FAS5Ep9 Banjos1
APM Studios
Today’s episode has a lot of pluck! It’s all about the banjo. For over 100 years, the banjo has been associated with country and bluegrass music, two genres that over-index with white musicians. But, with the help of Rhiannon Giddens, we find out that this uniquely American instrument traveled from Africa. The banjo’s story is so rich, it can’t be contained in just one episode, so we decided to make two! We’re also going to string you along for an extra week to think about your answers to First Things First. The question comes in this episode, and the answer comes out in the next. No peeking!
Featured expert: Rhiannon Giddens is a Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning singer and instrumentalist. You can check out her website here!
Resources: REDLINING IN COUNTRY MUSIC: Representation in the Country Music Industry (2000-2020)
Audio Transcript
Download transcript (PDF)
XAVIER: Hey, Joy. Joy.
JOY DOLO: Xavier. Perfect timing. I was just about to rehearse my moves for my next soon-to-be viral music video. It's called Bluegrass.
XAVIER: OK. I guess that explains why you painted all of the grass in your backyard blue.
JOY DOLO: Yep. Also, I may have accidentally ordered 100 cans of blue spray paint when I meant to order one can of blue spray paint. But I say, when life gives you 100 cans of blue spray paint, why not paint your grass and then get inspired to write a whole song about it and film a music video of said song in front of said blue grass? This song is going to be such a bop. It's going to launch a whole new genre of music. I call it, Bluegrass.
XAVIER: Joy, you know Bluegrass is already a type of music, right? You know there's usually a banjo, fiddle, and bass guitar player singing about country life.
JOY DOLO: Huh, but does it sound like this? (SINGING) I'm going to paint the ground blue, then I'm going to paint the tree blue, then I'm going to paint the leaves blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue. Well, what do you think?
XAVIER: It is different.
JOY DOLO: Right?
XAVIER: I still think you might want to come up with a new name, just so people don't confuse your Bluegrass with the one that everybody else knows.
JOY DOLO: Sure. Sure. Good point. Let me think. Oh, got it. I'll keep it nice and simple. This new never heard before music shall henceforth be called the blues.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome to Forever Ago from APM Studios. I'm Joy Dolo, and I'm joined today by Xavier from Kigali, Rwanda. Xavier is not only our co-host, but he's also a real life DJ. Hi, Xavier.
XAVIER: Hey, Joy.
[DJ NOTES PLAYING]
Professor in the studio.
[AIR HORN]
JOY DOLO: Wow. What an intro. So your DJ name is the Professor. How did you come up with it?
XAVIER: Well, ever since I was, like, teeny, tiny, little, little, little, I liked the alphabet. And I'm really into Marvel. There's this series called the X-Men. And the X-Men, it started by this guy who has telepathy, is in a floating wheelchair, for some reason, called Professor Charles Xavier.
JOY DOLO: Very cool.
XAVIER: I figured I'd help you out by handling some of the music.
JOY DOLO: OK then, Professor. I need a beat I can introduce today's topic with. Something upbeat, but also down tempo. Lands soft, but hits hard. Kind of light, but totally heavy. Know what I mean?
XAVIER: Absolutely not. But here, try this.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: That's exactly what I was imagining. Perfect. Now, today's episode is all about music. Specifically, we're going to be looking and listening to a special instrument that's been linked to the United States since before it even became a country, the banjo.
[BANJO PLAYING]
Super. Do you do birthday parties, specifically ones for adults who host history podcasts and have blue lawns? Asking for a friend.
XAVIER: I think we can probably work something out.
JOY DOLO: Yes. OK. Back to business. Just a heads up, we're doing two episodes about the banjo, and this is part 1.
XAVIER: So if you're starting with this one, you got it exactly right. Go you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: For our listeners who may have never seen a banjo, can you describe what one looks like, Xavier?
XAVIER: Well, it's a stringed instrument, and it looks like a guitar crossed with a small flat drum.
JOY DOLO: Exactly. The body is a kind of drum, and off one side of the drum is a long guitar-like neck with strings and tuning knobs.
XAVIER: You can strum a banjo just like a guitar, but has a different tone, sort of, metallic.
[BANJO PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: Yes. Yes. Very twangy. Now compare that to a guitar.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
Does that sound different to you?
XAVIER: Yes and no. First of all, the guitar, it sounds like serenity. That's the only way I can explain it, serenity. And then the banjo sounds like take serenity, and then mix it with someone banging a metal pipe on the wall. Serenity plus metal pipe equals banjo.
JOY DOLO: So banjo is for party rock, and guitar is for sleeping?
XAVIER: Yes.
[BANJO PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: Let's get into this episode. Banjos aren't the first instrument most people think of when they think about pop music. But once you know what to listen for, you'll start hearing banjos everywhere.
XAVIER: Huge stars like Taylor Swift, Noah Kahan, and Beyonce use banjos in some of their songs.
JOY DOLO: Like this banger from Beyonce called Texas Hold 'Em.
