If there’s any instrument in the quiver of American music that can simultaneously summon heartbreak, salvation and joy, it just might be the banjo. It’s a simple mechanism of hoop, animal skin, neck and strings — and yet its music invokes a myriad of musical styles and stories from within the ragged pages of the American story.
Brought over from Africa – or at least some version of it — and adapted by slaves in the Caribbean and the U.S., its earliest origins lie deep within the Black American experience. And that’s where Angela Wellman came to find it.
“The banjo for me also represents an embrace of our
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