Banjo History Quotes

Well, you know, the original banjos were all handmade instruments. Gourd - it would be made with gourds and whatever, you know, materials would have been around. And, you know, first hundred years of its existence, the banjo's known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument, you know?

There was such hostility to the idea of a banjo being a black instrument. It was co-opted by this white supremacist notion that old-time music was the inheritance of white America.

Being from New York, I wonder why am I inspired by bluegrass and Earl Scruggs? But when I look at the whole history of the banjo, I feel really good about it, including the Earl Scruggs part.

I'll talk about the banjo all day long and the history of minstrel shows.

To learn the history of the banjo is to recover the actual history of America.

There are a lot of chapters to the banjo's history. Part of it are the roots in Africa, where it's a more primitive instrument. Then it comes to the United States where it morphs into the slave music that they created here, which was very African in origin.

I play a replica of a banjo from the 1950s. It was the first commercial-style banjo in the United States so it's the first one that white people played.

In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.