The Rise of the Banjo: Part Two of the West Virginia Instrument Anthology

Cover Photo: Horace Weston standing with banjo from 1884 or earlier (Horace Weston 2024).

Welcome back to the West Virginia Instrument Anthology! The second blog post in this series will be a continuation of the banjo’s history and cultural impacts. Part two on the banjo is meant to zero in on the banjo’s transformation from the gourd-bodied, stringed instruments used by many African cultures to a uniquely American instrument, one that is complicated by its alienation from its black origins. You will see through this post how the banjo became a stereotypical image tied to African American people and white “hillbillies”, a fascinating instrument to white audiences, a symbol of new folk music in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and eventually an object that is now being reclaimed by African American musicians. Thank you for returning, or if you’re new, check out the first part in this series!

Introduction: Minstrel Show History

Continuing on from where part one left off, the banjo in the mid-nineteenth century was beginning to be written into sheet music and minstrel shows were rising in popularity. The minstrel show, a problematic and racist portion of American entertainment, began to gain attention somewhere around the 1830s and by the mid-nineteenth century, many performers were popping up across the United States. Some groups even toured in Europe, bringing the banjo across the Atlantic. White performers would rub burnt cork or shoe polish on their face and draw cartoonishly large lips in order to play a caricature of black musicians on stage for white audiences. One of the founding groups of minstrelsy was The Virginia Minstrels from New York City. The group consisted of performers from the Bowery Circus: William Whitlock, Dan Emmett, Dick Pelhman, and Francis Brower. “They had a new group, and on February 6, 1843, they would present the ‘First Night of the novel…Ethiopian band, entitled the Virginia Minstrels.’ They … billed themselves as authentic. But they were all white, none of them were from Virginia, and the entertainment they were performing wasn’t new. More than that, even as the Virginia Minstrels took the stage as a foursome with banjo, fiddle, tambourine, and bones, they were recreating what could have been heard in Black communities from New York to Suriname.” (Gaddy 2022: 185-186).

Sheet music cover featuring an African-American person holding a gourd-bodied instrument while a white composer writes music (Kristina R. Gaddy 2022).

Through these performers, and their newly popular shows, “traveling minstrel shows brought banjo music to large urban audiences” (Mazow 2005:2). Some performers, like Joey Sweeney went as far to develop a “mythology of authenticity.” “Sweeney was white and grew up in central Virginia. He learned to play the banjo from an enslaved man…Some said his first banjo was made of a gourd with four strings, like the ones people of African descent were playing, and that he eventually made one by attaching a neck to a wooden hoop and adding another long string, thus creating the five-string, wooden-rimmed banjo. Others said that joining the neck to a wooden hoop or ‘rim of a sugar box’ was already common among Black players” (Gaddy 2022:184). Sweeney’s supposed invention of the modern banjo is questionable, however he is credited with adding the extra string, changing the instrument forever. Minstrelsy extracted African American music and culture and deposited it uncontextualized into white popular culture. As scholar Cecelia Conway sarcastically writes, “The story goes that once upon a time, long ago, a white minstrel invented the five-string banjo — ‘America’s only original folk instrument’” (1995:xiii). While Sweeney no doubt had an influence on the development and popularization of the modern banjo, it is ridiculous to credit him with its invention and a shame that the instrument was brought to white audiences in such a racist context. 

Despite their mockery, “Blackface performers wanted to be authentic, so they said they learned their material from Black musicians, and that may be true. But because of the immense popularity of Blackface Minstrelsy, many more people…were going to hear these tunes at performances and learn them from sheet music,” rather than from enslaved or African-American players (Gaddy 2022:184). Some black performers also joined the cast of minstrel shows, such as Horace Weston, but the content of the shows was still focused on caricatures more than musical appreciation. Minstrel shows and the practice of blackface are forms of American entertainment that we want to leave in the past, yet in the case of the banjo, it is undeniable; minstrelsy is what catapulted the instrument into popular culture. Minstrel shows, the performers’ crude dancing, and the jolly, yet often incredibly racist tunes, brought the instrument to large audiences who became interested in owning and playing the banjo. 

