Building New Banjos for an Old-Time World

Richard Jones-Bamman

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780252082849, 9780252041303
• eBook ISBN: 9780252099908
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

Banjo music possesses a unique power to evoke a bucolic, simpler past. The artisans who build banjos for old-time music stand at an unusual crossroads "asked to meet the modern musician's needs while retaining the nostalgic qualities so fundamental to the banjo's sound and mystique. Richard Jones-Bamman ventures into workshops and old-time music communities to explore how banjo builders practice their art. His interviews and long-time personal immersion in the musical culture shed light on long-overlooked aspects of banjo making. What is the banjo builder's role in the creation of a specific musical community? What techniques go into the styles of instruments they create? Jones-Bamman explores these questions and many others while sharing the ways an inescapable sense of the past undergirds the performance and enjoyment of old-time music. Along the way he reveals how antimodernism remains integral to the music's appeal and its making.

1

A Brief History of the Banjo

[At] various points of its history it has been almost totally stripped of its African connections and African roots. So the desire to make a banjo into something that doesn’t have that African connection tells us a lot about how our culture has also tried to avoid dealing with parts of its history.

—Historian Laurent Dubois from the 2013 film, The Librarian and the Banjo

Origins?

Just when the banjo arrived in North America, either as a concept or as a complete instrument, remains subject to considerable conjecture. That this should be the case for an item that has been declared “America’s Instrument” (Gura and Bollman 1999), speaks volumes about its history, for the banjo, or rather one of several possible antecedents, arrived in this hemisphere with enslaved Africans among whom it gradually developed into the instrument we now recognize (Dubois 2016). It was only after the banjo made its way into dominant white society in the nineteenth century that its story becomes easier to corroborate. Nevertheless, thanks to the efforts of a couple of generations of researchers, we now have a better picture of this instrument’s origins and the means by which it became so deeply embedded in our culture.1

The earliest sightings and/or mention of something akin to the banjo date to the early seventeenth century, in the Caribbean colonies, where it was generally linked with group dancing (Epstein 1977). Even the term banjo is shrouded in historical mystery, since no clear cognate has been found among the several West African cultures deemed most likely to have provided the original model. Thomas Jefferson, for example, referred to the banjar in a 1781 journal entry, in which he additionally noted the instrument’s popularity among his own slaves (Carlin 2007a). Other terms encountered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries include bania, banjer, bangoe, bangie, bamshaw, banza, and even somewhat improbably, merrywang (Dubois 2016; Webb 1984).

Despite this lack of certainty as to the instrument’s first appearance in North America, there is no longer any argument over its association with African (and later, African American) slave populations, and its importance within these communities as an accompaniment to dance and song. We have not only the accounts of white travelers and slave owners familiar with slave culture to support this, but also published listings of runaways, who occasionally were cited as being proficient banjo players (Epstein 1977). As a result, while it is far from clear how widespread knowledge of the banjo might have been in the nascent period of this nation, it was irrefutably seen as a symbol of slavery, therefore lying outside the musical interests of the majority of the population. Even those individuals who attempted to describe their encounters with the banjo in relatively neutral terms, invariably found the instrument and its music difficult to interpret, given their admittedly Euro-American biases—it was clearly an instrument representative of African American slave populations, as evidenced in the following description of the banjo by Johann David Schoef (Epstein 1977: 36) from 1784:

It gives out a rude sound; usually there is some one besides to give an accompaniment with the drum, or an iron pan or empty cask, whatever may be at hand. In America and on the islands they make use of this instrument greatly for the dance. Their melodies are almost always the same, with little variation.

How, then, did this exotic instrument transmogrify into a compelling symbol of rural white culture, a position it has occupied for most of the last century?

The answer to this question lies in the circuitous path this instrument has taken through American culture, which is evident in both its history and its structural development. Thankfully, we have access to reliable sources to aid in unraveling the banjo’s story. These include visual evidence (early sketches, paintings, and photographs), written materials (diaries, travel journals, sales materials, and tutorials), and a number of extant instruments from the earliest years of the banjo’s manufacture (Bollman interview 2009). But none of these resources is of much benefit for those less familiar with the instrument, for a plantation-era banjo looks and sounds decidedly different than a modern instrument used in old-time or bluegrass, and introducing possible African ancestors at this point muddies the waters even further.2 So what exactly is a banjo? More to the point, are there specific commonalities linking the earliest and contemporary forms?

Before taking up these questions, however, let me explain I am only concerned with the five-string banjo and its immediate antecedents, since these are the instruments commonly associated with old-time music. During the first decades of the twentieth century, two new styles of banjo with four strings emerged (tenor and plectrum models) and eventually eclipsed the popularity of the five-string version, but these banjo variants had considerably less impact on old-time music where the five-string remains the instrument of choice. Nevertheless, given their close relations, both the tenor and plectrum share many basic structural characteristics with the older five-string.3 The Reverend Jonathan Boucher 1832 (Epstein 1977: 34) offers this explanation:

What makes it a banjo?

