My Name is Alan.... and I Play Banjo

Yet the history of the banjo points to a long and noble lineage. Drums with strings stretched over them can be traced throughout the Far East, the Middle East and Africa almost from the beginning of time. They were either strummed, bowed like a fiddle or plucked like a harp depending on their development and these instruments spread to Europe. The banjo, as we would recognise it, was made by African slaves who were forcibly removed to those countries engaged in the slave trade.

Before the American Revolution, white men began using blackface as a comic gimmick and the banjo became a prop. By the early part of the 19th century, minstrelsy became a very popular form of entertainment and the top names of the day included Joel Walker Sweeney & his Sweeney Minstrels and the Virginia Minstrels. In addition to one or more banjo players, minstrel shows usually featured a fiddler, a bones player and a drummer or tambourine shaker. Readers of a certain age may remember BBC TV’s Black and White Minstrel Show which ran from 1958-1978. It was hugely entertaining but deemed politically incorrect, a criterion not applied, alas, to certain types of Scottish entertainment.

After the Civil War, soldiers took the instruments home to almost every corner of America but the banjo was looked down upon by the gentry. In 1866, the Boston Daily Evening Voice classified the banjo as an instrument in “the depth of popular degradation” and an instrument fit only for “the jig-dancing lower classes of the community.” However, the banjo soon became a “universal favourite” with over 10,000 instruments in use in Boston alone, largely due to a sudden rise in popularity on its introduction as a parlour instrument.

In Ireland, the accordion/banjo combination for dancing was popularised by the likes of the Flanagan Brothers - Mike and Joe - who emigrated to the USA in the early years of last century. Their sound was ideal for the non-amplified auditoriums of the day and they played for decades in the Irish dance halls in New York. In the early 1960s, the rise to commercial success of The Dubliners had a profound effect on the popularity of the tenor banjo as Barney McKenna’s skill on the instrument led to thousands of converts on both sides of the Irish Sea.

There’s no space left to even touch upon the importance of the banjo in jazz bands or in bluegrass groups, so as I take my seat in the front row of the ceilidh band, and prepare to attempt to entertain “the jig-dancing lower classes of the community” or the dancers at a Society Ball, I feel part of a noble tradition. And remember, it isn’t easy playing the banjo - it takes a lot of pluck.

PS Did you hear the one about the bodhran player?