50 Fun Facts About Banjo

What is stretched over the frame of a banjo to make it sound?

Early heads were goat skin; modern ones are usually BOPET plastic film.

Where do the earliest forms of the banjo come from?

They were built from split gourds with animal skins stretched across them and gut or fibre strings.

Which West African gourd-bodied lute with a short drone string is a likely relative of the banjo?

It is played by the Jola people of Senegal, Gambia and Guinea-Bissau; its short 'thumb string' mirrors the banjo's fifth string.

The Mandinka phrase 'ban julo', a proposed root of 'banjo', also gives the name of which capital city?

It refers to the bamboo neck of the akonting; another theory traces 'banjo' to the Kimbundu word mbanza.

What fruit did early Caribbean players cut in half to make the body of a banza?

A former Saint-Domingue planter described the goatskin nailed over it and three strings of agave fibre.

Which Virginia minstrel performer is credited with popularising the five-string banjo in the 1830s?

He learned from enslaved people near Appomattox and became the first white performer to play banjo on stage.

Which Baltimore drum maker did Sweeney persuade to manufacture banjos commercially?

The move marked the shift from home-made folk instruments to a modern commercial product.

Which touring group introduced the banjo to Britain in the 1840s?

It became hugely popular in the music halls.

How many banjos were estimated to be in New York City in 1866, up from a handful in 1844?

The 'banjo craze' was fed by minstrel, medicine, Wild West and vaudeville shows, and by soldiers in the Civil War.

What was the first instruction method for the instrument, published in 1855?

It taught the 'stroke style', ancestor of today's clawhammer.

The finger style of playing, dominant by 1870, was first taught in a method by whom?

Players used the thumb and two or three fingers, resting the little finger on the head near the bridge.

What was the aim of banjo 'elevators' such as William Huntley and S. S. Stewart in the 1880s?

An 1888 newspaper reported that 'all the maidens' were strumming and banjo recitals were the newest fashion.

Which two four-string banjos, played with a pick, emerged in the ragtime and jazz eras?

Shorter necks and steel strings helped them cut through brass and reeds in the dance halls.

The tenor banjo has become an intrinsic part of which folk tradition, though a relative newcomer?

Players use a pick to play single-note melodies rather than strummed chords.

What is the metal assembly in most modern banjos that clarifies and projects the sound?

Many older banjos lack one; the body itself is called the 'pot'.

What is the plate on the back of some banjos that projects sound forward called?

Resonator banjos dominate bluegrass; open-back banjos are lighter and mellower.

Where does the short fifth string of a five-string banjo begin?

It is three-quarters the length of the others and tuned higher, giving the banjo a reentrant tuning.

What hardware-store item do many banjo players install at the seventh fret as a fifth-string capo?

The string is hooked under the spike to press it to the fret.

What is the most common five-string banjo tuning, especially in bluegrass?

Written G4 D3 G3 B3 D4; the older G C G B D 'C tuning' is still preferred for some styles.

In clawhammer style, how are the main strings struck?

The thumb catches the fifth string with a lifting motion, usually on the off-beat.

What is another common name for the clawhammer style?

It is a mainstay of American old-time music.

Who is regarded as the father of the bluegrass style of banjo playing?

His three-finger picking, aired nationally on the Grand Ole Opry in 1945, lifted the banjo from rhythm to solo instrument.

In whose band, the Blue Grass Boys, did Scruggs develop the three-finger style that bears his name?

'Bluegrass' became the name of a whole genre; Scruggs quit in 1948, worn out by touring.

With which guitarist did Scruggs form his famous duo after leaving Monroe?

Flatt and Scruggs recorded more than 50 albums over 20 years before splitting in 1969.

Which Scruggs instrumental, recorded in 1949, was revived by the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde?

It won two Grammys and entered the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2005.

Flatt and Scruggs's first chart-topping hit was the theme to which TV sitcom?

'The Ballad of Jed Clampett' carried bluegrass into mainstream American living rooms in the early 1960s.

