Thank you all for your remarks to my statement about the Griot influences. I really appreciate the efforts you have done to formulate your standpoints.

I would like to add, so there will be no mistakes, that I do not advocate the Jola Akonting music to be a replacement of the griot music in the New World. On the contrary, my whole point is that this subject is much more complex than most scholars have tended to describe it by simplify it to Griot music. And I believe we all agree on this point.

But like blues, jazz rock etc have been names for a genre of different music under the same label the descended African music in the New World has been labeled griot music to such degree that most people believe griot music is the same as genuine African folkmusic. That was my whole point. According to my very humble opinion that has contaminated the research work of Western scholars in Africa. If you have the only notion that Griot music is the answer then you will find a lot of old genuine and new fake Griot music wherever you go in Western Africa. It is far more difficult, sometimes even dangerous to search for other roots of African folk music specially as most of it have died out during the last century and been replaced by jazz, reggae and rock influenced music. Perhaps that has been the main problem for the last fifty years of constant research and recordings in this area of the world. Researchers could not find anything but griot music. And that situation has set the history in a misleading way

There is no single answer to what was the origin of the banjo and banjo music in the New World. For instance I am rather sure that the Jamaican Strum-Strum that Hans Sloan depicted around 1700 has it «s origin in two string folk lute instrument that was used in Ghana to Northern Nigeria region 200 years ago. I have seen and documented instruments like that in the Museum in Brussels (i.e Vase from Wasulo group). If you combine that fact with the knowledge that a large portion of the black population in Jamaica seems to heritage just from this regions (checked by DNA testing) that could give you some clue of the heritage of the music traditions. Scientific proofs, no, but at least enough facts for a speculations.

And I am equally convinced that early minstrel music in Eastern States like Virginia and both Carolinas was influenced by the Jola akonting playing or very similar now extinct lute playing. That does not exclude the notion that other type of African lute playing have influenced banjo playing in other parts and for other groups in the past in the eastern States and mountain areas.

been quite a few years since I read it) is that he didn't find anything out

I have a feeling that Sam agrees about the blues topic to-day. But it was about a note in his book about seeing and hearing a Xhalam being played by a Griot that Sam stated that this was a forefather for the Banjo. And it was Sam who, at first, disputed the idea that Akonting was an old instrument and he thought that it could have been influenced rather recently by banjo playing from the West.But perhaps Allen have also said that in our earlier discussions.Sam is now very enthusiastic about the Akonting finding.

A fully agree with you Allen. I do not deny at all that there are a griot influence in all African folk music or vice versa. What I was trying to say in my clumsy English was that just what you pointed out. Most probably rather few griots was brought over to the New World. If there was a griot tradition space to fill for other none griot musicians they most probably filled it. What people have told me many times in Senegambia is following. The griots have it«s base in Islam and existing power structure. No one outside the griot casts independent if ethnic group was in the past allowed to use the main three griot instrument, the Kora harp, the fan shaped bridge short dowel stick lute and the balafon. That has nowadays been deteriorated to such extent that all people who learn to play those instruments outside the griot casts call themselves griots. So the confusion is total. Also,real griots always never played for dancing. In the Islamic groups that was done to the accompangeman of drums. In the none Islamic groups that could and still is done by use of i.e akonting lutes.

griot or not can escape the

I fully agree with you Allen. That is why I am so surprised that scholars without any hesitation can (could) claim that griot music was the ancestor of Western banjo music. But at the same time the griot music has also from the beginning been influenced by Arabic-Middle East music. This is something Eric Charry has pointed out in his book Mande Music and also told me when I meet him this spring.

aristocratic power. If there is no aristocracy to compose and perform it

I agree. But the griots also were, and still are, paid for playing on weddings, ceremonys and circumcisions. That must have been taken over by other musicians in the spirit of African griots if no real griots were present. Thus they probably took part of the griots traditions to the new world until the new masters allowed them, from the beginning very reluctantly as they thought slaves needed no religion, to adopt Christianity.

evidence from present day Africa as if it was unmediated expression of 17th

I agree allen and would very much like to discuss the eventual southAfrican influences on the New World slave music. We know that the flat neck lutes with pegs of Malaysian origin ( Ramkies) was used in several South African states since the 1700th century. They are now completely obsolete and have been replaced since about 100 years by the western guitars. During my digging in the stored collection of African lutes in the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels I have also found four very interesting lutes from Eastern Congo(Zaire). They look like partly like Chinese-Japanese lute instrument, PI-PA,with flatted head, pegs and large decorated fiddle box peg heads very much like the Stedman Creole-Bania from Surinam. They were collected to the museum about 150 years ago. I would like to discuss those lutes further as well what you know about the Ramkie traditions..

Gourd banjo Pete Roos and I could at the same time at MIM also examine in detail the newly found Banza from Haiti and the Stedman Creole Bania. We have documented them good enough ( both inch and mm) to make blue print copies for making replicas in the future.

Ulf FBI Forensic Banjo Investigations