George Gibson on Antebellum Banjo Traditions

(The following is an interesting piece of personal correspondence from master banjo player and historian George R. Gibson.) 

Gibson's latest research into the evolution of American banjo culture is soon to be published in the forthcoming edited volume: Banjo Roots and Branches (University of Illinois Press: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/23cnd4ft9780252041945.html ) 

I have read several drafts of the article and eagerly anticipate its release to the public. Gibson's research is not only a pleasure to read, it's a direct and effective challenge to mainstream academia's decades-long, erroneous and culturally-insensitive dialogue regarding this subject.

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Clifton,

You asked for quotes that substantiate the existence of a banjo tradition prior to the Civil War among working class whites and mixed-race people that self-identified as white. Perhaps the best indicator is the fact that master banjoists in southeast Kentucky did not have one of the two minstrel tunings in their repertoire - the tuning in question is the dropped C tuning, g-CGBD in modern pitch.

My father tuned about a whole step lower than modern pitch and knew more that a dozen tunings, yet he did not use the dropped C tuning. Reverend Buell Kazee, who used at least a dozen tunings, said  he learned the dropped C tuning later in life - this is on one of the videos in which he appears. I did not meet an older banjoist around Knott County that used the tuning, I learned it from a cousin who played bluegrass; he used it for Scruggs's Farewell Blues. I have Stuart Jamieson's list of 16 tunings from Blind Hobart Bailey of Floyd County, Kentucky - Stuart and Hedy West recorded Bailey ca. 1966. Bailey did not use the dropped C tuning. Stuart did an extensive study of tunings, I have a copy of his manuscript. 

Three Kentuckians who grew up among Civil War veterans never described the banjo as being a newly imported instrument: they are folklorists Gordon Wilson and Josiah Combs, and Knott County balladeer, fiddler and attorney, Hillard Smith. Both Wilson and Smith described their grandparents dancing to the banjo and fiddle prior to the Civil War, and Combs lists banjo songs brought to Kentucky before the Civil War. 

Let those who presume the banjo was brought south by northern minstrels argue with an actual historian. The early penetration of the banjo in the Carolinas is supported by historian John Preston Arthur (1851-1916) in "Western North Carolina, A History from 1730 to 1913": "The banjo and fiddle have been as constant companions of the of the pioneers of the mountains of North Carolina as the Bible and Hymn Book." A biographer quoted an acquaintance of Arthur's, who said: "More so than any other local historian, he [Arthur] went to the original sources for facts. He sought out old diaries, journals, letters and even talked with old citizens, who shared their recollections with him." 

Richard Hocutt makes a good argument on BanjoHangout: the existence of a ballad tradition in the southern mountains was unknown to academics until about 1902, when ladies at the Hindman Settlement School became aware of the ballads children were singing.

George

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