Q 01/05

Which Muppet plucks a banjo while singing 'Rainbow Connection' at the start of The Muppet Movie?

A) Fozzie Bear

B) Kermit the Frog

C) Rowlf the Dog

D) Gonzo the Great

Answer · why

B) Kermit the Frog

Kermit the Frog sings it alone in his swamp; the songwriters modelled it on 'When You Wish Upon a Star' to show he had an inner life, and it earned an...

Q 02/05

In which Stephen Foster song does the singer come from Alabama with a banjo on his knee?

A) 'Camptown Races'

B) 'My Old Kentucky Home'

C) 'Oh! Susanna'

D) 'Old Folks at Home'

Answer · why

C) 'Oh! Susanna'

'Oh! Susanna' spread through blackface minstrel troupes in 1848 and launched Foster's career, though rival publishers pirated it and printed it under ...

Q 03/05

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

A) The djembe

B) The balafon

C) The kora

D) The akonting

Answer · why

D) The akonting

The akonting is a folk lute of the Jola people; Gambian scholar Daniel Jatta saw a banjo on American TV in 1974, heard his father's akonting in it, an...

Q 04/05

Rhiannon Giddens's banjo opens which Beyoncé single, a 2024 chart-topper on the Hot 100?

A) '16 Carriages'

B) 'Texas Hold 'Em'

C) 'Break My Soul'

D) 'Formation'

Answer · why

B) 'Texas Hold 'Em'

'Texas Hold 'Em' made Beyoncé the first Black woman to top Billboard's country songs chart, days after an Oklahoma country station refused a request f...

Q 05/05

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

A) A winter squash

B) A breadfruit

C) A coconut

D) A calabash gourd

Answer · why

D) A calabash gourd

A calabash gourd got a goatskin nailed across it and three strings of agave fibre, a former Saint-Domingue planter wrote in 1810; one Haitian banza bu...