[BEYONCE,"TEXAS HOLD 'EM"]
(SINGING) This ain't Texas, woo
Ain't no hold em, hey
So lay your cards down, down, down, down.
JOY DOLO: Beyonce's album, Cowboy Carter, features banjos all over the place.
XAVIER: She's helping to change the image of the instrument.
JOY DOLO: Right. Because most people associate the banjo with bluegrass or country music. And if you look at the musicians who are played on country radio stations and have their videos played on country music TV, they're pretty much all white.
XAVIER: And it's been like that for a while, almost a hundred years.
JOY DOLO: Yeah. There's data and numbers behind this. You can find it in our show notes.
XAVIER: But there have always been Black people playing the banjo in country music.
JOY DOLO: In fact, country music today wouldn't exist without Black people. And my girl, Beyonce, clearly loves history as much as I do because Cowboy Carter tells some of this story.
XAVIER: She plays historical music clips that show how Black people helped shape country music.
JOY DOLO: She includes current and older Black country musicians.
XAVIER: And it's been a huge hit.
JOY DOLO: Not only did Beyonce's Cowboy Carter album make a big splash in the world of pop music--
XAVIER: It went to number 1 on the country music charts, too.
JOY DOLO: Just before her album was released, she wrote, my hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist's race as it relates to releasing genres of music will be irrelevant. She's so fierce. What an inspiration. Xavier, can we get a little victory lap music for my personal icon, Beyonce?
XAVIER: You got it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: Yes. Love it. Now, the banjo didn't start as an instrument played by white people. In fact, it's hundreds of years old and actually has its roots in Africa. So what happened? We need answers.
XAVIER: Luckily, we have an expert musician and banjo historian to help us pluck our way to the past.
JOY DOLO: Rhiannon Giddens.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: Hey.
JOY DOLO: Rhiannon is a Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winning singer and instrumentalist.
XAVIER: And she played banjo on Beyonce's album.
JOY DOLO: Remember that clip from Texas Hold 'Em we played earlier?
[BEYONCE,"TEXAS HOLD 'EM"]
JOY DOLO: That was her.
XAVIER: Rhiannon grew up in North Carolina with a Black mother and white father, and the banjo was a big part of the music scene there.
JOY DOLO: As a kid, she thought she knew where the banjo came from, but those ideas ended up being wrong.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: So when I first started thinking about the banjo, it surrounds my whole childhood. Like, I would heard it on TV, I would have heard it on the radio, at festivals, my uncle was in a bluegrass band. And as far as I knew, it's a mountain instrument, and it comes from white people, and it goes along with farms and living in the countryside. And that's how I thought about it my whole life until I became an adult.
XAVIER: It took years for Rhiannon to hear the banjo with fresh ears.
JOY DOLO: She heard country music everywhere, but she never really saw Black people playing it. Then she discovered this one special musician.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: For me, my connection was Joe Thompson, who was an 86-year-old African-American fiddler, who was connected to this long line of fiddle and banjo playing that had gone back to the time of enslavement. And seeing him play was really important for me. Because when you see somebody who looks like you and you see somebody who comes from your culture, like, it just gave me this whole different idea of what it was.
["OLD JOE CLARK" PLAYING]
XAVIER: After that, Rhiannon needed to find out more.
JOY DOLO: Good thing because there is so much more to find out. But first, let's hit pause and take a break. Can I get some break music, Xavier?
XAVIER: Like this?
[FAST PERCUSSIVE MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: I meant break like rest, not break like break dancing.
XAVIER: Just kidding. Here, how about something a little more like this?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: Ah, now that I can break to.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Time to play--
(SINGING) First Things First.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: OK, Xavier. In today's First Things First, I'm going to give you three string-related inventions, and your job is to tell me which came first, which came second, and which came last. Ready?
XAVIER: Yes. I am ready.
JOY DOLO: Alrighty. Your string-related inventions are, silly string, the string phone, a.k.a., those tin can phones, and string cheese. What do you think?
XAVIER: What's silly string.
JOY DOLO: Oh, that's the stuff that comes in a spray can. It shoots out those long strings of foam.
XAVIER: Oh, the thing that's in the pranks online and things. OK. I think the string phone first. I think it's super easy to make because it's literally just string and cans. Maybe sometime in the 17th or 18th century because that's when the physics and science and stuff was really starting to become popular. Or maybe 1500, I don't know.
JOY DOLO: Oh, yeah. I wonder if it goes all the way back to then. That's a good guess.
XAVIER: I think the string cheese is next. Recently, I learned that pasteurized cheese is the same stuff string cheese is made of, except it's pasteurized mozzarella. I think that they started, like, near the Great Depression.
JOY DOLO: OK. So like the 1930s. That makes sense. So we've got string phone and then string cheese, so that just leaves silly string for the most recent.
