I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The thing about the banjo is, when you first hear it, it strikes many people as 'What's that?' There's something very compelling about it to certain people; that's the way I was; that's the way a lot of banjo players and people who love the banjo are.
English banjo players really were a law unto themselves - you don't find that kind of brisk banjo playing on the original Louis Armstrong or Bix Beiderbecke records.
They think the banjo can only be happy, but that's not true.
I didn't realize until I was older what a huge music fan my daddy really was, and actually that my grandma played banjo at one time, and I didn't even know that until a year or two ago.
When we moved back to the US, folk music was all the rage. So I traded in my banjo for a guitar.
I want you to hear a new version of Dueling Banjos. Anyone else is welcome.
I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.
There's a similarity between European and North African folk musics.
If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don't know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.
The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.