Announcing a new series of Banjo History shorts!

First in a new series of short slideshows: "An Introduction to Early Banjo History."

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In 1620 English trader, Richard Jobson, described a gourd instrument played by mixed-race Luso-Africans on the Gambia River in West Africa:

"They have little variety in instruments, that which is most common in use is made of a great gourd, and a neck thereunto fastened, resembling our bandora; but they have no manner of fret... notwithstanding, with pins they wind & bring to agree in tunable notes, having not above six strings..." 

Jobson's mention of "pins" that can be "wound" to adjust the instrument's tone sound remarkably like European-style tuning pegs. If so, this may be the earliest description of a gourd banjo.

Early gourd banjos (like Jobson's Luso-Africans) were an Atlantic Creole phenomenon combining both African & European traits. The instrument basically consisted of a gourd drum with a flat, wooden neck and twisted fiber strings. A floating bridge raised the strings over the drum head, allowing them to be plucked with the fingers. Each string was also adjusted by a wooden tuning peg, including at least one short string that was plucked exclusively by the thumb. 

In 1627 (also on the Gambia) a Jesuit missionary, Alonso de Sandoval, observed "Spanish-style guitars, although made of rough sheep skin." Sandoval may have been describing early gourd banjos, however, like Jobson, his report lacks the necessary detail for a a complete identification. 

In 1687 Sir Hans Sloane encountered another gourd instrument, this one played by enslaved Africans in Jamaica. His well-known sketch depicts the gourd body, tuning pegs & flat fingerboard of an early banjo, but seems to lack it's shortened thumb string. Therefore, we cannot say with certainty that these are early gourd banjos, either.

It's really not until the early 1700s that banjos begin to appear in the historic record. For example, we have a "bangil" reported in Barbados (1708), the "banjer" in New York (1736) & finally the "banjo" in Pennsylvania (1749).

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My source for this video was "Black Banjo, Fiddle and Dance in Kentucky and the amalgamation of African American and Anglo-American Folk Music," by George R. Gibson, in Banjo Roots And Branches [Winans, R. 2018].