XAVIER: Yes. I think silly string because it sounds 2000s thing when pranks were really starting to be popular, prank videos.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, you're right. Probably not the original intention. And it's hard to imagine somebody trying to come up with foam string that sprays across the room. Normally, we reveal the First Things First answer at the end of the episode. But since this is a two-part episode, we're going to wait until next week to find out the answer. Can you wait? Listeners, no peeking.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We're making an episode all about the different ways we've sent messages throughout history, from texts to telephones to good old-fashioned snail mail, and we want to hear from you. How do you think we'll send messages in the future? The bat signal, mind reading, maybe we'll start using carrier pigeons again? Xavier, how do you think we'll send messages in the future?
XAVIER: OK. Hear me out. Hear me out on this one. What if there were carrier pigeons that didn't have to fly. They just sat in these drones that are super fast, and then it's super efficient.
JOY DOLO: Listeners, record yourself describing how you think we'll send messages in the future, and send it to us at foreverago.org/contact. While you're there, you can send us episode ideas, drawings, and questions.
XAVIER: So keep listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MAN: Brains On! Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults. And since you're a fan of Forever Ago, we know you'll love the other shows in our universe. Come on, let's explore.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Entering Brains On! Universe. So many podcasts. Brains On!, Smash Boom Best, Forever Ago. Picking up signal Smash Boom Best, a debate show. What are they arguing about this time? Tomatoes versus potatoes.
MAN: Well, I was just remembering in 1949, the Mr. Potato Head went into production, a pivotal toy in a lot of people's childhood. And I was googling right now Mr. Tomato Head. And the first thing that comes up is, did you mean Mr. Potato Head?
AUTOMATED VOICE: [LAUGHS] Hilarious. Zorp! Signal down. Oh, no. Something like-- oh, something went wrong. Need Smash Boom Best now.
MAN: Search for Smash Boom Best wherever you get your podcasts.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
XAVIER: You're listening to Forever Ago. I'm Xavier.
JOY DOLO: I'm Joy.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: And I'm Rhiannon Giddens.
JOY DOLO: And this is part one of our look at the history of banjos, an instrument with a very long past.
XAVIER: I feel a recap coming.
JOY DOLO: Oh, I am definitely going to recap. You can't stop a girl from recapping. You can't stop me. Nobody can. Give me some recap music, professor.
XAVIER: You got it.
[HIP HOP MUSIC]
JOY DOLO: Rhiannon Giddens grew up hearing banjos, but she mostly saw white people playing them.
XAVIER: It wasn't until she was in her 20s that she heard about the history black people have with playing the instrument.
JOY DOLO: After that, she wondered, what else didn't she know about the banjo?
XAVIER: Researchers have been able to trace the early versions of the banjo to Africa over 500 years ago.
JOY DOLO: Here's Rhiannon again.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: You have instruments that were all over West Africa, all over Africa, the continent, of course, which is a huge landmass full of lots of different cultures and peoples and musical ideas. But there's a lot of different-- we call them lute-type instruments. So basically a body with a stick attached to it and strings attached to that stick with the bridge.
JOY DOLO: A lute is an instrument that looks like a miniature guitar. So lute-type instruments all have that same shape.
XAVIER: The bodies of the instruments Rhiannon mentioned were made from gourds. That's a type of fruit. Think of a pumpkin or a watermelon.
JOY DOLO: You can slice off part of a gourd, then scoop out the seeds and the gunk. Then leave it out to dry, and you get a hard shell. Add a long stick for a neck, add some strings, and you have an instrument.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So for a long time, people in Africa made and played these gourd instruments.
XAVIER: These were the great, great grandparents of the banjo.
JOY DOLO: Jump forward to the 1500s, printing on paper was still a pretty new thing. People sailed around in massive, wooden ships. Around this time, white Europeans started coming to Africa to capture and enslave people there. They would force them on boats and send them to other countries like Portugal, England, Spain, and eventually, the land now known as the United States. Once there, enslaved people were forced to work for no money.
XAVIER: This is now called the Transatlantic slave trade, and it lasted hundreds of years.
JOY DOLO: The overseas trip was brutal. Historians estimate that around 2 million enslaved Africans didn't even survive the long journey to the Americas.
XAVIER: Those who did survive were often separated from their families and forced to leave behind their culture.
JOY DOLO: But these African gourd instruments stayed with them in their minds and hearts, even though they were far from home. One of the main stopping points of the Transatlantic slave trade was the Caribbean, a group of islands between South America and what's now Florida. Rhiannon says it was here that parts of different African cultures started mixing together, including their instruments.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: What we have to remember about slavery is that people were being brought from all over this massive continent. And so already they had to learn how to talk to each other. So do they know the same language? Do they have the same religion? Do they have the same approach to music and dance? And so as soon as people land in the Caribbean, probably on the ships over, they're starting to create this culture where they can talk to each other, where they can communicate with each other. And music is a big part of that.
JOY DOLO: Let's think about this for a minute. People from all over Africa were forced onto ships. Then they're sent across an ocean far from their home. They can't even communicate with each other because they don't share a language.
XAVIER: But they can make instruments. It's through those banjo-like instruments that they start to understand each other.
