| Contents |
Foreword / by Rhiannon Giddens -- Prelude -- 1st movement. The Atlantic Ocean, 1687 [the Benjamin voyage from Europe to Jamaica] ; Jamaica, 1687 [African stringed instruments in Jamaican musical culture, how the banjo was made, Hans Sloane's Strum Strumps] ; Martinique, 1694 [the drum, African dance, contredanse] ; New York, 1736 [origins of the word "banjo" and other similar names, religion and the banjo] ; Maryland, 1758 [the banjo in America] ; Jamaica, 1750 [the role of banjos in the development of Black Jamaican culture] ; Suriname, 1773 [description of the banjo as "a mandolin or guitar" like instrument, the Creole-bania] ; South Carolina, 1780s [John Rose's The Old Plantation painting, banjos in African American culture] ; Cap François, Saint-Domingue, 1782 [the banjo and drums in Creole dance, banjos versus banjas, preference of violins to banjos, the Vodou religion] ; England, 1787 [John Stedman's collection of Suriname paintings, notes, and instruments, Samuel Jennings' Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences painting, Stedman's Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam book] ; Albany, New York, 1803 [Pinkster and the banjo] -- Interlude -- 2nd movement. Paramaribo, Suriname, 1816 [Gerrit Schouten's Waterkant van Paramaribo] ; New Orleans, Louisiana, 1819 [the banjo as a Black instrument] ; Haiti, 1841 [West African banjos, banzas, and kontings] ; Suriname, 1850 [the panja] ; Paramaribo, Suriname, 1855 [Surinamese music, banya dances] -- Interlude -- 3rd movement. New York City, 1840 [Joel Sweeney, Black minstrelsy, increasing popularity of the banjo] ; New Orleans, Louisiana, 1850 [Louis Moreau Gottschalk] ; Washington, DC, 1857 [Eastman Johnson and his Negro Life at the South painting, William E. Boucher, Jr's banjos] -- Coda. |
| Abstract |
An illuminating history of the banjo, revealing its origins at the crossroads of slavery, religion, and music. In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, the author uncovers the banjo's key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. Through meticulous research in diaries, letters, archives, and art, she traces the banjo's beginnings from the seventeenth century, when enslaved people of African descent created it from gourds or calabashes and wood. She shows how the enslaved carried this unique instrument as they were transported and sold by slaveowners throughout the Americas, to Suriname, the Caribbean, and the colonies that became U.S. states, including Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland, and New York. African Americans came together at rituals where the banjo played an essential part. White governments, rightfully afraid that the gatherings could instigate revolt, outlawed them without success. In the mid-nineteenth century, Blackface minstrels appropriated the instrument for their bands, spawning a craze. Eventually the banjo became part of jazz, bluegrass, and country, its deepest history forgotten. |