[T]he favorite and almost only instrument in use among the slaves … was a bandore; or as they pronounced the word, banjer. Its body was a large hollow gourd, with a long handle attached to it, strung with catgut, and played with the fingers.

Perhaps the most obvious defining attribute of the banjo is the use of a membrane as the primary vibrating surface; this is set in motion by the energy of the strings transmitted through a small, nonfixed bridge. This membrane is referred to by banjoists as the head, and can be made of skin (calf or goat most frequently, but historically also groundhog, opossum, and virtually anything else readily available and suitable) or synthetic materials (most commonly BoPET, a polyester film). How the head is affixed has been subject to considerable variation over the centuries, reflecting both the availability of resources and existing technology. Based on extant examples, the head was held in place on the earliest banjos with small nails or pegs, an efficient approach still used among contemporary African cultures with similar instruments. This technique has never disappeared entirely here in North America either, resulting in what builders and players refer to as a tack head (i.e., the head is “tacked” in place), but it has limitations, not the least of which is the lack of any means to adjust the tension of the membrane, once it has been mounted. This method works only with skin, which is put on wet allowing it to become more taut as it dries. Unfortunately, skin is also very responsive to weather changes, so an instrument with a tack head may be usable only when the temperature and humidity are within an optimal range. Consequently, this approach to mounting is now reserved for use in building historical reproductions.

A second shared element is the frame or body of the instrument, referred to by banjoists as the rim or the pot, and here a large degree of difference is apparent, particularly between the earliest instruments and those produced from the second quarter of the nineteenth century forward. The former, like their African relatives, were often made of gourds, ranging from small dipper varieties to large calabashes (Menzies interview 2009). Once these reached maturity, they were harvested and allowed to dry until their moisture content had been reduced sufficiently to yield a relatively rigid structure. A longitudinal section was removed, the seeds were scooped out, and the interior was scraped and cleaned, resulting in a bowl-shaped vessel, which ultimately became the body of the instrument (Thornburg interview 2009). But this approach to constructing a banjo obviously depended on access to gourds, which were not always available in the regions of North America where slave populations were found (ibid.). As a result, other materials were used, including wooden boxes, biscuit tins, and any number of similarly recyclable resources. Judging from the admittedly scanty evidence for these early banjos, the shape and the materials used were of less concern than the fact that the frame be structurally capable of withstanding the combined tension of the head and the strings. There was a preference, however, for ovoid or round shapes, which not only hearkened back visually to the instrument’s gourd origins, but also made it much easier to hold and play. A flat edge, such as one would encounter on a banjo with a box body, would be quite difficult to position comfortably on the lap. Nevertheless, square and rectangular shapes do show up with some frequency in homemade banjos, presumably because of the paucity of better resources or the requisite skills to construct a round shape.4

A third shared structural characteristic concerns the relationship between the body and the neck of the instrument. In comparison with other familiar chordophones (e.g., the guitar or the violin), the banjo has an exceptionally long neck relative to the size of its body. For example, contemporary banjos range from 36” to 38” in length, but their necks average 23.5” to 26”, or nearly 70 percent of the total dimension. An acoustic steel-string guitar, by contrast, averages 40.5” in length, but its neck is no more than 20.5” or approximately 50 percent of its total. Additionally, the banjo’s fingerboard ends where its neck meets the body, giving the instrument a slightly awkward appearance compared to a guitar or violin, whose fingerboards extend over their bodies to increase their playing range.

There is another distinguishing factor about the banjo’s neck that would be easy to miss without careful examination. On most of the banjos built before the mid–twentieth century, the neck passes through the body of the instrument, in some instances emerging from the other side of the rim for a distance of as much as an inch. This is a vestige of the earliest instruments reckoned as banjos and offers even more evidence for African origins, where this method of constructing a chordophone is very common.5 This has two structural functions: first, it contributes to the stability of the body, serving as a brace for what might otherwise be quite a flexible structure; and second, it provides an extremely secure means of mounting the neck to the body. In some early banjos, the neck is simply a single, long piece of wood, passing through the rim before terminating. This is derived directly from West African construction practices such as found on the akonting and the ngoni, two instruments that often figure into discussions of banjo origins (Jägfors 2003). In most banjos, however, this extension of the neck is a separate piece called a dowel stick (less frequently perch pole), typically made of the same species of wood as the neck, and attached to the heel with a blind mortise joint (see Illustration 1). Alternatively, the neck may be fitted to the body with a metal rod (or even a pair of rods) that serves the same purpose of strengthening the rim and ensuring the two parts are securely joined. In either case, the use of this through-body construction differs significantly from that found with other familiar stringed instruments, adding to the distinctive quality of the banjo’s structure.