JOY DOLO: Rhiannon says these instruments were really important because they helped enslaved African people connect with each other, even as the people who had enslaved them were trying to take their humanity away.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: So an instrument that we now call the banjo comes into being in the Caribbean with these people. And it's an instrument of spirituality. This is not just, hey, we're singing and dancing, and we're talking to each other. This is like we're actually connecting on a profound level in a way that is going to help us survive. We can't sugarcoat slavery in the Caribbean. It was horrific. So this is something that is really bringing people together, not only in a musical sense but also in a spiritual sense.
JOY DOLO: We don't know a lot about how these enslaved people lived. Remember, this was hundreds of years ago in the early 1600s. The United States wasn't even a country yet. Indigenous people were being forced off their land as new immigrants from Europe arrived and set up colonies.
XAVIER: There was no internet. There were no phones. And if you want to capture life back then, you had to write it down, or maybe paint a picture.
JOY DOLO: But enslaved people didn't get the chance to write about their lives or make paintings. They were being told what to do by their European enslavers.
XAVIER: They were being oppressed.
JOY DOLO: That's when you're being treated unfairly and another group of people has power over you. The history we have from this time was written from the European enslavers point of view, so pretty much everything we know about Black music at this time comes from them.
XAVIER: Those Europeans had never heard anything like the music Africans were playing.
JOY DOLO: Here's Rhiannon again.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: They start making comments about this instrument. And it's called different things, the strum-strum, the banjo, or the banza. And they start noticing how people are drawn to it. People start seeing that it has a power to it.
And so that is a piece of the banjo's history that has really not been talked about a lot, because it's really it's like a couple hundred years of like you're talking about late 1600s to the 1800s of this instrument as a purely Black instrument of survival, of resistance in the new world.
XAVIER: Around this time, the banjo is still being made of dried gourds and long sticks.
JOY DOLO: But like Rhiannon said, the banjo had a power to it. Eventually, other people started to play it, and they brought their own musical traditions to it.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: The main thing is that everybody was poor who was playing the banjo in the beginning, right? Particularly, in areas like Kentucky, North Carolina. You have these people who are close enough to see what other people are doing. So who's to say who the first European-American to pick up the banjo is?
I don't know. But you can say the late 1700s or most likely early 1800s is when it starts to happen. So that's happening in a folk tradition like, oh what is that? I want one of those. You know what I mean? And then something starts to happen that really changes things.
JOY DOLO: So the banjo goes from Africa to the Caribbean to a growing colony, soon to be known as the United States.
XAVIER: It's had quite a journey so far.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, that little instrument sure has a lot of pluck.
[COUGHS]
Pluck.
XAVIER: Joy?
JOY DOLO: What? It does. And there's so much more to this story. We're going to continue following the banjo's journey in the next episode of Forever Ago, where we'll look at the banjo's role in a hugely popular and hugely problematic musical movement from the 1800s, the minstrel show.
XAVIER: Rhiannon says minstrel shows thrust the banjo onto the world stage.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: They go to England. It goes to Australia. It goes to any kind of English colony, any kind of place where they've already been and taken over, minstrelsy follows. And it becomes really the first American cultural export 100 years before rock and roll. It's minstrelsy.
JOY DOLO: Be sure to tune in next week for the rest of the story. That's it for this episode. Professor, hit the theme music.
XAVIER: Consider it hit.
[SYNTHESIZER MUSIC PLAYING]
When people hear the banjo being played, they often think of bluegrass and country music.
JOY DOLO: Because the majority of people playing bluegrass and country today are white, the banjo gets thought of as a white instrument.
XAVIER: Thanks to musicians like Beyonce and our pal Rhiannon Giddens, we're starting to see a fuller picture of the banjos past.
JOY DOLO: A past that has roots in Africa. Early banjo-like instruments helped enslaved Africans communicate and connect with each other.
XAVIER: The banjo traveled from the Caribbean islands into American colonies, and eventually, found its way into the hands of other oppressed communities.
JOY DOLO: Find out more in our next episode. Plus, you'll hear the answers to our string-themed First Things First. Catch you then. This episode was written by--
MARC SANCHEZ: MARC Sanchez.
JOY DOLO: It was produced by--
NICO GONZALEZ WISLER: Nico Gonzalez Wisler.
JOY DOLO: And--
RUBY GUTHRIE: Ruby Guthrie.
JOY DOLO: Editors are
SANDEN TOTTEN Sanden Totten.
JOY DOLO: And--
SHAHLA FARZAN: Shahla Farzan.
JOY DOLO: Fact checking by--
NICO GONZALEZ WISLER: Nico Gonzalez Wisler.
JOY DOLO: Engineering help from Lorraine Gramada with sound design by--
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
JOY DOLO: Original theme music by--
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
JOY DOLO: We had additional help from the rest of the Brains On! Universe team.
MOLLY BLOOM: Molly Bloom.
RACHEL BREES: Rachel Brees.
ROSIE DUPONT: Rosie Dupont.
ANNA GOLDFIELD: Anna Goldfield.
LAUREN HUMPERT: Lauren Humpert.
JOSHUA RAY: Joshua Ray.
