For enthusiasts of early banjo
Musieu Bainjo
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Comment by Wes Merchant on March 17, 2016 at 2:24pm
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Comment by Strumelia on March 19, 2016 at 12:29pm
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Here's the page of this tune:
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I like the note about the barrel-head drum and the jawbone as being typical accompaniments to the singers and the dancers. Also, is this not the first time we see the instrument being called "Bainjo"?
The great importance of this book lies in the fact that it features music collected from and created by the slaves themselves, not music composed by or re-interpreted by white minstrel performers and songwriters imitating or parodying black slaves or so-called "Ethiopean" music. I think I recall reading in this book that the intent of the author was to produce a second book featuring non-religious music played and sung by slaves...but this unfortunately never happened, so this first book contains mostly religious hymns and songs. Someone correct me if I'm wrong about this..I read this book a while back.
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Yes there is always an accuracy issue about any written transcriptions, but my point is they were collecting/transcribing songs from what they heard the black slaves singing/playing/dancing, much as the musicologist Sharp did a little over 100 years later when he transcribed/collected unaccompanied ballads in the southern Appalachias, accompanied by his assistant. The person transcribing the songs in Slave Songs of the United States wasn't composing songs, or transcribing performances of white people's derogatory songs about black people or white people's ideas of what black slave songs would sound like... i.e. the whole "Ethiopean songs" that weren't Ethiopean songs by any stretch of the imagination thing. Rather they were collecting songs and describing how they were played, sung, and danced. That's why this particular book is particularly important.
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Comment by Brian Kimerer on March 20, 2016 at 8:25am
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That is a very nice tune, but what I am hearing as Paul plays it is not what I am seeing when I follow along with the written music. I understand that the music notation is an incomplete transcription of the music itself, but the difference is more than just expression; I am hearing notes played that are not on the sheet, e.g. in the third measure. It also sounds as though some of the written notes are silent in the performance, such as the leading note of the last measure. That gives the music a syncopation that is not apparent in the written score.
As a novice, I am wondering how you pulled the music out of that minimal description of it in the notation. For those of us with with less experience, how do we squeeze music out of the dots on the page?
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Comment by Paul Draper on March 20, 2016 at 9:59am
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Brian - that is a great question. I'll try to answer as best I can - I'm not extremely articulate when it comes to explaining my process - even less so while balancing a bowl of oatmeal on my lap... I started out with the melody notes exactly as transcribed. My goal was to sing those notes as they are written, while playing a banjo accompaniment which more or less hits those notes. After playing many times on the banjo the simple melody exactly as written, I started to incorporate some "banjo characteristics" i.e. thumb strings and drop-thumb on to the 2nd string. I tried to maintain the over-all melody, but as you pointed out it was necessary to add some notes, subtract some notes, and substitute notes. I figured this was acceptable as an accompaniment to my singing of the melody line. Now, how did I figure out a banjo part? Not to be glib, but I just let my fingers do what they do when they play banjo. I did this until I came up with something that was comfortable to play and I thought sounded ok. The syncopation is quite easy - it happens rather naturally in banjo playing whenever you miss a string. I know this is not a very good analysis of my process. Sometimes the more I analyse the process, the more it falls apart. My playing is held together by thin threads....
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Thank you for the explanation. I am attempting this music somewhat in isolation, so I don't know if the process I go through is a dead end or not. I think I go through a process similar to the one that you have described... without the oatmeal... but my fingers do not yet come up with such nice embellishments. For example, they have never told me to leave out a note for a syncopated effect. They did discover once quite by accident the marvelous minor second chord that makes the banjo really twang.
As an aside, I hang out more with visual artists than I do musicians. I have been painting far longer than I have been playing the banjo. We get the same sort of questions and give the same sort of answers.
Q: "Why did you put that color there?"
A: "Because it is correct".
Being in the arts is not an exact science.
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Paul that was a great description of how you came up with a 'banjo arrangement' to back up your singing the unadorned melody part. We all know that when we play banjo, we don't merely play melody notes only- we use the thumb string as syncopated note, we brush chords and other stringhs, add pull-offs and hammer on notes, and use a themb to drop onto other strings, etc etc. These 'banjo moves' are not done on fiddle for example- the fiddle has its own characteristic 'fiddle moves'. So when we are presented with a written plain melody line of a tune, we have to kind of let our familiar 'banjo moves' happen, and suggest themselves as we play the melody. Like Paul, I find this happens most if I don't overthink it- I just first find the melody and start playing it, and the thumb string is usually the first thing that asserts itself, followed by other typical banjo moves. This can happen over many playings. Once some of it is taking shape as a banjo version, I can then more consciously experiment in adding some little 'banjo move' or ornamental bit that might sound interesting and less generic. The extent of the banjo 'arrangement' depends a lot also on whether you are intending to sing or if it's going to remain instrumental.
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Yeah, without the melody we might as well be playing hammered dulcimers. =8-0 (lololol just kiddinnnnng!)
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