Rise in Banjo Sheet Music

“Grotesque Fantasie” classical sheet music composed by L.M. Gottschalk featuring banjo drawings published in 1855 (Sheet Music Plus 2024).

The minstrel shows of the mid-nineteenth century led to a rise in interest and demand for banjos and banjo sheet music. “Shops in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, South Carolina, and London would sell sheet music written by white men displaying banjos on the cover, and soon, anyone could walk into a store and buy a banjo.” (Gaddy 2022: 190-191). The banjo became a parlor decoration, an amusement for white people to show their friends, extracting it from its important and rich cultural origins in Africa and African Americans. The songs written into history for the banjo were full of racist lyrics and faked African-American vernacular. Early songs in minstrel shows like “‘Coal Black Rose’ were followed by T.D. Rice’s ‘Jump Jim Crow’ in the early 1830s, ‘Zip Coon’ in 1834, ‘Sitting on a Rail’ in 1836, and ‘Jenny, Get Your Hoe Cake Done’ in 1840. All were catchy, earwormy songs sung by professional Blackface performers as part of theatrical acts and during interludes in circus performances.” (Gaddy 2022: 183). Three of the verses in Joel Sweeney’s ‘Jenny Get Your Hoe Cake Done!’ mention the banjo alongside derogatory terms for black people and racist mockery of African-American vernacular. 

“Massa and Missus gwan away,

Left home fore de break ob day,

Den you har de white folks say,

Stan clear and let de banjo play.

Oh, Jenny get your hoe cake done, my dear,

Oh, Jenny get your hoe cake done, love!” (Sweeney 1840).

These lyrics parallel the enjoyment of “white folks” in the song with the white entertainment in the nineteenth and twentieth century’s that cast the banjo under a new light. Songs like ‘Jenny Get Your Hoe Cake Done!’ caused an increased need for and interest in banjo music. “In 1855, a Boston publisher put out Briggs’ Banjo Instructor, noting that ‘there had never yet been published a complete method for this instrument.’ The book made learning banjo music accessible to middle-class white people and provided ‘plantation melodies which the author learned when at the south from negroes’ and specifics about how to play and tune a five-string, wooden-rimmed banjo.” (Gaddy 2022:210).

The Banjo Culture and Wealth Gap

Early 1900’s Sears Catalogue selling different banjo models (Banjo Hangout 2022)

The increasing amount of interest and sheet music for the banjo led to a shift in the demographic of the people playing it. The banjo was elevated in culture, carried in the hands of white people, and used in music genres that diverged from the minstrelsy that catapulted it into fame. However, this newfound interest caused the original inventors and players of the instrument, African-Americans, to become exoticized and trivialized as white people began to pluck out “plantation melodies.” In the words of art historian Leo Mazow, “In the process of translation from its African roots and minstrel-show connections, the banjo itself underwent a dramatic metamorphosis. Manufacturers, stage performers, and parlor musicians aestheticized, modernized, feminized, and trivialized it. In the process, they also whitewashed it … Its connotations were, and remained, complex. It signified modern femininity and modern leisure, yet at the same time maintained an undertone of blackness, wildness, instinct–all attributes ascribed to the instrument in its premodern, African, and plantation past.” (Mazow 2005:75). These attempts to “elevate” the banjo fundamentally changed the instrument in status, demographic, and, most of all, appearance. 

In order to make the banjo more “polite”, it was physically altered. “Frets facilitated the execution of harmonically based music, as opposed to the earlier ‘rhythmic and monophonic’ style that was characteristic of minstrelsy. That, along with the introduction of an up-picking guitar-style technique (instead of the downward-picking banjo, or stroke, style), enabled the performance of genteel and sentimental parlor music originally written for the guitar. Finally, the publication of notated banjo music beginning in the early 1880s helped ignite a society fad that spread beyond the parlor to college clubs, camps, and other venues of middle-class leisure in the last two decades of the century”(Mazow 2005: 73). This newly designed, more polite banjo with the addition of further developed sheet music led the instrument into the hands of people of all social classes, and upset the status quo when many women began to play the “crude” instrument. 