Scruggs-style banjo is played with picks on which fingers?

The ring and little fingers are braced against the head; the technique was first recorded in 1946.

What are 'rolls' in five-string banjo playing?

Rolls and drone notes on the short fifth string are idiomatic to the instrument and define the bluegrass sound.

Whose book How to Play the Five-String Banjo was for years the only banjo method on the market?

He learned finger styles in Appalachia and inspired players like Dave Guard of the Kingston Trio.

The 'long-neck' banjo invented by a famous folk singer differs from a standard one how?

At 25 frets it is slightly longer than a bass guitar, and it suits singing keys comfortable for folk guitarists.

What slogan did the folk singer behind the first popular banjo method paint on his banjo from 1952?

It answered Woody Guthrie's guitar, which read 'This machine kills fascists'.

'Dueling Banjos' was made famous by which 1972 film?

The film used it without the composer's permission, and Arthur Smith won a lawsuit.

Who composed 'Dueling Banjos', originally titled 'Feudin' Banjos', in 1954?

His 1955 recording paired his four-string plectrum banjo with Don Reno's five-string; The Andy Griffith Show aired it in 1963.

How high did the 1972 film recording of 'Dueling Banjos' climb on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973?

It sat behind Roberta Flack's 'Killing Me Softly' for four weeks and won a Grammy for Weissberg and Mandell.

Banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck was named after which composer?

His middle names Anton and Leoš honour Webern and Janáček; he has won 18 Grammys.

How many Grammy Awards has Béla Fleck won?

He has been nominated 41 times and was inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame with New Grass Revival in 2020.

Which comedian and lifelong banjo player created a prize for excellence in banjo and bluegrass in 2010?

His first all-music album, The Crow, appeared in 2009 with a guest spot from Dolly Parton.

Which English comedian is the most famous player of the banjo ukulele, or banjolele?

The hybrid, first built in 1917, gave vaudeville performers a loud, portable instrument.

Which German composer wrote notably for the banjo in his Sixth Symphony?

Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, in Grofé's original arrangement, also includes tenor banjo.

A six-string banjo is tuned and played like which instrument?

It has gained popularity as a crossover instrument for guitarists.

Which type of tuner, unusual on guitars, is commonly fitted to banjos?

Frets have been standard since the late 19th century, though fretless banjos are still made for glissando and quarter tones.

Which hardcore punk band notably used the banjo on their debut album?

The banjo also turns up in Dixieland jazz and in Caribbean genres like calypso and mento.

Which English banjo maker patented the 'zither' banjo in 1869 after opening a London shop in 1846?

His seven-string zither banjos had a closed back with the drum suspended inside a wooden rim; Cammeyer later devised a six-string version.

Which opera diva advised Alfred Cammeyer to take his zither banjo to England, where he settled in 1888?

In London society he met Sir Arthur Sullivan, who urged him to compose his own banjo music rather than arrange others'.

In which year was Earl Scruggs's three-finger style first aired nationally on the Grand Ole Opry?

He had developed it from an older Appalachian two-finger up-pick, and it soon defined the sound of bluegrass.

The melodic bluegrass banjo style is named after which player?

Don Reno gave his name to the three-finger style with single-string work, and Scruggs to the classic roll-based approach.

Which member of The Kingston Trio followed Pete Seeger's lead in the postwar folk banjo movement?

Erik Darling of the Weavers and Tarriers was another; the folk boom brought the five-string back to a mass audience.

Which Japanese instrument is among the banjo's world relatives, alongside the Chinese sanxian and Persian tar?

The Moroccan sintir is another cousin: all share a skin head stretched over a body.

Which company produces a five-string cello banjo tuned an octave below a bluegrass banjo?

It keeps the short fifth string; Sonny Osborne played a Vega converted into a six-string bluegrass banjo by luthier Rual Yarbrough.

Besides bluegrass and Dixieland, the banjo is frequently used in which Caribbean genres?

Twoubadou from Haiti is another; the instrument's roots lie with enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and Americas.