Schomburg Center: "The Banjo: America's African Instrument" is new book by Laurent Dubois, Professor of Romance Studies and History at Duke University

The Banjo: America's African Instrument

Laurent Dubois

Schomburg Center

With his new book, The Banjo: America's African Instrument, Laurent Dubois , Professor of Romance Studies and History at Duke University, has written an illuminating biography of an instrument that was an essential part of black culture on Caribbean and North American plantations, yet its history has been virtually whitewashed in more recent popular culture. 

Harvard University Press

The banjo has been called by many names over its history, but they all refer to the same sound—strings humming over skin—that has eased souls and electrified crowds for centuries. The Banjo invites us to hear that sound afresh in a biography of one of America’s iconic folk instruments. Attuned to a rich heritage spanning continents and cultures, Laurent Dubois traces the banjo from humble origins, revealing how it became one of the great stars of American musical life.

In the seventeenth century, enslaved people in the Caribbean and North America drew on their memories of varied African musical traditions to construct instruments from carved-out gourds covered with animal skin. Providing a much-needed sense of rootedness, solidarity, and consolation, banjo picking became an essential part of black plantation life. White musicians took up the banjo in the nineteenth century, when it became the foundation of the minstrel show and began to be produced industrially on a large scale. Even as this instrument found its way into rural white communities, however, the banjo remained central to African American musical performance.