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The banjo -- an American instrument. (Current and Coming).(Brief Article)
The banjo is a descendant of gourd instruments made in Africa, and the techniques for making them came to America with African slaves. However, the banjo soon developed into a distinctively American instrument. An exhibition that examines the evolution of the banjo is currently on view at the Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington, Massachusetts, where it may be seen until August 25. Entitled The Banjo: The People and the Sounds of America's Folk Instrument, it comprises some 250 objects, including banjos, paintings, lithographs, photographs, and sheet music, all dating from the nineteenth century. Of the more than sixty instruments on view, many are drawn from the collection of James F. Bollman, a banjo historian.
In 1880 the banjo instructor George C. Dobson wrote: "the natives of Africa have musical instruments which, though differing in minor particulars, possess essentially the same basic peculiarities." He described the African antecedents of the banjo as the kissar and nanaa, "a five-stringed instrument with a head of wood and skin" from eastern Africa. He noted that in western Africa one finds "the omlic with eight strings, the boulou with ten strings, and in Senegambia the bania, which it is sometimes claimed was imported to the United States by the negro slaves, and became the banjo." Today the consensus among music historians seems to favor a western African origin for the banjo.
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