Early Banjo

~ George Crawford

A little historical banjo for a musical Monday.  Nothing comes from nothing.  The banjo is truly American with roots in Africa, the mother of us all.

The Banjo Player by William Sydney Mount, 1856.
The Banjo Player by William Sydney Mount, 1856. Click the image for some info on early banjo sources.
Manjak bunchundo master Francis Mendy. Banjul, Gambia, 2004 (Photo by Ulf Jägfors).
Manjak bunchundo master Francis Mendy. Banjul, Gambia, 2004 (Photo by Ulf Jägfors).  Click the image for more information about this three string lute and other banjo cousins.
An interesting article on NPR about the akonting: a three-stringed instrument with a long neck and a body made from a calabash gourd with a goat skin stretched over it.
An interesting article on NPR about the akonting: a three-stringed instrument with a long neck and a body made from a calabash gourd with a goat skin stretched over it.
A lonely but beautiful image of a lone musician.
A lonely but beautiful image of a lone musician.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.