{"id":4882,"date":"2024-11-11T21:09:16","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T21:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/?p=4882"},"modified":"2024-11-11T21:09:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T21:09:54","slug":"americas-early-banjo-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/2024\/11\/11\/americas-early-banjo-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Early Banjo Legacy — Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 2017, the Sousa Archives acquired the Old Town School of Folk Music Banjo Exhibition Records and Samuel Swaim Stewart Banjos.\u00a0 This collection documents the unique legacy of the nineteenth-century American banjo, featuring Samuel S. Stewart (1855-1898), a builder of fine-art banjos and Horace Weston (1825-1890), one of America\u2019s most accomplished black banjo artists between the 1870s and 90s.<\/p>\n

Joel Walker Sweeney (1810-1860), the country\u2019s first \u201cpop minstrel show artist,\u201d introduced the five-string banjo to America\u2019s stage, but was not its first inventor.\u00a0 The instrument that became the standardized five-string banjo was frequently played by enslaved West African musicians.<\/p>\n

According to Old Town School of Folk Music\u2019s Paul Tyler, the five-string banjo sprang from early plucked string instruments that were made from gourds and called bandora<\/em>, banza<\/em>, banjah<\/em>, and akonting<\/em>.\u00a0 The three-stringed akonting<\/em>, an instrument made with a long neck and a body made from a calabash gourd, is still used today by the Jola<\/em> people of West Africa\u2019s The Gambia.<\/p>\n

Most banjo playing styles associated with these earlier traditions can be traced with some reasonable accuracy, the dating and location of the earliest five-string addition to the banjo family remains inconclusive.\u00a0 According to Jay Bailey\u2019s 1972 article, \u201cHistorical Origin and Stylistic Developments of the Five String Banjo,\u201d the origin of these instruments is lost in a maze of folklore.<\/p>\n

While the definitive origin of the five-string banjo is unclear, the instrument gained significant popularity immediately after the Civil War.\u00a0 Instrument makers began mass producing and marketing artist-grade banjos to America\u2019s middle class and specialized banjo orchestras became common.\u00a0 However, by the early years of the twentieth century, four- and five-string banjos had become associated with white, rural mountain music, and the banjo\u2019s minstrel and classical music traditions both fell into obscurity.<\/p>\n

At the vanguard of builders of artist-grade banjos was Philadelphia\u2019s Samuel S. Stewart.\u00a0 Considered by musicians of his time to be the nineteenth-century Stradivari of banjo makers, Stewart created extraordinarily beautiful instruments that, for their day, were unsurpassed for their workmanship, tone, and playability. This was because he demanded exceptional materials and innovative construction techniques.<\/p>\n

While Stewart\u2019s innovative silver rimmed shell design and banjeaurine grew out of America\u2019s late nineteenth-century \u201cbanjo boom,\u201d his work was quickly surpassed by more technologically sophisticated builders like A. C. Fairbanks and William Lange, whose instruments eventually surpassed the Stewart banjo\u2019s tonal quality and volume.\u00a0 Stewart\u2019s scornful dismissal of Fairbank\u2019s and Lange\u2019s new innovations eventually led other builders and banjo performers to dismiss his antiquated instruments by the early 1900s.\u00a0 However, his belief that the banjo was a high-art instrument remained the distinctive hallmark of his salesmanship and instruments.<\/p>\n

Horace Weston, considered the Paganini of the nineteenth-century banjo, was one of two prominent high-art banjoists to promote Stewart\u2019s banjos during the 1880s and 1890s.\u00a0 Weston, along with Canadian American banjoist Alfred A. Farland (1864-1954), were recognized around the world for their performances of European classical music on the banjo.\u00a0 Their stories and influence on America\u2019s banjo traditions will continue with part 2 of the Sousa Archives\u2019 \u201cAmerica\u2019s Early Banjo Legacy\u201d on January 25, 2025.\u00a0 For more information about the Sousa Archives\u2019 Stewart banjos contact Scott Schwartz at either schwrtzs@illinois.edu<\/a> or 217-333-4577.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2017, the Sousa Archives acquired the Old Town School of Folk Music Banjo Exhibition Records and Samuel Swaim Stewart Banjos.\u00a0 This collection documents the unique legacy of the nineteenth-century American banjo, featuring Samuel S. Stewart (1855-1898), a builder of fine-art banjos and Horace Weston (1825-1890), one of America\u2019s most accomplished black banjo artists between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4882"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4887,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4882\/revisions\/4887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/sousa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}