For example, the Chinese sanxian, the Japanese shamisen, Persian tar, and the Moroccan sintir, in addition to the many African instruments mentioned above. Similar instruments include the xalam of Senegal and the ngoni of the Wassoulou region including parts of Mali, Guinea, and Ivory Coast, as well as a larger variation of the ngoni known as the gimbri developed in Morocco by Black Sub-Saharan Africans ( Gnawa or Haratin).īanjo-like instruments seem to have been independently invented in several different places, since instruments similar to the banjo are known from a diverse array of distant countries. Īnother likely relative of the banjo is the aforementioned akonting, a spike folk lute which is constructed using a gourd body, a long wooden neck, and three strings played by the Jola tribe of Senegambia, and the ubaw-akwala of the Igbo. Those African instruments differ from early African American banjos in that the necks do not possess a Western-style fingerboard and tuning pegs instead they have stick necks, with strings attached to the neck with loops for tuning. Various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd (or similar shell) body. However, contrary evidence definitively supports that the terms bandore and bandurria were terms used when Europeans encountered the banjo or its kin varieties in use by people of African descent, who used different terms for the instrument like banza. The OED claims that the term banjo comes from a dialectal pronunciation of Portuguese bandore or from an early anglicisation of Spanish bandurria. Its earliest recorded use was in 1678 in the Caribbean (Martinique) by enslaved Africans. The instrument's name might also derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza, which is a loan word to the Portuguese language resulting in the term banza. In this interpretation, Banjul became a sort of eponym for the Akonting as it crossed the Atlantic. The material for the neck, called ban julo in the Mandinka language, again gives Banjul. Another claim is a connection to the West African akonting: it is made with a long bamboo neck called a bangoe. The term banjo has several etymological claims, one being from the Mandinka language which gives the name of Banjul, capital of The Gambia. The earliest written indication of an instrument akin to the banjo is in the 17th century: Richard Jobson (1621) in describing The Gambia, wrote about an instrument like the banjo, which he called a bandore. Written references to the banjo in North America and the Caribbean appear in the 17th and 18th centuries. Strings, from gut or vegetable fibers, were attached to a wooden neck. Their African-style instruments were crafted from split gourds with animal skins stretched across them. The modern banjo derives from instruments that have been recorded to be in use in North America and the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West and Central Africa.

1770–1777, from the Surinamese Creole culture. 1785–1795, the earliest known American painting to picture a banjo-like instrument thought to depict a plantation in Beaufort County, South Carolina The oldest known banjo, c. Note: This article uses Helmholtz pitch notation to define banjo tunings. It is also very frequently used in Dixieland jazz, as well as in Caribbean genres like biguine, calypso and mento. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as bluegrass and old-time music. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and rural folk culture before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Among rock bands, the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. By the early 21st century, the banjo was most frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, but was also used in some rock, pop and even hip-hop music. The inexpensive or home-made banjo remained part of rural folk culture, but 5-string and 4-string banjos also became popular for home parlour music entertainment, college music clubs, and early 20th century jazz bands. In the 19th century, interest in the instrument was spread across the United States and United Kingdom by traveling shows of the 19th century minstrel show fad, followed by mass-production and mail-order sales, including instruction method books. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents.

The membrane is typically circular, in modern forms usually made of plastic, originally of animal skin. The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. Problems playing this file? See media help.

Russian banjo