MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

Musical Instrument

Musical Instrument

The roots of African-American music are buried deep within the music of the African continent. The history and evolution of African-American music is as rich and complex as the history of African Americans themselves. The essence of African-American music lies in its expression of the human experience. Although the different styles vary widely in their tone, topic and the tools used to produce them, African-American music has the ability to cross all color and culture lines.

“Banjo” is a stringed instrument invented by enslaved Africans in the US, adapted from some African musical instruments. Solo singers needed instruments. The banjo, an African instrument ("banhjour"), came on the ships. The guitar and the harmonica were adopted from the whites. Eventually, the guitar came to be the second "voice" of the bluesman. Instead of addressing an audience in a church or plantation, and interacting with it, the black songster was interacting with his guitar. The blues became a dialogue between a human being and his guitar. The itinerant black "songsters" of the time of the Reconstruction, armed with the guitar, adapted the songs of the hollers to the narrative format of the British ballad.

The banjo is a product of Africa. Africans transported to the Caribbean and Latin America were reported playing banjos in the 17th and 18th centuries, before any banjo was reported in the Americas. Africans in the US were the predominant players of this instrument until the 1840s. Originally the banjos were made out of gourds and skins. The strings numbered between three and nine, with four- and five-string banjos being popular. A distinguishing feature was one or more short drone strings sounded with the thumb.

Banjos began to be built by fine instrument makers, factory scaled manufacturers, as well as working people and farmers who ...