Banjo Prototype

The New World banjo before the civil war

By Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta (MBA)

The new world banjo, which was played mostly in the Caribbean, South America and North America, developed from an African prototype. All available research today depicts it as a folk instrument with a gourd body and a long neck that passes through its calabash body. It has a bridge, which rests on its skinhead, the skin used to build its sound table was goatskin and it has three or four strings, one of them a short drone string. It was mostly played in all these areas by a style we call today “Clawhammer”. I honestly agree, there is a considerable volume of work produced by both European and American Scholars on the modern commercial banjo (that is the Northern American banjo after the civil war), but there is still a great imbalance on the amount of work done on the Southern American folk banjo (that is the banjo before the civil war), which evolved the modern banjo by the same scholars. It is this great imbalance that challenged me to get involved in the search for the origin of this wonderful instrument, which is the root of all modern music today.

The search for the origin of the New World banjo is a complex one, since many people in the new world see it as a product of multi ethnic cultures instead of a product of one ethnic culture. Because of this complex thinking that emanated from theories without supporting evidence I feel the origin of the new world banjo can not be a reserve of Euro-American scholars alone. Equally it cannot be a reserve of African oral traditional scholars (griots) alone. No academic culture or oral tradition culture can claim supremacy over the facts surrounding its social and musical history. Having said this I want to emphasise that the search for the new world banjo can also not be done by only one article of research. My research article is an addition to the already rich research work done by many researchers before me like George R. Gibson, Pete Seegar, Mike Seegar, Ulf Jagfors, Michael Theodore Coolen, Dena Epstein, Samuel Charters, Dr. Rex M. Ellis, just to name a few.

The purpose of my research article is to introduce an interesting chordophone instrument (one of the oldest in the Senegambian region) called Akonting, which was never researched or studied by any well-known banjo scholar or researcher. The Akonting has a round gourd body, a long neck that passes through its gourd body and a bridge that rests on its skinhead. The neck of the Akonting is called “bangoe” in mandinka language, which means bamboo. The Akonting is played with a style in Jola called “auteek”, which means knock or beat the strings. Among the people I met in the Senegambian region who played the Akonting, some have “Sambo” as their last names.

The early theories about the origin of the new world banjo were very confusing. However during the last fifty years there is a general consensus among banjo scholars and historians that the new world banjo came to America from Africa via the West Indies. It has thus fare not been established by any scholar which specific instrument in Africa evolved the American folk gourd banjo, neither with ethnic group or groups played and produced that instrument, or what language or languages the terms banjo, bangoe, bangy, banjil, bangelo and Sambo (which were mentioned in early records on the banjo) may originate from. Challenged by the inability of many researchers to properly trace the origin of the new world banjo, I, twenty-nine years ago began a research on the history of the new world banjo with the backing of International Cultural Centre of Vuxenskolan in Stockholm, Sweden.

After my desk and my video research I went into the field research. I relied heavily on interviews with my father and other elders from the diverse ethnic groups of the Senegambian region who have immense knowledge of the history of the chordophones of the region as there were no good reference of the materials. By year 2000 I was ready with my research and here are some of my findings:

The word “bangoe” which was among the first words used to name the instrument in the new world means bamboo, in mandinka which is a language only spoken today in the Senegambian region. The mandinko people migrated to the Senegambian region in greater numbers in the thirteenth century. But before this time there were some historical facts that said the manding people already lived in the region but not in large proportion as in the thirteenth century on words. When they settled in the region the mix with the local ethnic groups like Jolas, Manjagos, Balanta, Pepel, Mankanj, Mansonka, etc and assimilated each others culture. For example today in the Senegambian region you have last names like Jatta, Jammeh, Bojong, Sonko, Sane, Mane etc in both Mandinko and Jola ethnic groups.

The word “Sambo” is interesting to note here because it was connected with the banjo music culture. There are even books written called “Little black Sambo”, or in Swedish; “Lilla svarta Sambo”, and all these books identifies with black culture. Sambo is 100% Jola last name. What is more interesting among the Akonting players in the Senegambian region some of them have Sambo as their last name.

The play style that was most remembered by all early observers of the folk banjo and even the early observers of the modern banjo is called Clawhammer. This is a style that uses only two fingers to play the instrument (the ball of the thumb and the nail of the index finger or the nail of the middle finger). I have seen during my twenty-nine years of research in the Senegambian region how most of the banjo like chordophones are played. I have even learned how to play some of the chordophones like Akonting, Buchundu, Molo etc. The only instrument I found that uses absolute Clawhammer is the Jola Akonting.

Let us conclude by going to history to see how best we can see things. According to West African history the Carthaginian traveller “Hanno” during his visit to West Africa in 470 BCE described that he found in the Gambia Wolofs living mainly on the northern bank of the river Gambia and Jolas on the southern bank of the river Gambia. Jolas both in the Gambia and Senegal live along the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean and along both Senegal and Gambia rivers banks.

Given the diversity of the Senegambian culture at that time and even today, a consensus on the prototype of the New World banjo cannot take form easily but this does not mean the search for the prototype is impossible. I believe given the facts we have today plus the new methods of research we have today with the aid of information media technology it will not be too long to form a consensus on what instrument or instruments evolved the New World banjo.

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