The Banjo Guru

That’s a frequent question, and not one with a single answer since the banjo is actually a family of instruments. The five-string banjo was the original, featuring a gourd body (later modified into a drum) and a short drone string. It was brought to what is now the United States by African slaves. The finger-picked five-string banjo enjoyed immense popularity in the nineteenth century, finding acceptance in the parlors of the urban middle class. It was used to play material from the classical repertoire, and rural musicians of the southeast adapted it to the Irish-style music they enjoyed.

Shortly after the turn of the century, the prominence of new music forms such as ragtime and syncopated dances, like the tango, led to the creation of the four-string , or plectrum, banjo. The sharp, percussive sound of the instrument was preserved but the quirky short drone string was eliminated. That made the instrument more user-friendly for musicians who preferred to strum chords with a flat pick, or plectrum. The next step was the tenor banjo, with a shorter scale and tuned in fifths to make it more familiar to players of other popular instruments such as the mandolin. Banjo bands were all the rage by the 1920s and other variations included the mandolin-banjo, the guitar-banjo, and the uke-banjo, but the tenor banjo was by far the most popular, leaving its original five-string cousin to be regarded as a quaint relic. Four-string banjos remain popular in traditional Dixieland jazz as well as Irish music, but the five-string was revived in the years following World War II with the arrival of Earl Scruggs and a new musical style-bluegrass.