Gourd Banjos: From Africa to the Appalachians
- Monday, October 01, 2001 -
Freed slaves were welcomed on a frontier where neighbor had to depend on neighbor. Many of the "mulattoes" married into white families. There would have been no class inhibition for banjo playing among children of these frontier families. There were also slaves on the early frontier - they lived in much closer intimacy with their masters than was common on big plantations.
Charles Doe visited Danville, Virginia, near the North Carolina border, in 1850. Following are his observations in a letter dated Feb. 22, 1850 (Archives and Manuscripts, Accession # 38743, Library of Virginia):
"Their [blacks] national instrument is the banjo; some of them play on the violin. The whites play the banjo a great deal, at least as much as northerners do the flute. But the flute is hardly known here."
Although Doe does not describe the banjos whites played, it is likely that some may have been made from gourds.
Gourd Banjos in the Kentucky Mountains
It is difficult to document gourd banjos in the mountains because early banjos were home made. A gourd banjo, therefore, did not excite curiosity – it was just another hand made instrument. There are, however, a few sightings and descriptions of gourd banjos. Jim Fee, an outstanding bluegrass pioneer in the Orlando area of Florida, grew up in Harlan County, Kentucky. He was playing bluegrass on a local radio station in Harlan by 1956. He saw a gourd banjo in Harlan County when he was a boy. He didn't observe it closely because it was "just another old banjo."
Ed Haggard reported seeing a gourd banjo in Winchester, Kentucky, between 1953 and 1956. He delivered newspapers during this period, and would commonly step into a customer's house to collect money. The hallway of one house had a gourd banjo and a fiddle hanging side by side.
Larry N. Bare, who grew up in Perry County, Kentucky, saw a gourd banjo played in the mid-1940s at a pie supper and dance at the Mudlick School, which was near the head of Grapevine Creek. He worked at Homeplace on Troublesome Creek in Perry County. Dances were held at the community house, where local people would on occasion bring musical instruments to play. He saw a gourd banjo played there in late 1950 or early 1951. Mr. Bare did not at that time consider a gourd banjo unusual, because most banjos in that area were home made.
Jean Thomas describes banjo making in Devil's Ditties, published in 1931:
"If a fiddle were not to be had, a man could, if he were so minded, make a banjo with a pine or cedar for the neck, a coon skin or fox hide stretched tight over a hickory hoop for a sounding board, or he could even use a long necked squash for that purpose."
Thomas also describes a banjo made from a gourd in Ballad Makin' in the Mountains of Kentucky:
