"Drums with brushes, in the right hands, maybe."

Well, not if you want to sound like traditional folk music. To the best of my knowledge, drums with brushes only got introduced to "folk" music by '50s-'60s A&R people, who misguidedly buttumed that recordings of traditional folk ought to have some kind of drums or another on them, and then noticed that '50s-urban-light-jazz-style drumming would overpower acoustic instruments less than heavy drumming would.

In "race"- and "hillbilly"-related music of folk interest, drum sets basically were accepted a little after electric instruments were, when you get down to it. (There was never a time when an acoustic guitar backed by a drum set was the norm in any of it.) For instance, Ernest Tubb was big on electric guitars as of the early '40s, but only started accepting drums on his records about '49. Muddy Waters used electric guitar on all his late '40s and early '50s recordings, but often used a bbuttist and no drummer on those recordings.

Brad, imo, as far as old-time folk string-band music is concerned, personally being heard well is kind of an anachronistic "new-time" goal, compared to the ensemble sounding good as a whole. A lot of the best old-time string band stuff, it's not that easy to hear how many guitarists and banjoists there are when you take a quick listen to it, because they're cooperating in an important rhythmic and harmonic function, not getting a spotlight shined on them. That beautiful-mush-of-sound thing even applies a lot as late as the '40s, on commercial pure-string-band stuff, such as "When Mama Goes Out..." by the Bar X Cowboys, "Cowboy Boogie" by Red Woodward, and every urban "black" '40s string band I can think of.

Personally I don't buy that washboards were very popular among folk musicians during the '10s or earlier. Or jug either. Bones yes.

In response to Paul's comment, happily we can hear how African drumming would have met up with European material by going to where it did, e.g. by listening to the recordings Alan Lomax made in the Caribbean -- some of the most worthwhile work A.L. ever did, imo.

Joseph Scott