The banjo is a plucked lute whose body is a round frame covered with a stretched head, like a small drum. It was created in the Americas by enslaved people of West African origin, who built on the gourd lutes of their home regions. Nineteenth-century minstrel shows spread it widely and often in racist caricature, and factories soon mass-produced it. Today it belongs to bluegrass, old-time, jazz and Irish music, and to a growing body of research and revival.
A lute remade in the Americas
Begin with a gourd, a skin and a neck. Historians generally agree that the banjo descends from West African lutes built on that plan, among them the akonting of the Jola people of Senegal and the Gambia and various forms of ngoni. In 2000 the Gambian scholar Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta argued that the akonting was an especially close relative, and its playing style resembles clawhammer banjo. Which African instruments contributed what remains debated, because enslaved people came from many cultures and left few written records of their own.
Europeans who visited the Caribbean in the late seventeenth century described and drew gourd lutes played by enslaved people, and later accounts from North America mention instruments called banjar, banza or similar names. A painting of about 1785–95 from South Carolina, The Old Plantation, shows one being played. A gourd instrument from Suriname, probably from the later eighteenth century, is often cited as one of the oldest surviving banjo-like objects. Enslaved musicians did not simply transport an instrument; they rebuilt it from available materials and gave it new functions.
Hoop, head and a short fifth string
The earliest banjos used a hollowed gourd or a wooden frame covered with animal skin. A British museum holds one from about 1840 that has a pear-shaped body, an unfretted neck and five gut strings, one of the earliest examples to survive from the commercial era. From the 1840s makers produced banjos in growing numbers, and by the 1880s fretted fingerboards had become standard. Plain wooden hoops gave way to metal rims and brackets, allowing the head to be tightened to a desired pitch.
A modern banjo has a rim, or pot, with a head made from plastic film (animal skin was used earlier), held by a hoop and adjustable brackets. A long neck carries about twenty-two frets. Many bluegrass instruments add a resonator, a wooden bowl on the back that throws sound forward, while open-back models are usual in old-time music. The five-string banjo has a short fifth string that starts partway along the neck, sounding a high drone against the melody.
A drum that carries a string
A drumhead changes how a string sounds. When a banjo string is plucked, vibration passes through the bridge into a taut membrane, which radiates it like a small drum. The result is a bright, percussive note with a quick attack and relatively short decay. Since little of the sound depends on the wooden body, a banjo projects well outdoors or in a loud band, a practical asset for dance music in the days before amplification.
Tone can be shaped in several ways. A tighter head sharpens the sound, a looser one makes it duller and more muted. Resonators add volume and punch, while open backs give a rounder, quieter voice favoured for accompanying songs. Steel strings make a clear, metallic ring, whereas earlier gut strings were warmer and softer. Players also change attack by plucking near the bridge for brightness or over the fingerboard for warmth.
Tunings that change the instrument
The most common tuning for a five-string banjo is open G, with the strings sounding G4 (the short fifth), D3, G3, B3 and D4, so that strumming all the open strings produces a G major chord. The fifth string is higher than the four beside it, an unusual arrangement, and it gives the banjo a characteristic ripple. Many old-time players prefer tunings such as double C (g4–C3–G3–C4–D4), which are often set to suit a fiddle tune’s key. Across a 22-fret neck the range is roughly D3 to C6.
Four-string banjos use their own tunings. The tenor banjo is commonly tuned C3–G3–D4–A4 in jazz and popular music, the same pitches as a viola’s strings, though Irish players commonly tune it G2–D3–A3–E4, an octave below the mandolin. The plectrum banjo, with a longer neck, is commonly tuned C3–G3–B3–D4 for strumming chords. The pitches are therefore quite different across the family, which is why notation and tunings must always be specified.
Claw, roll and strum
Clawhammer, also called frailing, is a down-picking style in which the player’s fingernail strikes the strings in a downward stroke while the thumb catches the short fifth string on the off-beat. It has a bouncing rhythm that suits dance tunes and accompanies song. Many performers sit with the rim on the thigh. The technique is widely associated with the Appalachian region and is often considered one of the oldest ways of playing the five-string instrument.
Bluegrass players use metal picks on thumb and two fingers, rolling across the strings in fixed patterns to create a flowing, rapid line that continues beneath the melody. This three-finger style emerged in the American South during the 1940s. Plectrum and tenor banjos are strummed or picked with a flat pick, and jazz players of the early twentieth century used them as driving rhythm instruments. Each approach favours a different hand, tuning and role in the band.
