Learning To Play Banjo: Emulation vs. Imitation
- Sunday, December 01, 2002 -
Although playing styles varied among old timers in East Kentucky, there were common elements in the sounds they produced. Most used different tunings, and many of those tunings were commonly used throughout the area. Many players used left hand techniques that helped provide a fuller sound for both singing and playing for dances. Also, quite a few players used more than one playing style.
Learning to play by emulation requires a cultural support system in which playing banjo is a normal activity, and which does not include people who have nominated themselves as experts on the "proper" method of playing banjo. The cultural support system for this type of learning has vanished in East Kentucky, and probably in most other mountain areas as well.
There are many recordings of mountain banjo players that give one an appreciation of different playing styles. There is a listing of some of these recordings at the end of this article.
Learning by Imitation
People who play old time banjo today rarely have neighbors with the same interest. For instance, I do not know anyone in my town, or in the county where I live in Florida, that plays old-time banjo. I know of no one that has continued playing old-time banjo on Burgeys Creek in East Kentucky, where I was reared. Old time banjo players live in dispersed communities today, and are connected by the telephone, the computer, and gatherings at festivals and colleges, where old-time music is played and taught.
The lack of a cultural support system and the wide dispersion of old time banjo players makes it necessary for most people today to learn banjo by imitation; that is, the playing style they are learning is broken into discrete steps by a teacher, and the student learns to play the style almost exactly as taught. Gifted players who learn by imitation are more likely to excel and improve the style they are taught. I believe this is demonstrated by the outstanding technical expertise of banjo players today in both the bluegrass and old time communities. A result of learning by imitation, however, is the tendency towards a standardization of playing styles.
Many people who teach banjo at colleges and festivals today learned by imitation from other teachers. The original teachers learned from a very few older people in the mountains and elsewhere. Over the last few decades playing styles from North Carolina and West Virginia have become popular, with the playing style from North Carolina the most ubiquitous. It is rare to hear someone at a festival today that does not play one of these styles.
THE PHILADELPHIA BANJO STYLE
My introduction to one particular style of banjo playing began in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I lived for several years. I had brought a few banjos with me from Kentucky and thought I was one of the few people left playing old-time banjo. The culture had crashed in Knott County, Kentucky, where I learned to play ca. 1950, and old-time banjo players there had mostly ceased playing.
I discovered Fred Oster's Vintage Instrument shop not long after arriving in Philadelphia, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that Fred and some of his young customers played old-time banjo. I was puzzled, however, because they all played a similar stroke style. The people from whom I had learned, of course, had styles that varied. When I asked Fred about this, he said, "We learned from the same teacher."
