What’s the difference between a banjo and a lawnmower? You can tune a lawnmower. What’s the difference between a dead skunk in the middle of a road and a dead banjo player in the middle of a road? There are skid marks in front of the skunk. Speaking of which, how many banjo players does it take to eat a possum? Two, one to eat it and the other to watch for cars. And last but definitely not least, what do you call 100 banjos at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.“The banjo in postwar America was perceived primarily as a white, rural instrument.”There are entire websites devoted to banjo jokes, so we could spend all day on this, but let’s not. Instead, hang on to those descriptions of unplayable instruments and moronic musicians eating roadkill. Though they may produce casual chuckles today, these jokes are actually rooted in the racist put-downs that were once directed at black banjo players in America, as we learned when we spoke recently to Laurent Dubois, whose new book, The Banjo: America’s African Instrument, was published in the spring of 2016 by Harvard University Press.
Dubois’s book arrives at a weirdly bipolar moment in Western cultural history. On the one hand, the five-string banjo has never been more popular. Winston Marshall of Mumford & Sons plays sold out concerts with a top-of-the-line Deering banjo strapped over his shoulder, as does Scott Avett of the Avett Brothers. On Broadway, “Bright Star,” which was co-written by the funniest banjo player alive, Steve Martin, enjoyed a spirited, if brief, run. And even pop idol Taylor Swift has woven the sound of the banjo (albeit a six-string variant that’s tuned like a guitar) into her multi-platinum repertoire.
At the same time, racism in the United States hasn’t been so naked in decades. Young African American men are routinely gunned down by peace officers, prompting everything from the #blacklivesmatter movement to the refusal of an African American quarterback in the NFL to stand at attention during the national anthem. For many, the presidential election in the United States is itself a referendum on racism, particularly as it applies to which religious groups should be allowed inside the nation’s borders, and whether portions of those borders should be visible from space after the construction of a massive wall.
What, you might ask, does racism have to do with the banjo, an instrument that for most people is no more controversial than the banjo-heavy theme song for “The Beverly Hillbillies”? Well, race is actually central to any conversation about banjos, or at least it should be. That’s what makes The Banjo so relevant in 2016. The book includes a detailed explication of the instrument’s African origins before the slave trade, its Caribbean evolution in the 16th to 18th centuries, and its racist reinvention in 19th-century America. After reading Dubois’s book, this old-timey instrument may never sound the same to you again.