A family defined by string count and role
The five-string banjo is the most widely recognised form, but it is one of several. Four-string tenor and plectrum banjos were designed in the early twentieth century for jazz, dance bands and vaudeville, where a louder, chordal instrument was needed. Six-string banjos tuned like guitars appeared to let guitarists double. Banjo-ukuleles, combining a small Ukulele-like neck with a banjo body, had a vogue in the 1920s. Small models also exist, such as a six-string nineteenth-century example with Tunbridge-ware inlay in the Horniman Museum.
Modern makers also build open-back, resonator, electric and travel banjos, along with fretless models that recall early instruments. Ancestors, relatives and descendants therefore stand side by side: the akonting and ngoni in West Africa, gourd banjos of the early Americas, and factory-made instruments with metal hardware. Some present-day players deliberately build gourd banjos to revisit the early sound, which is softer, lower and more muted than that of a modern steel-string instrument with a bright plastic head.
Minstrelsy, string bands and revival
Any honest account must include minstrelsy. From the 1830s, white performers who had learned the banjo from Black musicians used it in blackface shows that mocked African Americans. Joel Walker Sweeney, a Virginian, popularised the instrument in the United States and England in the 1840s and 1850s. The form was racist, yet it brought the banjo to a mass audience and later to Black and white players alike, and after the Civil War Black minstrel troupes also toured. Its legacy is therefore painful and complicated.
The banjo then moved into string bands, parlour orchestras, jazz, vaudeville and country music. Appalachian old-time music combined British, Irish and African American influences. Bluegrass, which took shape in the mid-1940s, made the five-string a virtuoso lead. Folk revival players took it into coffeehouses, and musicians today such as those working in Black string-band traditions have revisited its roots. Irish ensembles favour the four-string tenor banjo for fast dance tunes, and Mandolin and Violin players often share the stage.
Keeping a drum and a neck in balance
The banjo’s head is sensitive to humidity. A plastic head stays fairly stable, but one made of animal skin tightens in dry conditions and slackens in damp ones, changing pitch and tone. Players usually adjust head tension with a small wrench and check that the bridge sits square. Extreme heat and cold are worth avoiding, as are cars and windows, since brackets, glue and finish can suffer from sudden shifts.
Regular maintenance is mostly mechanical. Metal parts benefit from occasional tightening, and strings wear out faster when a player has acidic skin. The neck should stay straight; a rod inside it can be adjusted by a qualified repairer. A fitted case protects the instrument in transit. Museum conservators treat antique instruments differently, avoiding fresh strings under tension, since old skin heads and hoops can be damaged by strain.
Details worth knowing
- The fifth string is shorter than the others, which is why it needs its own tuning peg partway along the neck.
- The akonting is played with a downward-striking technique that some players and scholars compare with clawhammer banjo.
- A nineteenth-century banjo in the Horniman Museum has Tunbridge-ware marquetry on its fingerboard, a craft usually found on small decorative boxes.
- Banjos were among the instruments mass-produced in American factories as early as the 1840s.
Terms used in this entry
- akonting
- A three-stringed gourd lute of the Jola people of Senegambia, often discussed as a close relative of the early banjo.
- clawhammer
- A down-picking style in which the nail of a finger strikes the strings while the thumb sounds the short fifth string.
- drone string
- A string that sounds the same note repeatedly, here the short fifth string.
- frailing
- Another name for clawhammer playing, especially in the Appalachian tradition.
- head
- The stretched membrane, originally skin and now usually plastic, that covers the rim and amplifies the strings.
- minstrelsy
- A nineteenth-century theatrical entertainment in which performers used caricature, often in blackface, to mock African Americans.
- plectrum banjo
- A four-string banjo with a long neck, played with a flat pick, commonly used for strumming chords.
- resonator
- A wooden bowl fitted to the back of a banjo that reflects sound forward.
- tenor banjo
- A four-string banjo with a shorter neck, used in jazz and Irish music.
References
- Victoria and Albert Museum. Banjo | Unknown | V&A Explore The Collections. collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O92609/banjo-unknown
- Horniman Museum and Gardens. 321.312 Spike box lutes or spike guitars - Horniman Museum and Gardens. horniman.ac.uk/object/M15.10.48/75
- Grinnell College Libraries. five-string banjo · Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection. omeka-s.grinnell.edu/s/MusicalInstruments/item/653
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Banjo, American, ca. 1845. metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/628865
- St. Olaf College. The Birth and Popularization of the Banjo | Music 345: Race, Identity, and Representation in American Music. pages.stolaf.edu/americanmusic/2021/10/03/the-birth-and-popularization-of-the-banjo
Sources were consulted for facts and context; the text is original. See Sources and Methodology.
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