A final element that runs constant through the banjo’s many iterations concerns the manner in which the instrument is strung. Not all of the strings are of the same length, with one of them being considerably shorter and higher pitched than the rest.6 What makes this exceptionally unusual, however, is the placement of this short string, which lies directly in line with the player’s thumb, i.e., on top of the other strings. This rather odd configuration has a simple explanation: the short string functions as a drone (also called a chanterelle or chanter) that is struck repeatedly with the thumb, regardless of the tuning used or the chord played. Its placement, higher up the neck and closer to the body than the other strings, also makes it very difficult to fret, confirming its function as a drone since its pitch is not easily altered. This important structural characteristic contributes to the sound that makes the banjo readily identifiable: the resulting high-pitched drone, amplified by the vibrating membrane, has a piercing timbre, one that is easily perceptible over the other strings.7

In summary, the banjo, with very few exceptions, has the following elements: a membrane (head) serves as its primary vibrating surface, mounted on some type of rigid frame (rim or pot), typically round or oval-shaped; proportionally, the neck is long in relation to the body and moreover passes through the frame, adding to its rigidity and structural integrity; and the instrument is strung asymmetrically, with one string (the drone) being significantly shorter than the others, positioned so that it is easily struck by the player’s thumb. At a minimum, therefore, the instrument that first attracted the attention of white Americans met these basic criteria, but it was to undergo significant structural and contextual changes before it achieved its present form, and this process began with the advent of blackface minstrelsy.

From Plantation to Parlor

As early as 1769, white actors portrayed African Americans on the American stage by donning blackface makeup and adopting speech and body mannerisms thought to be typical of slave populations (Hamm 1979). Not to be confused with earlier theatrical portrayals of black characters (Othello, for instance), these actions constituted a form of cultural co-optation that became the foundation of American minstrelsy (Stark 2000; Sweet 2000). Gradually, music began to enter these presentations, starting with song and dance and eventually incorporating the banjo as the most obvious symbol of slave culture (Nathan 1962). English composer Charles Dibdin, for example, found tremendous success in his home country and here in the United States with his 1790 sketch, The Wages, which included a song called “The Negro and his Banja” (Hamm 1979: 110). And by the 1830s, banjo-playing blackface minstrels like Daniel Emmett and Joel Walker Sweeney were entertaining large audiences of curious whites, primarily in urban locations in the northern regions of the country.8

Within a few decades, what had started as an occasional sketch in variety shows and circuses gained sufficient popularity to warrant mounting entire evenings of entertainment featuring a company of white male performers in blackface, playing instruments (usually banjo, fiddle, tambourine, and bones), singing, dancing, telling stories and jokes, in both male and female roles (Winans 1976). Beginning in the early 1840s, these full-scale minstrel shows quickly became the most popular form of entertainment in the nation, with the larger cities having at least one professional minstrel troupe and often enough interest among audiences to support competing groups in different venues.9 Blackface minstrelsy also became America’s first real musical export, with minstrel troupes touring the British Isles to great success by the mid-1840s (Toll 1974; Nathan 1962).

As a result of minstrelsy’s popularity, the banjo shifted from an instrument clearly reflecting its African roots to one serving as an emblem of slave culture in the hands of white performers, who increasingly knew little of its original technique or repertoire. While evidence suggests some of the earliest blackface minstrels who played the banjo learned directly from African American musicians, typically slaves with whom they had some contact (Carlin 2007a), by the time minstrelsy demonstrated its potential as a form of entertainment, most subsequent practitioners learned to play the banjo from one another or from professional teachers who were invariably white—accuracy was not a hallmark of these presentations in any regard. Concomitant with this development, the homemade banjos associated with the plantation were deemed inadequate for their new role in minstrelsy. These instruments were neither loud enough nor suitably sturdy to meet the demand of stage musicians, particularly as minstrel shows moved into larger venues where greater volume was a necessity to compete within an expanded ensemble and predictably rowdy audiences.

In response, several enterprising musical instrument manufacturers began building banjos, first for professional use, followed shortly thereafter by instruments for the growing amateur market. The latter in particular drew the attention of musical instrument makers, who went to great lengths to create banjos specifically destined for this clientele. Not surprisingly, music teachers were also an impo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 A Brief History of the Banjo
• 2 The Old-Time Nation
• 3 God Is in the Details
• 4 An Homage to the Past
• 5 An Apprentice to Ghosts
• 6 The Banjo’s Evolving Story
• Appendix 1. List of Interviewees
• Appendix 2. Banjo Builder Websites
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index