The Banjo as a Feminist Sign

“Portrait of Theresa Vaughn playing a Fairbanks Electric No. 2 banjo, c. 1895, photograph, 6×14 ¼ inches. Collection of James F. Bollman (Mazow 2005:24)

A London publication, The Saturday Review, published an article on the new craze of women playing banjo on December 16th, 1882. One section read:

“‘It is with some regret that we hear rumours of the banjo becoming a favorite musical instrument in society; and with a view to checking the aspirations of those young ladies who are desirous of learning this instrument we have a suggestion to make. Why not learn the “mandoline”… it has none of the disadvantages of the ugliness and twanginess of the banjo.’” (Vorachek 2013:34).

By the late nineteenth century, the banjo had entered popular culture, but its continued association with minstrel shows, music made in slavery, and exoticism deterred men from accepting when women wanted to pick up and play the instrument. The banjo, therefore became a symbol of feminism for many in the late nineteenth century, and women of middle to upper classes could be seen playing the banjo for a living or entertainment, representing the rise of the “new women” at that time (Mazow 2005:25). The rise in female banjo players caused unease in white men due to the banjo’s perceived associations with a sordid past, however the market and the upcoming century would show a further change in the banjo’s status. “A few instrument makers attempted to capitalize on the female market, offering ‘the new instrument for ladies, the Banjoline’ or a ‘ladies’ special model’ of the banjo. By the 1890s, women were proficient enough on the instrument to offer lessons to others” (Vorachek 2013:34). At the turn of the century, the banjo was continuing to be whitewashed and further accepted into modern music genres. “Perhaps it was no accident that Boston manufacturer A.C. Fairbank’s most wildly popular banjo, introduced in 1901, was named the ‘Whyte Laydie’” (Mazow 2005:84). Before I turn the focus onto the banjo’s role in forming old-time, bluegrass and other iconic American genres, I must revisit the people the banjo came from and how the instrument’s elevation caused distress among the communities that once treasured it. 

Langston Hughes and Banjo Shame

As the banjo became loved and accepted by white audiences,it was imbued with racist assumptions when placed into the hands of African American players. Where the banjo was modern and industrious when played by white women, when it was played by African-American men, it was archaic, crude, and a symbol of plantation music. Although, the shows did not reach rural areas like Appalachia until much later. “Minstrel shows were largely big-city entertainment, so, in some areas, such as rural West Virginia, African-Americans proudly played banjos into the late 20th century.” (Milnes 2017). Yet in American popular culture, the banjo was still associated with racist and exotic notions that dissuaded the majority of African Americans from picking the instrument up and carrying on their musical legacy. “Despite its ‘ascent’ in the world, plantation music, rooted in what were perceived to be ‘strange, barbaric’ African worlds of magic and primitive ritual, carried a sexual charge, however muffled by convention and decorum. For that reason, presumably, it was one of the therapies a New York doctor reportedly recommended to nervous women.” (Mazow 2005:79).The banjo may have been elevated and thrust into white popular culture, yet the people whose ancestors brought gourd-bodied instruments from Africa were still looked down upon and shamed for playing the banjo. Writing in a 1967 collection titled Black Misery, the famous poet Langston Hughes mentions the complications of being black and owning a banjo. One of the poems contains the stanza:

“Misery is when your own mother

won’t let you play your new banjo

in front of the other race” 

(Mazow 2005:116).

African American boy playing a banjo, year unknown (The Banjo Project 2021).

