Dan'l sez:

Sorry to include the entire post, but there is a lot of information that needs to be mentioned.

Having seen several west African musicians and their instruments (and, sorry to say, I don't remember their various names for the instrument, or which parts of the continent they come from) I can state that there is a direct correlation between the modern instrumental styles and their African antecedents. The picking styles, especially, are directly related to modern "old-time" styles, especially straight clawhammer techniques.

American traditional styles directly incorporate the original African methods, most notably the short drone string used as an off-beat decoration to the melody. Certainly more modern techniques are in use, especially two- and three-finger styles, but these came from the parlor guitar styles of the late nineteenth century -- and even Scruggs-style picking can trace directly to this. But if you'd put an African gourd banjo player alongside a Round Peak or Kentucky hillbilly player, you'd see more similarities than differences in their basic technique.

As for the flat fingerboard, metal parts, frets and extra strings (compared to the two and three-string African instruments) these represent industrialization of construction practices. Builders use what they have available and what they're comfortable with, and the changes in these components come partly from this fact, plus the requirements of playing to larger audiences, necessitating more volume, and ease and speed of making adjustments to the instruments, for the same reason. (It's easier to tighten a loose head with metal brackets than with metal tacks, and to tune strings with "patent" tuners than wooden pegs.)

The most defining characteristic of the banjo, however, is the short drone string, something that is rare to unknown in instruments of European or even North African origin. It is this "extra" string that is the main defining characteristic of the banjo, and ties together the more primitive instruments of the African diaspora to today's relatively "high-tech" descendents.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Charlotte

As easy as 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~