CHARLOTTE TRAVER: Charlotte Traver.
ANNA WEGGEL: Anna Weggel.
JOY DOLO: And--
AARON WOLDESLASSIE: Aron Woldeslassie.
JOY DOLO: Beth Perlman is our executive producer. And the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith.
JOY DOLO: Xavier. Perfect timing. I was just about to rehearse my moves for my next soon-to-be viral music video. It's called Bluegrass.
XAVIER: OK. I guess that explains why you painted all of the grass in your backyard blue.
JOY DOLO: Yep. Also, I may have accidentally ordered 100 cans of blue spray paint when I meant to order one can of blue spray paint. But I say, when life gives you 100 cans of blue spray paint, why not paint your grass and then get inspired to write a whole song about it and film a music video of said song in front of said blue grass? This song is going to be such a bop. It's going to launch a whole new genre of music. I call it, Bluegrass.
XAVIER: Joy, you know Bluegrass is already a type of music, right? You know there's usually a banjo, fiddle, and bass guitar player singing about country life.
JOY DOLO: Huh, but does it sound like this? (SINGING) I'm going to paint the ground blue, then I'm going to paint the tree blue, then I'm going to paint the leaves blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue. Well, what do you think?
XAVIER: It is different.
JOY DOLO: Right?
XAVIER: I still think you might want to come up with a new name, just so people don't confuse your Bluegrass with the one that everybody else knows.
JOY DOLO: Sure. Sure. Good point. Let me think. Oh, got it. I'll keep it nice and simple. This new never heard before music shall henceforth be called the blues.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome to Forever Ago from APM Studios. I'm Joy Dolo, and I'm joined today by Xavier from Kigali, Rwanda. Xavier is not only our co-host, but he's also a real life DJ. Hi, Xavier.
XAVIER: Hey, Joy.
[DJ NOTES PLAYING]
Professor in the studio.
[AIR HORN]
JOY DOLO: Wow. What an intro. So your DJ name is the Professor. How did you come up with it?
XAVIER: Well, ever since I was, like, teeny, tiny, little, little, little, I liked the alphabet. And I'm really into Marvel. There's this series called the X-Men. And the X-Men, it started by this guy who has telepathy, is in a floating wheelchair, for some reason, called Professor Charles Xavier.
JOY DOLO: Very cool.
XAVIER: I figured I'd help you out by handling some of the music.
JOY DOLO: OK then, Professor. I need a beat I can introduce today's topic with. Something upbeat, but also down tempo. Lands soft, but hits hard. Kind of light, but totally heavy. Know what I mean?
XAVIER: Absolutely not. But here, try this.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: That's exactly what I was imagining. Perfect. Now, today's episode is all about music. Specifically, we're going to be looking and listening to a special instrument that's been linked to the United States since before it even became a country, the banjo.
[BANJO PLAYING]
Super. Do you do birthday parties, specifically ones for adults who host history podcasts and have blue lawns? Asking for a friend.
XAVIER: I think we can probably work something out.
JOY DOLO: Yes. OK. Back to business. Just a heads up, we're doing two episodes about the banjo, and this is part 1.
XAVIER: So if you're starting with this one, you got it exactly right. Go you.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: For our listeners who may have never seen a banjo, can you describe what one looks like, Xavier?
XAVIER: Well, it's a stringed instrument, and it looks like a guitar crossed with a small flat drum.
JOY DOLO: Exactly. The body is a kind of drum, and off one side of the drum is a long guitar-like neck with strings and tuning knobs.
XAVIER: You can strum a banjo just like a guitar, but has a different tone, sort of, metallic.
[BANJO PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: Yes. Yes. Very twangy. Now compare that to a guitar.
[GUITAR PLAYING]
Does that sound different to you?
XAVIER: Yes and no. First of all, the guitar, it sounds like serenity. That's the only way I can explain it, serenity. And then the banjo sounds like take serenity, and then mix it with someone banging a metal pipe on the wall. Serenity plus metal pipe equals banjo.
JOY DOLO: So banjo is for party rock, and guitar is for sleeping?
XAVIER: Yes.
[BANJO PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: Let's get into this episode. Banjos aren't the first instrument most people think of when they think about pop music. But once you know what to listen for, you'll start hearing banjos everywhere.
XAVIER: Huge stars like Taylor Swift, Noah Kahan, and Beyonce use banjos in some of their songs.
JOY DOLO: Like this banger from Beyonce called Texas Hold 'Em.
[BEYONCE,"TEXAS HOLD 'EM"]
(SINGING) This ain't Texas, woo
Ain't no hold em, hey
So lay your cards down, down, down, down.
JOY DOLO: Beyonce's album, Cowboy Carter, features banjos all over the place.
XAVIER: She's helping to change the image of the instrument.
JOY DOLO: Right. Because most people associate the banjo with bluegrass or country music. And if you look at the musicians who are played on country radio stations and have their videos played on country music TV, they're pretty much all white.
XAVIER: And it's been like that for a while, almost a hundred years.
