Did the clawhammer style of banjo playing originate in West Africa? It seems likely. The West African musical instrument known as the Akonting is played in a way that is very similar to clawhammer--as the following video clips indicate. It appears that clawhammer derives from this instrument and the technique was brought across the Altantic by the slave trade. The clips were posted to YouTube by Swedish banjo player Ulf Jagfors who has extensively researched the origins of the banjo in West Africa. Ulf says of the clip: "Joe Diatta (Jatta in English) plays an old Jola tune on the three string gourd lute Ekonting (Akonting). The name of the tune is Ampa Youtou, Child of Yuotou, a village in southern Senegal. The Akonting is one possible West African forerunner to the New World banjo."
Here is another clip posted to YouTube by Ulf Jagfors showing advanced Akonting playing. The text accompanying the clip says: "This video features one of the best Akonting players, Ekona Jatta, from Mlomp, Casamance region, Southern Senegal. In slowed down, and up to speed tempo, he demonstrates advanced Akonting playing."
This instrument, and the clawhammer style of playing, was brought across the Altantic to the Americas by West Africans during the period of the slave trade. The Akonting gradually developed into the modern banjo. West African Akontings, and early American banjos, were often made out of gourds. The gourd banjo, to my ears, has a sound that is reminiscent of the Akonting. This video, posted to YouTube by Boscoheja, shows a gourd banjo being played by Fred Cochran:
This clip, posted to YouTube by PaulBanjoSedgwick, shows an akonting player playing a modern banjo for the first time. He writes: "Master Jola akonting player, Jesus Jarju, plays a banjo for the first time. The banjo is tuned to a traditional akonting tuning: gBA, where 'g' is the 3rd string, 'b' is the 2nd string and 'a' is the 1st string."
'Watcha plays the song "Africa". The akonting (or ekonting) is a folk lute of the Jola people. Filmed by George Smerin in Kafountine, Senegal 2018.' See George Smerin
Watcha plays the song "Koto Khady". The akonting (or ekonting) is a folk lute of the Jola people. Filmed by George Smerin in Kafountine, Senegal 2018. https://www.smerin.com.
With support from Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, through their Folk Arts Outreach Project, the Virginia Folklife Program brought Malian Griot and n'goni player, Cheick Hamala Diabate, together with master bluegrass banjoist, Sammy Shelor, and multi-instrumentalist, Danny Knicely, in Charlottesville, Virginia, for three days of collaboration, fellowship and musical exchange.
Rhiannon Giddens: On the Lost History of the Black Banjo
Rhiannon Giddens is a Grammy-award-winning musician and co-founder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops who discusses the history of the African banjo and how it became a keynote instrument of American music through the minstrelsy and beyond. Rhiannon is part of the new film on mountain music, A Great American Tapestry, The Many Strands of Mountain Music, with more information at www.saveculture.org
Here is the trailer to a five part radio documentary: A Great Amercian Tapestry - The Many Strands of Mountain Music.
The video version of the documentary is available for purchase at svaeculture.org
A five episode radio version of the documentary is available to listen to online here:
Here are two more excellent videos about banjo history featuring vintage banjo maker Jim Hartel and African-American banjo player Rhiannon Giddens. Rhiannon talks about the nineteenth cetury black face minstrel period in popular music.
Jim Hartel minstrel banjo & Rhiannon Giddens, MUSIC episode
Rhiannon Giddens interviewed by David Holt
Filmed at the Augusta Heritage Center's Old Time and Vocal Week. The Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College is known internationally for teaching, presenting, and nurturing traditional music, folklife and folk arts. It is best known for intensive week-long workshops in traditional music, dance, craft, and folklore.
Tablature is not a recent invention. It was used for fretted stringed instruments during the Renaissance. An example was the lute, which was the most important instrument of its time, occupying the central place then that the piano does today. Tablature thus has a very long and noble ancestry! Lute tablature took different forms in different countries. In France, frets were not numbered, but given a letter of the alphabet. This system was the one adopted in England also. The open string was 'a', the first fret 'b', 2nd fret 'c' and so on. Spanish and Italian lute tablature were more like modern tablature since both used numbers.
Most Spanish composers for the vihuela (a guitar shaped instrument with the tuning of a lute) used the Italian tablature system. This represented the 1st, highest pitched, string (the one nearest the floor) as the bottom line of the tablature.* Italian-Spanish tablature was thus the forerunner of modern guitar and banjo tablature.
* There were some important exceptions. Well known Spanish vihuelista, Luis Milan, represented the 1st string as the top line of the tablature. And Italian lutenist Francesco da Milano also used a different system. For more information on this, see the following newsgroup posting
Click here to see some images of Italian, French and Spanish lute/vihuela tablature.
With instruments like the clawhammer banjo, which frequently use a number of different cross-tunings, conventional musical notation is impractical. There are several different string tunings in common usage for the clawhammer banjo. Tablature can be used easily with any tuning--it simply indicates which fret to hold down. Using musical notation would mean re-learning the note for each fret every time the instrument was retuned, which can be as many as half a dozen times in a performance. Another advantage is that once tablature is understood, it can be used to read music for any fretted stringed instrument. It is not necessary to re-learn the notes for each fret on a new instrument. So, once it is understood, banjo players can use tablature to help them learn the guitar and vice versa.
A disadvantage of tablature is that, unlike musical notation, it does not specify the length of every single note in every voice in the piece of music, but uses one note length symbol at any given point in the tablature.
Does all of this mean that you have to learn tablature or music notation to play the banjo? On the contrary. Pete Seeger, in his classic banjo tutor, reports a comment made by an old banjo player who was asked if he read music: "Hell, there are no notes on a banjo. You just play it," was his reply. I couldn't agree more.