[Dixielandjazz] Banjo History -"something substantial"

[D and R Hardie]

Hi Dan and Hal et al.
  At the risk of introducing a too substantial thread.
The Banjo or banjar or banza  (or bonjour if you were French) appears 
to have been an African instrument introduced to America  by the 
slaves. The first banjos we know of   had bodies made of gourds with 
three or four strings. The modern banjo  was perfected by a white 
minstrel performer in  the 1840's. The drone string  was introduced 
with the 5 string banjo, carrying on an ancient African  tradition 
shared with the bagpipe. The  banjo was introduced to Scotch-Irish 
Appalachian music around 1860 where it shared popularity with the 
fiddle and after 1880 the guitar.
Early black jazz bands  (1897-1917) did not use the banjo but the 
Spanish guitar. White bands were using it by around 1915, perhaps 
earlier, and it was introduced to black bands in the recorded era after 
1917.
New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Anton Dvorak, do 
appear to have introduced themes from Creole slave music into their 
works, particularly La Calinda and La Bamboula, dances performed in New 
Orleans Congo Square. (Brahms was no fool it appears)
  Gottschalk's  piano piece The Banjo (ca 1855) appears to be the 
earliest composition to reflect the sound of the instrument then 
commonly played by Minstrel performers, though it is clear the earlier 
African type instrument was played in the Congo Square when he was a 
boy, in the 1840's.
regards
  Dan Hardie

Blatant commercial insert.
More on this thread  in my forthcoming book The Ancestry of Jazz

  Check out the website:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~darnhard/EarlyJazzHistory.html


On Saturday, January 10, 2004, at 12:46  AM, DWSI at aol.com wrote:

> John:
>
> At the risk of sounding too academic on this site (a rare risk taken I
> notice), I recall reading that the banjo is, in fact, the only truly
> American-original instrument. And it gets stranger. The first banjo 
> (Carolinas origin where
> the Scots first settled) was a five string. The tenor four string came 
> much
> later. The fifth string was supposed to mimic the drone of a bagpipe. 
> Is that
> weird or what?
>
> Dan (piano fingers) Spink
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