[Dixielandjazz] Banjo History -"hello!"

[D and R Hardie]

Dear Fred,
Early French writers typically rendered the pronunciation of the name 
of  slave instrument as bonjou or bonjour.
When I put this through one computer translator the  instrument came 
back as 'the hello'.  (Hello, it's a pun). The banjo and the bagpipe
are alike only in sharing the drone facility. There is some argument as 
to the origins of the noble Scottish (Irish) instrument.
Some authorities think Scottish (Irish) Music came from Africa through 
the  'perfidious Angleterre' ( pig French for England) in the middle 
ages, but I'll leave that to the experts to argue. Many African 
instruments in the countries that exported slaves used drone strings 
but the banja as it was known in early America did not. The drone 
string appears to be an American addition  coming with the five string 
Banjo in the nineteenth century. I think that is  a reversion to what I 
called a Noble African tradition though I would not stake my life on it.
The Gottschalk piece to which I referred was "The Banjo - Fantasie 
Grotesque Opus 15".I have not been able to track down the Heinrich 
composition so cannot comment on it.

Note the Australian for Bon Jour is G 'day mate.
regards Dan Hardie

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






On Sunday, January 11, 2004, at 08:06  AM, Fred Spencer wrote:

> 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
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dixielandjazz mailing list
>>> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
>>> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dixielandjazz mailing list
>> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com
>> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
>>
>>
>>
>
>