An Introduction to America’s Music

94 PART 1 | FROM COLONIZATION THROUGH THE CIVIL WAR

quaffi ng of “stimulating potions” that seemed to streng then “all their ner ves and

muscular powers” and to make perspiration fl ow “in frequent streams, from

brow to heel,” before they dropped out when “extreme fatigue or weariness” set

in. The music underlying this riot of physical stamina came from a drum and

the drummer’s “ever wild, though euphonic cry of Hi-a-bomba, bomba, bomba, in

full harmony with the thumping sounds,” which was “readily taken up and as oft

repeated by the female portion of the spectators.”

The description of a 1770s Pinkster celebration suggests a pattern of call and

response between the drummer and the female spectators. The 1756 Election Day

festival in Newport illustrates an additional Africanism: what has been called

the “heterogeneous sound ideal,” a preference for piling up different-sounding

lines rather than blending them into one homogeneous sound. In this case the

singing was accompanied by fi ddle, tambourine, banjo, and drum, a combina-

tion poorly suited to blending. The Newport example, with its babel of African

languages mixed with English and accompanied by instruments, also illustrates

yet another African trait: the tendency to pack musical events as densely as pos-

sible into a relatively short time, thus fi lling all available musical space.

The Albany Pinkster dance exhibits similar Africanisms. First, it makes

bodily motion integral to musical performance: drumming and singing are tied

so closely to the dancing they accompany that it is hard to say where music stops

and physical motion begins. A second trait lies in the percussive use of the voice.

As early as the 1650s European observers noted

the presence among African slaves in the West

Indies of instruments resembling both the present-

day banjo and West African antecedents. North

American accounts date back to the 1740s, and

by 1810 written references to the banjo often lack

descriptions, implying that the instrument was

familiar to most readers. In its earlier forms, the

banjo had a body made from a halved gourd, with

an animal skin stretched over the opening and from

one to six strings. Instruments of this description are

identifi ed by various names, some of which resemble

its modern name: bangil, bangar, banshaw, Creole-

bania, banjar, and bonjaw.

By the 1840s, the gourd sound chamber gave

way to a wooden rim with a metal tension hoop

The Banjo: African Origins of “America’s Instrument”

A CLOSER LOOK

and adjustable brackets much like a drum. Around

the same time, whites also began to play the banjo.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, a banjo

manufacturer could proudly state that “what the

mandolin is to Italy, and the guitar to Spain, the

banjo is to America.” That status inspired the

title of a recent history of the banjo, America’s

Instrument. An irony of history is that today the

instrument is associated almost exclusively with

white performers.

K This “Creole-bania,” made in Dutch Guyana before

1772, and now in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde,

Leiden, Holland, is made from a gourd, a sheepskin,

and gut strings.

heterogeneous

sound

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