JOY DOLO: Yeah. There's data and numbers behind this. You can find it in our show notes.
XAVIER: But there have always been Black people playing the banjo in country music.
JOY DOLO: In fact, country music today wouldn't exist without Black people. And my girl, Beyonce, clearly loves history as much as I do because Cowboy Carter tells some of this story.
XAVIER: She plays historical music clips that show how Black people helped shape country music.
JOY DOLO: She includes current and older Black country musicians.
XAVIER: And it's been a huge hit.
JOY DOLO: Not only did Beyonce's Cowboy Carter album make a big splash in the world of pop music--
XAVIER: It went to number 1 on the country music charts, too.
JOY DOLO: Just before her album was released, she wrote, my hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist's race as it relates to releasing genres of music will be irrelevant. She's so fierce. What an inspiration. Xavier, can we get a little victory lap music for my personal icon, Beyonce?
XAVIER: You got it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: Yes. Love it. Now, the banjo didn't start as an instrument played by white people. In fact, it's hundreds of years old and actually has its roots in Africa. So what happened? We need answers.
XAVIER: Luckily, we have an expert musician and banjo historian to help us pluck our way to the past.
JOY DOLO: Rhiannon Giddens.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: Hey.
JOY DOLO: Rhiannon is a Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winning singer and instrumentalist.
XAVIER: And she played banjo on Beyonce's album.
JOY DOLO: Remember that clip from Texas Hold 'Em we played earlier?
[BEYONCE,"TEXAS HOLD 'EM"]
JOY DOLO: That was her.
XAVIER: Rhiannon grew up in North Carolina with a Black mother and white father, and the banjo was a big part of the music scene there.
JOY DOLO: As a kid, she thought she knew where the banjo came from, but those ideas ended up being wrong.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: So when I first started thinking about the banjo, it surrounds my whole childhood. Like, I would heard it on TV, I would have heard it on the radio, at festivals, my uncle was in a bluegrass band. And as far as I knew, it's a mountain instrument, and it comes from white people, and it goes along with farms and living in the countryside. And that's how I thought about it my whole life until I became an adult.
XAVIER: It took years for Rhiannon to hear the banjo with fresh ears.
JOY DOLO: She heard country music everywhere, but she never really saw Black people playing it. Then she discovered this one special musician.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: For me, my connection was Joe Thompson, who was an 86-year-old African-American fiddler, who was connected to this long line of fiddle and banjo playing that had gone back to the time of enslavement. And seeing him play was really important for me. Because when you see somebody who looks like you and you see somebody who comes from your culture, like, it just gave me this whole different idea of what it was.
["OLD JOE CLARK" PLAYING]
XAVIER: After that, Rhiannon needed to find out more.
JOY DOLO: Good thing because there is so much more to find out. But first, let's hit pause and take a break. Can I get some break music, Xavier?
XAVIER: Like this?
[FAST PERCUSSIVE MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: I meant break like rest, not break like break dancing.
XAVIER: Just kidding. Here, how about something a little more like this?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: Ah, now that I can break to.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Time to play--
(SINGING) First Things First.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOY DOLO: OK, Xavier. In today's First Things First, I'm going to give you three string-related inventions, and your job is to tell me which came first, which came second, and which came last. Ready?
XAVIER: Yes. I am ready.
JOY DOLO: Alrighty. Your string-related inventions are, silly string, the string phone, a.k.a., those tin can phones, and string cheese. What do you think?
XAVIER: What's silly string.
JOY DOLO: Oh, that's the stuff that comes in a spray can. It shoots out those long strings of foam.
XAVIER: Oh, the thing that's in the pranks online and things. OK. I think the string phone first. I think it's super easy to make because it's literally just string and cans. Maybe sometime in the 17th or 18th century because that's when the physics and science and stuff was really starting to become popular. Or maybe 1500, I don't know.
JOY DOLO: Oh, yeah. I wonder if it goes all the way back to then. That's a good guess.
XAVIER: I think the string cheese is next. Recently, I learned that pasteurized cheese is the same stuff string cheese is made of, except it's pasteurized mozzarella. I think that they started, like, near the Great Depression.
JOY DOLO: OK. So like the 1930s. That makes sense. So we've got string phone and then string cheese, so that just leaves silly string for the most recent.
XAVIER: Yes. I think silly string because it sounds 2000s thing when pranks were really starting to be popular, prank videos.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, you're right. Probably not the original intention. And it's hard to imagine somebody trying to come up with foam string that sprays across the room. Normally, we reveal the First Things First answer at the end of the episode. But since this is a two-part episode, we're going to wait until next week to find out the answer. Can you wait? Listeners, no peeking.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We're making an episode all about the different ways we've sent messages throughout history, from texts to telephones to good old-fashioned snail mail, and we want to hear from you. How do you think we'll send messages in the future? The bat signal, mind reading, maybe we'll start using carrier pigeons again? Xavier, how do you think we'll send messages in the future?
XAVIER: OK. Hear me out. Hear me out on this one. What if there were carrier pigeons that didn't have to fly. They just sat in these drones that are super fast, and then it's super efficient.
