Ulf -

Please explain once more why, other than having a skin head and different length strings, these West African gourd instruments have any more than a pbutting resemblance to the 5-string banjo pattern as invented in the United States? The whole West African connection seems so much about so little.

These West African instruments didn't typically employ a constructed hoop, or have a constructed metal tension band with fabricated screw-tensioned hooks and brackets, or even typically a flat fretboard -- all standard items of the 5-string banjo pattern established by Joe Sweeney and certain other European Americans in the first third of the 19th century. None of these defining characteristics came from Africa.

And the popular music of the 5-string banjo beginning in the first third of the 19th century was not similar to the style imported from Africa by the slaves, despite the claim that they were at the time (a marketing ploy). The popular music that the banjo was and is today known for would not have been recognizable to slave relatives back in West Africa.

All instruments were derived from some previous idea, and the banjo and its playing technique was created as much from European tradition stringed instruments as it was from African tradition. So, any honest description of the origin of the banjo as we know it should include - in the search of truth - the equally significant European source and its prior genesis, the Mediterranean.

- Dan'l