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Music history reveals many examples of instruments migrating and mutating over time and across geographical boundaries. Some of these are simple stories, while others create a more muddled history; sometimes it's just the "idea" of an instrument which is shared across adjacent cultures. Especially interesting is the case of the banjo, an instrument indigenous to North America but based on recollections of West African models. Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia (1782), mentions the "banjar," a fretless plucked lute with three gut strings and a skin face stretched over a gourd, as a principal instrument of African American slaves, and many period illustrations confirm this (see Eileen Southern's Iconography of Music in African-American Culture, 1770s-1920s for wonderful examples). In the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War, musical experimentation between whites and blacks-like other forms of cultural exchange-was very widespread even though largely undocumented. But it seems clear that the banjo began as an African-American recollection of various West African instruments, which was quickly adopted and adapted in various ways and to various traditions. By the 1840s, the banjo (with the fiddle, tambourine, and bones) was an essential part of the blackface musical/comedy idiom called minstrelsy, in which Caucasian performers (many of Irish ethnicity) dressed in ragged clothes, blackened their faces with burnt cork, and presented skits and songs that parodied Southern Black folkways. There's no question that minstrelsy was racist and exploitative, but it also provided a significant and unique forum for the exchange of musical ideas: Irish dance tunes and song melodies were married with African-American rhythmic ideas, Irish dance steps mingled with African-American steps. The result was the classic songs of Stephen Foster, vaudeville, and eventually much of 20th century American tap- and jazz dance (see Tyler Anbinder's Five Points and Dale Cockrell's Demons of Disorder for two fascinating studies of anti-Bellum Irish/African musical interactions). It seems likely that the ?rst banjos in the Irish tradition were 5-strings that crossed the Atlantic with touring American minstrel shows in the 1840s. A late-19th century sketch in Captain Francis O'Neill's Irish Minstrels and Musicians of piper Dick Stephenson and banjoist John Dunne shows Dunne holding a 5-string. By around 1915, in?uenced in the US by a collegiate craze for "mandolin orchestras" (employing a full consort of instruments from mandolin, through mandola, mando-cello, and mando-bass, an instrument as big as a rowboat), and another for Latin ballroom dance, variant banjos were developed. These included the tango or tenor banjo, with a shorter neck, a smaller body, and four strings tuned in fifths (usually CGDA). The similarity of the instrument's tuning and stringing to that of the mandolin and violin made it a natural for Irish tunes, and its usage as the preferred rhythm instrument in early jazz made it a not-uncommon addition to 78s of Irish traditional music recorded in New York during the music's "Golden Age" of the 1920s and '30s. Mike Flanagan, born in County Waterford in 1898, emigrated to the United States at the age of 10, and with his brothers ran a dance-hall band and recorded a number of in?uential discs of songs and tunes, in which his high-tuned tenor banjo played a prominent role. The instrument was further popularized in the hands of Barney McKenna, a key instrumentalist in the "Dubliners" folk group of the 1960s; McKenna employed heavier string gauges and a lower tuning of GDAE, which preserved the fifth-interval relation, but placed the instrument an octave below fiddle. Since the 1960s, the general trend has been for banjoists to follow McKenna's lead, using the lower GDAE tuning and fiddle fingerings. However, more recently, and perhaps following the example of the virtuosic Gerry O Connor, some players have reconsidered the high CGDA tuning, whose lighter string gauges and quicker action favor O Connor's lickety-split approach. A further step has been to capo the CGDA tuning at the 2nd fret, this in turn yielding DGEB, whose open lower strings encompass the ?ute and pipes bass but also place the high B within very easy range. Personally, I've come to favor the "growl" of the low GDAE tuning, as I feel it works better in supporting other instruments. Asterisked discs below are personal favorites featuring this tuning. Some players and recommended recordings[Disclaimer: the following is by no means a comprehensive list and many great players have not been included. But the following does provide an overview of key players, both better- and lesser-known.]
Christopher J. Smith is Assistant Professor of Music History and Literature at Texas Tech University School of Music. He holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts and Indiana University, serves as Director of the Vernacular Music Center at Texas Tech. His research interests are in American Music, 20th Century Music, vernacular music and culture, improvisation, and historical performance. He is the author of Celtic Backup for All Instrumentalists and the forthcoming Irish Session Tunes by Ear (both Mel Bay), is the authorized biographer of Irish musician and folklorist Séamus Ennis, and has published articles and presented papers on many topics in jazz, classical, and world musics. His solo CD of traditional Irish music (with fiddler Randal Bays and bouzouki-player Roger Landes) will appear early in 2004. In addition, he records and tours internationally with Altramar medieval music ensemble, leads the Irish traditional band Last Night's Fun, and has lectured or performed across North America and in Europe. He directs Irish Session Workshops, a non-profit organization, serves as co-Director of the Symposium of World Musics and on the Steering Committee of the Buddy Holly Symposium, and is a founding staff member of ZoukFest, the world's only music camp and festival for players of the Irish bouzouki. |
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