JOY DOLO: Listeners, record yourself describing how you think we'll send messages in the future, and send it to us at foreverago.org/contact. While you're there, you can send us episode ideas, drawings, and questions.
XAVIER: So keep listening.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MAN: Brains On! Universe is a family of podcasts for kids and their adults. And since you're a fan of Forever Ago, we know you'll love the other shows in our universe. Come on, let's explore.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Entering Brains On! Universe. So many podcasts. Brains On!, Smash Boom Best, Forever Ago. Picking up signal Smash Boom Best, a debate show. What are they arguing about this time? Tomatoes versus potatoes.
MAN: Well, I was just remembering in 1949, the Mr. Potato Head went into production, a pivotal toy in a lot of people's childhood. And I was googling right now Mr. Tomato Head. And the first thing that comes up is, did you mean Mr. Potato Head?
AUTOMATED VOICE: [LAUGHS] Hilarious. Zorp! Signal down. Oh, no. Something like-- oh, something went wrong. Need Smash Boom Best now.
MAN: Search for Smash Boom Best wherever you get your podcasts.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
XAVIER: You're listening to Forever Ago. I'm Xavier.
JOY DOLO: I'm Joy.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: And I'm Rhiannon Giddens.
JOY DOLO: And this is part one of our look at the history of banjos, an instrument with a very long past.
XAVIER: I feel a recap coming.
JOY DOLO: Oh, I am definitely going to recap. You can't stop a girl from recapping. You can't stop me. Nobody can. Give me some recap music, professor.
XAVIER: You got it.
[HIP HOP MUSIC]
JOY DOLO: Rhiannon Giddens grew up hearing banjos, but she mostly saw white people playing them.
XAVIER: It wasn't until she was in her 20s that she heard about the history black people have with playing the instrument.
JOY DOLO: After that, she wondered, what else didn't she know about the banjo?
XAVIER: Researchers have been able to trace the early versions of the banjo to Africa over 500 years ago.
JOY DOLO: Here's Rhiannon again.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: You have instruments that were all over West Africa, all over Africa, the continent, of course, which is a huge landmass full of lots of different cultures and peoples and musical ideas. But there's a lot of different-- we call them lute-type instruments. So basically a body with a stick attached to it and strings attached to that stick with the bridge.
JOY DOLO: A lute is an instrument that looks like a miniature guitar. So lute-type instruments all have that same shape.
XAVIER: The bodies of the instruments Rhiannon mentioned were made from gourds. That's a type of fruit. Think of a pumpkin or a watermelon.
JOY DOLO: You can slice off part of a gourd, then scoop out the seeds and the gunk. Then leave it out to dry, and you get a hard shell. Add a long stick for a neck, add some strings, and you have an instrument.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So for a long time, people in Africa made and played these gourd instruments.
XAVIER: These were the great, great grandparents of the banjo.
JOY DOLO: Jump forward to the 1500s, printing on paper was still a pretty new thing. People sailed around in massive, wooden ships. Around this time, white Europeans started coming to Africa to capture and enslave people there. They would force them on boats and send them to other countries like Portugal, England, Spain, and eventually, the land now known as the United States. Once there, enslaved people were forced to work for no money.
XAVIER: This is now called the Transatlantic slave trade, and it lasted hundreds of years.
JOY DOLO: The overseas trip was brutal. Historians estimate that around 2 million enslaved Africans didn't even survive the long journey to the Americas.
XAVIER: Those who did survive were often separated from their families and forced to leave behind their culture.
JOY DOLO: But these African gourd instruments stayed with them in their minds and hearts, even though they were far from home. One of the main stopping points of the Transatlantic slave trade was the Caribbean, a group of islands between South America and what's now Florida. Rhiannon says it was here that parts of different African cultures started mixing together, including their instruments.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: What we have to remember about slavery is that people were being brought from all over this massive continent. And so already they had to learn how to talk to each other. So do they know the same language? Do they have the same religion? Do they have the same approach to music and dance? And so as soon as people land in the Caribbean, probably on the ships over, they're starting to create this culture where they can talk to each other, where they can communicate with each other. And music is a big part of that.
JOY DOLO: Let's think about this for a minute. People from all over Africa were forced onto ships. Then they're sent across an ocean far from their home. They can't even communicate with each other because they don't share a language.
XAVIER: But they can make instruments. It's through those banjo-like instruments that they start to understand each other.
JOY DOLO: Rhiannon says these instruments were really important because they helped enslaved African people connect with each other, even as the people who had enslaved them were trying to take their humanity away.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: So an instrument that we now call the banjo comes into being in the Caribbean with these people. And it's an instrument of spirituality. This is not just, hey, we're singing and dancing, and we're talking to each other. This is like we're actually connecting on a profound level in a way that is going to help us survive. We can't sugarcoat slavery in the Caribbean. It was horrific. So this is something that is really bringing people together, not only in a musical sense but also in a spiritual sense.
