Description

In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, Kristina Gaddy uncovers the banjo’s key role in Black spirituality, ritual and rebellion. Through meticulous research in diaries, letters, archives and art, she traces the banjo’s beginnings from the seventeenth century, when enslaved people of African descent created it from gourds or calabashes and wood. Gaddy shows how the enslaved carried this unique instrument as they were transported and sold by slaveowners throughout the Americas, to Suriname, the Caribbean and the colonies that became US states, including Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland and New York

African Americans came together at rituals where the banjo played an essential part. White governments, rightfully afraid that the gatherings could instigate revolt, outlawed them without success. In the mid-nineteenth century, Blackface minstrels appropriated the instrument for their bands, spawning a craze. Eventually the banjo became part of jazz, bluegrass and country, its deepest history forgotten.

Publisher Review

“Beguiling… [Gaddy] weaves her story together from sources including paintings, diaries and letters, and tells it chronologically. In a less daring writer’s hands, this might have become a slog, but Ms. Gaddy successfully blends archival skills with imagination.” — The Economist “A potent combination of research and storytelling…What emerges is an extraordinary narrative of African Americans’ resistance to brutalisation and the myriad attempts to destroy, pervert, exoticise or appropriate their cultural practices.” — Steph Power – BBC Music Magazine “Tracing the development of the banjo…this meticulous history also illuminates the difficulties of unearthing a story rooted in the experiences of the enslaved.” — The New Yorker “In her compelling, thoroughly researched history, Kristina R. Gaddy reveals a different instrument entirely, one intimately rooted in the African diaspora and capable of expressing flights of sorrow and joy…The time is ripe for lovers of the banjo to learn about its hidden past.” — David Yezzi – The Wall Street Journal