Instruments:
Banjo
Perhaps no other instrument is more often linked, in thought and memory, to the mountains of the Southeast than the banjo. Through Hollywood portrayals, media stereotyping, and the recent rise in popularity of Bluegrass music, the banjo became inextricably linked to the people of the southern Appalachians.
Of African origin, the banjo was introduced to the United States in southern slave communities. Consisting of a gourd head and gut or vine strings, these early forms of the instrument had a vague resemblance to more modern versions. Soon after transmission into Euro-American culture in the early nineteenth century, the banjo underwent important changes in structure and construction. The gourd head used in the African and early forms of the instrument was replaced by a wooden rim design. By 1850, some forty years after the date believed to signify the initial crossover into Anglo-American culture, the gourd sound chamber design had largely disappeared altogether. 1 The introduction of the fifth “drone” string in the mid-nineteenth century, however, proved to be the most significant adaptation. It is argued whether this change was made among African American players or white American players, but regardless of who made this modification, its impact on the playing style of the instrument cannot be understated. This addition fundamentally altered the way the instrument was played and the sound that it produced. It was this alteration that brought the banjo from an African instrument to what John and Alan Lomax described as “America’s only original folk instrument.” 2
By the end of the nineteenth century many of the instruments played throughout the country were manufactured by a number of different American companies. As the banjos popularity grew with its incorporation into jazz and swing, and the rise of radio “hillbilly” music in the first decades of the twentieth century, the manufacture of the instrument grew. 3 Through catalogs like Sears and Roebuck these manufactured banjos were distributed throughout the nation. No doubt many of these banjos were purchased in the highlands of the South, but there remained a significant output in this region of instruments made by hand.
The construction of hand-made banjos took on a wide variety of techniques. Somewhat simple examples of designs were made completely of wood, utilized tin cans for rim construction, adapted parts from other instruments, and included any number of other methods of improvisation. 4 There were, however, many instances of more complex high quality craftsmanship. Most often, hard woods like hickory, walnut, maple, and poplar were used for the construction of the head (although pine was used as well) due to preference for associated tonal quality. 5 The greater density of these woods tended to reflect the sound more, making it slightly louder. Craft Revival era instrument maker Homer Ledford of Lexington, Kentucky used “curly maple in the fancy models,” and all walnut in the fretless mountain types. 6
After the wood was cured, the instrument’s parts were fashioned using rasps, pocketknives, and handsaws. The wood for the rim or hoop was boiled or steamed and bent into shape. Then a skin of some sort, with groundhog and cat being the most widely used, was stretched across and tacked down to form the head of the instrument. 7 The carved neck would next be attached and strings added to complete the work. While factory-produced examples often had frets along the neck to mark finger positions, usually handmade banjos did not. This allowed for the sliding of notes, a preferred method in the old time string band style. Handmade versions often had a smaller diameter head than manufactured models. 8
Both in the years prior to and during the Craft Revival, the banjo was a widely popular handmade instrument in the southern Appalachians. 9 Despite the rise of factory-produced instruments, local artisans continued to produce banjos for their community, often using factory-made versions as a model for design. 10 After visiting western North Carolina, folklorist and writer Louise Rand Bascom noted in a 1909 article for the Journal of American Folklore that “the banjo is home-made, and very cleverly fashioned, too, with its drum head of cat’s hide, its wooden parts of hickory.” 11
Born in 1910, Leonard “Lucky” Glenn began making banjos as a boy in the Laurel Creek community of Watauga County, North Carolina. Awarded with the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1992, his instruments were a favorite among traditional style banjo players. 12 Rejecting the metallic sounding manufactured banjos, Mr. Glenn and other makers of hand-made versions produced an instrument with a softer tone that much better suited the singing and playing styles of many mountain communities. His longevity as a maker, and accolades as a craftsman, is a testament to the continued demand for the unique sound produced by the “mountain” banjo.
- Patrick Velde
1. Cecilia Conway, African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1995), 164, 173.
2. John and Alan Lomax as quoted in Conway, 160.
3. Karen Linn, That Half-Barbaric Twang (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 82.
4. John Rice Irwin, Musical Instruments of the Southern Appalachian Mountains (Exton, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 1983), 61.
5. Eliot Wigginton (Ed.) Foxfire 3 (New York: Anchor Books, 1975), 138.
6. Edward Dupuy, Artisans of the Appalachians (Asheville, NC: Miller Printing, 1967), 75.
7. Irwin, 31.
8. Henry Glassie as quoted in Conway, 179.
9. Irwin, 31.
10. Vaughn Webb, “Instrument Making,” in Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press 2006), 1175.
11. Louise Rand Bascom, “Ballads and Songs of Western North Carolina,” Journal of American Folklore v. 22, n. 34 (April-June 1909): 238.
12. “Leonard Glenn: Banjo and Dulcimer Maker,” North Carolina Folklore Journal/44, nos. 1-2 (1997): 62-63, and Thomas McGowan, “Leonard Glenn, 1910-1997,” North Carolina Folklore Journal/45, no. 2 (1998): 93-94.