I just finished this book. It isn't your typical banjo book. There are many good books about the instrument, but none about the cultural context in which the banjo evolved, from a gourd instrument first made by African slaves on Caribbean sugar plantations to the fancy instrument of the bluegrass, old time and folk musicians of today. It's very well written and researched. If you are interested in the history and cultures that gave us the banjo, this is the book you want to read. It covers early African origins, the banjo on the plantations and it's used by enslaved . OK, but it needs work reuben PRO: The Banjo by Laurent Dubois seems to be well researched, and I did learn about the banjo's various incarnations, and artists from West Africa to the latest masters. I never knew that after being developed by slaves, white American marketing sold it as a white man's invention. I salute the parts portraying Pete Seeger, Earl Scruggs, Grandpa Jones, etc. It answered some questions and raised others, like any good text book.CON: I think it needs a second edition with more COLOR pictures, maps, & specs. I think I learned more about slavery than about the banjo.I agre

(Vincent Brown, author of The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery)Dubois illuminates the banjo’s complicated cultural history…This lively account is not without surprises. If you are interested enough in the banjo to understand the instrument and its uses more fully, you cannot do better than to read this lively, superb account. It is impossible to follow Dubois’s trail without a smile and the satisfaction of hearing the world anew. The Banjo: America’s African Instrument is a rich, original view of our sonic landscape. (John Check Weekly Standard 2016-03-14)A riveting history of the banjo…While the story Dubois tells is primarily historical and sociological, it is also musical, and he never lets us forget