Despite the banjo’s origins, it is clear by the time that Hughes writes this in 1967 that the banjo has long been an instrument of shame when viewed in the hands of an African American person by a white person. The poem is devastatingly effective, showing how a child’s joy is dwindled by the stigma of such a culturally rich instrument. “In Hughes’s narrative, a child’s treasured possession–a new banjo, a gift or perhaps a purchase long saved for–carries with it a shameful legacy. Moreover, his lines suggest that what should be a source of pride has become a source of pain.” (Mazow 2005: 117). For African Americans “in the late nineteenth century, the banjo had become a symbol of racism mostly because of its associations with minstrel stereotyping. [African Americans] became less interested in it as a result, and the black tradition of playing the instrument began to die away” (Perryman 2013:32). Going into the twentieth century, the banjo became a symbol of white popular culture, while African American people began to stray away from the instrument, a situation that leads us into the primarily white genres that are still popular today, specifically old-time and bluegrass. 

The Banjo’s Role in Modern Music Genres

“Jimmy Dowdle from Cowen, WV holding an old Dobson peghead banjo made in Baltimore, most likely manufactured in the 1890’s. Photograph by Gerry Milnes, Jan 1988, Cowen, WV.” (Augusta Archive 2024).

While Bill Monroe is credited with the popularization and invention of the bluegrass genre, it is clear that the music was centuries in the making before the Blue Grass Boys made their first recording. In my own work on West Virginia traditional music, the main difference people noted was that bluegrass is more structured, more performative. This structure hails from more European notions of how music should be performed, while the heterogeneous, improvisational nature of old-time has its ties with African musical traditions. Bluegrass is meant to be a form of popular entertainment, a stage show, while old-time is meant for entertainment in an informal setting, it is a social event, a way to get together in communities and share songs. Both genres are meaningful to West Virginia musical tradition and both wouldn’t exist without the influence of the banjo and African musical traditions. “Bluegrass, like almost all American vernacular music, is the result of the long-term consistent first-hand contact between European and West African musical culture” (Perryman 2013:15). The banjo has come a long way from the gourd-bodied instrument brought over from Africa by slaves who were stolen from their own musical and cultural contexts. It is a complicated instrument, a symbol of shame and cultural exchange, and a necessary part of some of the most recognizable American musical genres.

The genres of bluegrass and old-time have become synonymous with the image of a banjo. But where did the instrument first come into contact with Appalachian music and where did it change from an African instrument to a staple of white mountain music? “Interestingly, by the late twentieth century, the banjo had become a symbol of white hillbilly stereotypes” (Perryman 2013:32). With minstrel shows, recordings and constant contact in communities across Appalachia, the banjo slowly became a common instrument in the hands of white people in the area. In earlier scholarship there was a separation of the origins of the fiddle and the banjo. “The combination of the fiddle, an instrument from Europe, and the banjo, an instrument that developed in America from African predecessors, evolved into the mountain string band, a precursor to the bluegrass ensemble” (Perryman 2013:31). While the most basic origins of both instruments are labeled as the European fiddle and the West African banjo, their place within popular music today and even the older versions of traditional or folk music are not as easily defined. As American music developed, it was clear that the way the fiddle and banjo were played couldn’t be fully separated into the categories of “European instrument” and “African instrument” as cultures and playing styles constantly came into contact with one another. With the addition of a guitar, which some scholars claim were brought to Appalachia by African American blues players, the Appalachian string band was a common meeting place for African, African American, and European cultural traditions. In the Appalachian rural communities, “old-time music was the vernacular musical tradition…and when the first hillbilly artists recorded it, their records became wildly popular among these groups” (Perryman 2013:41). However, these recordings and the commercialization of the music industry tended to overshadow American folk music’s origins and continued the trend of whitewashing music history. As famed musician Rhiannon Giddens puts it, “From one century to the next, Black folk were in the thick of it, playing fiddles, banjos, and eventually the guitar and harmonica. They creatively mixed, matched and played for themselves and their local traditions, while also navigating popular demand within a wider musical and professional context” (Giddens 2024). In Appalachia, the thick of it meant playing casually for community get-togethers, with musicians of different races playing, sharing ideas, and solidifying musical traditions. So, where did this cross-cultural exchange get lost in the historical narrative? Why is country music, bluegrass, and old-time as we see it today so overwhelmingly white? As we enter into the twenty-first century with the banjo and the musical genres associated with it, it is important to have a discussion about the labeling of genres and origins of musical traditions associated with the instrument. 

