[Dixielandjazz] Banjo History -"something substantial"

[Fred Spencer]

Dear Dan et al.,
You wrote "The banjo or banjar or banza (or bonjour if you were French)".
It is hard to understand how the French "bonjour" became a synonym for a
banjo when it literally means "good" (bon) "day" (jour) in French, and is
the customary greeting in France.
  What is the connection between the banjo's fifth (drone) string in
"carrying on an ancient African tradition shared with the bagpipe."
According to "TheOxford Companion to Musical Instruments", the bagpipe is of
European origin, with an extension only to the African Mediterranean
littoral, not to the regions from which slaves were exported.
  Karen Linn, in her book "That Half-Barbaric Twang," says that the American
violinist, Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781-1861), wrote a piano piece entitled
"The Banjo...twenty years before" Gottschalk's composition. There is a
discussion of Gottschalk's "The  Banjo(more accurately, the Banjo I and the
Banjo II, since he produced two quite different variants of the piece") in
the jazz clarinetist/ scholar, Fred Starr's book, "Bamboula.The Life and
Times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk" (Oxford University Press, 1997).
Regards.
Fred.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "D and R Hardie" <darnhard at ozemail.com.au>
To: <DWSI at aol.com>
Cc: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2004 6:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Banjo History -"something substantial"


> 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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> >
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