AFRICANS INVENTED THE BANJO

Did you know that African people invented the banjo? The banjo is an instrument that nowadays is largely associated with rural White country artists, but it would not exist without African innovation.

Africans were kidnapped and brought to the Americas, bringing with them their culture and their music styles. Stringed instruments are common across Africa, and many of them bear a striking similarity to the banjo found in the southern United States. African instruments such as the kora, the akonting, the ubaw-akwala, the xalam and the ngoni are all precursors to the American banjo.

The earliest historical documentation of the American instrument all attribute its origin to enslaved Africans. The latter used materials that were readily available to them in the Americas to recreate the instruments they were familiar with in Africa. They originally used gourds and animal skins, which is how these instruments are usually made in Africa. Banjos and other, similar stringed instruments were also created by African people across the Caribbean.

The Banjo was such an important centrepiece of African life across the Americas and the world at large that Jamaican-born writer Claude Mckay titled his novel about Pan-African exchanges 'Banjo.'

It was only through generations of racism in the US music industry that the instrument was decoupled from its African roots and attributed to Southern White populations.

This clip by @protectourhistory gives a good account of the story - as well as some fine examples of the instrument being played! Do you play?