Thought I already made a post on this.\u00a0\u00a0 This is something I have discussed over the years with people like Pete Ross, Cece Conway and others.\u00a0\u00a0 Gourd banjos tended to go out of use among the enslaved, among free African Americans and among European American folk banjoists once banjo playing\u00a0 with hoop or frame head banjos became wide spread among banjo entertainers in the 1840s.\u00a0 There is certainly a folk record of making frame headed banjos, not just\u00a0the creation of banjos by luthiers in the 1840s.<\/p>\n
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It is true that among some people white and black gourd banjo making and playing continued into the 20th century, although probably from the 1840s on gourd banjos were rare even among the enslaved and chiefly something that would be used by a child until they could obtain or make or have someone make a frame headed banjo or buy a manufactured banjo.<\/p>\n
It is simply easier to make a frame headed banjo that a gourd banjo and the process isn't seasonally dependent.\u00a0\u00a0 Gourd banjo makers I know talk about how each banjo tends to need to be adapted to the particular shape and size and characteristics of individual gourds.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Contrary to a lot of the paternalism rampant among folk revivalist old time music enthusiasts and folkies--groupd I have been a charter member of since around 1960--plebian vernacular banjoists, particularly the Black ones, have tended to welcome the advances in banjo development that have been identified with the organized banjo industry that we can first note coming into being in the 1840s.\u00a0\u00a0 There seems to be absolutely NO evidence of African American banjoist, cleaving to gourd banjos, because of the origin of the banjo came from gourd instruments any more than there is any evidence whatsoever of New World Africans using round pole necked instruments as opposed to flat necked instruments or using African string tuners as opposed to violin like tuning pegs.<\/p>\n
Banjos certainly originated in the Caribbean out of African roots and were brought here by people of AFrican descent.\u00a0 However, the popularization of the banjo by European American entertainers and the innovations in banjo construction that they spread ad those that followed once banjo craftspersons and then manfacturers came along tend to have been followed and embraced by plebian vernacular players urban and rural.\u00a0 Perhaps the only resistance came among a minority of Southern folk banjoists to the insertion of frets.<\/p>\n
Likewise there is absolutely no evidence of the persistence of\u00a0 3 and 4 string banjos--Early gourd banjos in the Caribbean and the US were chiefly 4 string but some were 3 string,\u00a0 once the five-string banjo started being popularized by banjo entertainers in the early 1840s.\u00a0 Home made banjos seemed to follow the trends of the banjo manufacturers and luthiers, including when like many other musical instruments, banjo tunings were raised three steps in the late 19th century.<\/p>\n
However,\u00a0 one can discern some of the links to the earlier three and four string banjo in the nature of many of the traditional African American origined banjo tunes, or at least banjo tunes whose shape has been African Americanized whatever their origins.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the standard banjo tunings like G and\u00a0 drop C and the open D reuben tuning tha twas probably more popular among folk players in the time of early banjos,\u00a0\u00a0 you can play most tunes like Juba or Cripple Creek, or Reuben, etc. etc. without using the fourth string of the banjo quite easily and remain in a more or less traditional African American style.<\/p>\n
A couple times when visiting with friends like Scott Odell and others\u00a0 sitting around picking I have disabled the 4 string on my banjo and got along quite fine playing what I consider an older black style.\u00a0 When I was hot into discussing this a few years ago a major banjo scholar we all know did take an informal look at a bunch of minstrel banjo pieces and thought they tended to use the fourth string much less than 20th century banjo pieces.<\/p>\n
There is a lot of pressure in the banjo world, particularly the \"trad\" and \"minstrel\" banjo worlds to picture banjo playing as some kind of ancient premodern practice held back and encrusted by hidebound tradition, clinging to the purity of its roots in Africa or elsewhere on other continents.<\/p>\n
However, whether among European Americans or African Americans, or indeed beyond the United STates, banjo playing has been a distinctly modern phenomena, one of the first world cultural developments spread by capitalism, one of the first more or less standardized products of its nature,\u00a0 characterized by constant innovation and creation and technical development and innovative use of new developments and contributions from other instruments<\/p>\n
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