Q 01/05

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

A) A thin wooden soundboard

B) A fine wire mesh

C) A thin membrane, or head

D) A flat metal plate

Answer · why

C) A thin membrane, or head

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

Q 02/05

Where do the earliest forms of the banjo come from?

A) German luthiers in Pennsylvania

B) Enslaved Africans in the Americas

C) Spanish colonists in Mexico

D) Irish immigrants in Appalachia

Answer · why

B) Enslaved Africans in the Americas

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

Q 03/05

Which West African gourd-bodied 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

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

Q 04/05

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

A) Banjul

B) Bathurst

C) Bamako

D) Bissau

Answer · why

A) Banjul

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

Q 05/05

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

A) A pumpkin

B) A breadfruit

C) A coconut

D) A calabash gourd

Answer · why

D) A calabash gourd

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