Rhiannon Giddens playing banjo (Garden & Gun 2020).

Rhiannon Giddens highlights the differences between musical traditions and musical genres: “Tradition is story songs; dance songs; spiritual songs; work songs; played and sung in immeasurably different ways, according to the understanding of the community. Genre, on the other hand, is a product of capitalism, and people with access to power create it, control it, and maintain it in order to commoditize art” (Giddens 2024). Dividing musical traditions by arbitrary genre labels and selling recordings under those genre labels allows the companies marketing and recording that music to decide what and who belongs in certain music genres. It is through this process that we came to hear bluegrass and modern country music. It is also through this process that African American players were excluded from the recording industry and the banjo became widely associated with white bluegrass players. “In this moment, after 100 years of erasure, false narratives, and racism built into the country industry, it’s important to shine a light on the Black co-creation of country music – and creation is the correct word, not influence … We would not have any of what we call country music without the history of the black string band musicians, who helped form the nexus of American music for 100 years or more before record players” (Giddens 2024). This sentiment is why it is important to not just recognize the banjo as an African American instrument and an important part of the string band, old-time, and other musical traditions. The banjo is a symbol of African American players’ constant presence in almost every corner of American music for centuries. It is just one of the contributions that has been hidden, ignored, and overlooked when considering America’s music now and in our history. 

Conclusion: Reclaiming the Banjo

Carolina Chocolate Drops Heritage Album Cover 2011 (Amazon 2024)

In the twenty-first century, there has been a concerted effort to reclaim the banjo as a black instrument. The banjo is changing from the object in Langston Hughes poem that should be hidden away into an instrument of pride and a driving force in changing the modern music industry. In this last section, Rhiannon Giddens words have shown more eloquently than I could have written how the banjo and African American musical creation has impacted our musical history. She is not just a powerful wordsmith, but a key activist, musician, and catalyst for the banjo’s reclamation in the modern day. In 2005, at the first Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina, “the Carolina Chocolate Drops were formed by Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson” (NC Music Hall of Fame 2024). This group and many other scholars, musicians, and attendees were an integral part of the movement to retell our histories, reshape the music industry, and make people notice how African American music history is America’s music history. As I wrap up my research on the banjo, I encourage my reader to seek out black banjo players, to research the history of your favorite tunes, and to pick up a banjo yourself with newfound knowledge and recognition of its effects and origins on music today. I also encourage players, newcomers, and listeners alike to foster an inclusive community when teaching and inviting people to play together today.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this post, suggestions for other instruments I should cover, and artists you would recommend! Following in that spirit, Rhiannon Giddens posted on her Facebook earlier this year a collection of banjo players and research she titled Black Banjo Renaissance. Please go listen to and support this list of musicians which can be found here (scroll up from the first post to see the full list!): https://www.facebook.com/share/p/oT84XD6La9nhQLBZ/

“Long, slate neck banjo from Madison, Boone County WV, in Patty Looman’s extensive instrument collection. Photograph by Gerry Milnes, July 1990, Marion County, WV.” (Augusta Archive 2024)

