Often thought of as the quintessential musical emblem of the Appalachian mountains, the banjo actually provides a tangible reminder of American popular music’s African origins. A plucked stringed instrument with a long neck and a round sound chamber covered with animal skin or plastic, the banjo may have evolved from any one of several similar African instruments. (The word itself may be an Africanization of the Portuguese bandore, or bandora, an early lute.)

Its first popular heyday was in the blackface minstrel show of the nineteenth century, where, as part of the genre’s racist caricatures, it was used to represent a characteristic timbre of slave music.

From all available evidence, it appears that the instrument was in fact in common use among slaves. One of the most famous minstrel-show banjoists, Joel Walker Sweeney, may have been responsible for adding the short fifth string that appears on modern instruments;other noted banjoists of the day included Daniel Emmett, the composer of “Dixie.” Because of the influence of the minstrel show and of the numerous amateur banjo clubs that flourished early in the twentieth century, the banjo became entrenched in southern mountain culture. Over the last half century it has been central to bluegrass music, that culture’s vital artistic statement.