Stewart Universal Favorite Custom Banjo, ca. 1890. The neck is made from cherry, and the instrument’s shell is made from maple. The heel plate is ebony. The tuning pegs and head, ivory tailpiece and ...

Early American banjo music is Black music. The banjo was created by enslaved African Americans, and according to the Smithsonian Institute, up until the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively an African ...

In this less than melodious celebration of the origins and history of the banjo, Dubois delivers a straightforward social history of the relationship between race and music. Drawing deeply on archives ...

Twenty years ago, the old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops turned heads and wowed audiences. They were young. They were Black. And with their fiddles and banjos, they launched a movement that ...