Works Cited

• Amazon, 2024. ‘Heritage: Carolina Chocolate Drops’, amazonmusic, available on-line (amazon.com/Heritage-CAROLINA-CHOCOLATE-DROPS/dp/B004WOXKT8).
• Augusta Archive 2024. ‘Jimmy Dowdle with banjo’, Augusta Heritage Center, available on-line (augustaartsandculture.org/document/jimmy-dowdle-with-banjo/, Accessed Oct. 8, 2024).
• Augusta Archive 2024. ‘Slate-neck banjo’, Augusta Heritage Center, available on-line (augustaartsandculture.org/document/slate-neck-banjo/, Accessed Oct. 8, 2024).
• Banjo Hangout. 2022. ‘Discussion Forum: ARCHIVED TOPIC: Old Sears / S.S. Stewart Banjos from the early 1900’s’, available on-line (banjohangout.org/archive/383169, Accessed Oct 8, 2024).
• Conway, C. 1995. African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions, The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN.
• Dickey, B. 2020. ‘Rhiannon Giddens: The Storyteller’, Garden & Gun, available on-line (gardenandgun.com/articles/rhiannon-giddens-the-storyteller/, Accessed Oct. 9, 2024).
• Gaddy, K. 2022. ‘Music in Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History’, Kristina R. Gaddy, available on-line (kristinagaddy.com/blog/category/fiddle, Accessed Oct. 8, 2024).
• Gaddy, K. 2022. Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY.
• Giddens, R. 2024. ‘Black artistry is woven into the fabric of country music. It belongs to everyone’, The Guardian, available on-line (theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/27/black-artistry-is-woven-into-the-fabric-of-country-music-it-belongs-to-everyone-beyonce-texas-hold-em-rhiannon-giddens, Accessed Oct. 9, 2024)
• Mazow, L. 2005. Picturing the Banjo, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA.

• Milnes, G. 2017. ‘The Banjo in West Virginia’, Goldenseal Magazine, Spring 2017, pp. 40-47.
• North Carolina Music Hall of Fame 2024. ‘The Carolina Chocolate Drops’, NC Music Educators Association, available on-line (www.ncmea.net/the-carolina-chocolate-drops/, Accessed Oct. 9, 2024).
• Perryman, C. 2013. Africa, Appalachia, and acculturation: The history of bluegrass music, The Research Depository at West Virginia University, available on-line (researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/298/, Accessed Oct. 8, 2024).
• Sheet Music Plus, 2024. ‘The Banjo. An American Sketch. Grotesque Fantasy, available on-line (sheetmusicplus.com/en/product/the-banjo-an-american-sketch-grotesque-fantasy-20083919.html, Accessed Oct. 8, 2024).
• Sweeney, J. 1840. ‘Image 3 of Jenny Get Your Hoe Cake Done’, Library of Congress, available on-line (.loc.gov/resource/music.mussm2-sm1840-371080/?sp=3&r=-0.151,0.464,0.302,0.239,0, Accessed Oct. 8, 2024).
• The Banjo Project 2021. ‘The Banjo Project: A Digital Museum’, Facebook, available on-line (facebook.com/thebanjoproject/, Accessed Oct. 8, 2024).
• Vorachek, L. 2013. ‘Whitewashing Blackface Minstrelsy in Nineteenth-Century England: Female Banjo Players in ‘Punch’’, University of Dayton eCommons, available on-line (ecommons.udayton.edu/eng_fac_pub/6/, Accessed Oct 8, 2024).
• Wikipedia 2024. ‘Horace Weston’, available on-line (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Weston, Accessed Oct. 8, 2024).

Madeline Ricks is an AmeriCorps member with the Appalachian Forest National Heritage Area serving at Augusta. She is using her year of service to continue the mission of digitizing Augusta’s large archive, as well as adding to the collection through new recordings and blog posts about Augusta happenings and stories of West Virginia culture. While she was born in Georgia, raised in both Indiana and Montana, and has traveled around the world, she has a special place in her heart for West Virginia, as her mother’s side of the family still lives outside of Charleston. She received her BA in English Literature and a minor in Italian Studies from Gonzaga University and recently finished a Master of Research in Social Anthropology from the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She hopes to leave a lasting, positive impact on the organization and community during her short time at Augusta.