JOY DOLO: We don't know a lot about how these enslaved people lived. Remember, this was hundreds of years ago in the early 1600s. The United States wasn't even a country yet. Indigenous people were being forced off their land as new immigrants from Europe arrived and set up colonies.
XAVIER: There was no internet. There were no phones. And if you want to capture life back then, you had to write it down, or maybe paint a picture.
JOY DOLO: But enslaved people didn't get the chance to write about their lives or make paintings. They were being told what to do by their European enslavers.
XAVIER: They were being oppressed.
JOY DOLO: That's when you're being treated unfairly and another group of people has power over you. The history we have from this time was written from the European enslavers point of view, so pretty much everything we know about Black music at this time comes from them.
XAVIER: Those Europeans had never heard anything like the music Africans were playing.
JOY DOLO: Here's Rhiannon again.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: They start making comments about this instrument. And it's called different things, the strum-strum, the banjo, or the banza. And they start noticing how people are drawn to it. People start seeing that it has a power to it.
And so that is a piece of the banjo's history that has really not been talked about a lot, because it's really it's like a couple hundred years of like you're talking about late 1600s to the 1800s of this instrument as a purely Black instrument of survival, of resistance in the new world.
XAVIER: Around this time, the banjo is still being made of dried gourds and long sticks.
JOY DOLO: But like Rhiannon said, the banjo had a power to it. Eventually, other people started to play it, and they brought their own musical traditions to it.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: The main thing is that everybody was poor who was playing the banjo in the beginning, right? Particularly, in areas like Kentucky, North Carolina. You have these people who are close enough to see what other people are doing. So who's to say who the first European-American to pick up the banjo is?
I don't know. But you can say the late 1700s or most likely early 1800s is when it starts to happen. So that's happening in a folk tradition like, oh what is that? I want one of those. You know what I mean? And then something starts to happen that really changes things.
JOY DOLO: So the banjo goes from Africa to the Caribbean to a growing colony, soon to be known as the United States.
XAVIER: It's had quite a journey so far.
JOY DOLO: Yeah, that little instrument sure has a lot of pluck.
[COUGHS]
Pluck.
XAVIER: Joy?
JOY DOLO: What? It does. And there's so much more to this story. We're going to continue following the banjo's journey in the next episode of Forever Ago, where we'll look at the banjo's role in a hugely popular and hugely problematic musical movement from the 1800s, the minstrel show.
XAVIER: Rhiannon says minstrel shows thrust the banjo onto the world stage.
RHIANNON GIDDENS: They go to England. It goes to Australia. It goes to any kind of English colony, any kind of place where they've already been and taken over, minstrelsy follows. And it becomes really the first American cultural export 100 years before rock and roll. It's minstrelsy.
JOY DOLO: Be sure to tune in next week for the rest of the story. That's it for this episode. Professor, hit the theme music.
XAVIER: Consider it hit.
[SYNTHESIZER MUSIC PLAYING]
When people hear the banjo being played, they often think of bluegrass and country music.
JOY DOLO: Because the majority of people playing bluegrass and country today are white, the banjo gets thought of as a white instrument.
XAVIER: Thanks to musicians like Beyonce and our pal Rhiannon Giddens, we're starting to see a fuller picture of the banjos past.
JOY DOLO: A past that has roots in Africa. Early banjo-like instruments helped enslaved Africans communicate and connect with each other.
XAVIER: The banjo traveled from the Caribbean islands into American colonies, and eventually, found its way into the hands of other oppressed communities.
JOY DOLO: Find out more in our next episode. Plus, you'll hear the answers to our string-themed First Things First. Catch you then. This episode was written by--
MARC SANCHEZ: MARC Sanchez.
JOY DOLO: It was produced by--
NICO GONZALEZ WISLER: Nico Gonzalez Wisler.
JOY DOLO: And--
RUBY GUTHRIE: Ruby Guthrie.
JOY DOLO: Editors are
SANDEN TOTTEN Sanden Totten.
JOY DOLO: And--
SHAHLA FARZAN: Shahla Farzan.
JOY DOLO: Fact checking by--
NICO GONZALEZ WISLER: Nico Gonzalez Wisler.
JOY DOLO: Engineering help from Lorraine Gramada with sound design by--
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
JOY DOLO: Original theme music by--
MARC SANCHEZ: Marc Sanchez.
JOY DOLO: We had additional help from the rest of the Brains On! Universe team.
MOLLY BLOOM: Molly Bloom.
RACHEL BREES: Rachel Brees.
ROSIE DUPONT: Rosie Dupont.
ANNA GOLDFIELD: Anna Goldfield.
LAUREN HUMPERT: Lauren Humpert.
JOSHUA RAY: Joshua Ray.
CHARLOTTE TRAVER: Charlotte Traver.
ANNA WEGGEL: Anna Weggel.
JOY DOLO: And--
AARON WOLDESLASSIE: Aron Woldeslassie.
JOY DOLO: Beth Perlman is our executive producer. And the executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati and Joanne Griffith.
Transcription services provided by 3Play Media.
