Well Of Souls Uncovering The Banjos Hidden History

Author : Kristina R Gaddy
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0393866807
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Well of Souls written by Kristina R Gaddy and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating history of the banjo, revealing its origins at the crossroads of slavery, religion, and music. In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, Kristina Gaddy uncovers the banjo’s key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. Through meticulous research in diaries, letters, archives, and art, she traces the banjo’s beginnings from the seventeenth century, when enslaved people of African descent created it from gourds or calabashes and wood. Gaddy shows how the enslaved carried this unique instrument as they were transported and sold by slaveowners throughout the Americas, to Suriname, the Caribbean, and the colonies that became U.S. states, including Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland, and New York. African Americans came together at rituals where the banjo played an essential part. White governments, rightfully afraid that the gatherings could instigate revolt, outlawed them without success. In the mid-nineteenth century, Blackface minstrels appropriated the instrument for their bands, spawning a craze. Eventually the banjo became part of jazz, bluegrass, and country, its deepest history forgotten.

Author : Kristina R. Gaddy
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393866815
Total Pages : 261 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History written by Kristina R. Gaddy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year Named one of the Most Memorable Music Books of the Year by No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music “Compelling.… [R]eveals [an instrument] intimately rooted in the African diaspora and capable of expressing flights of sorrow and joy.” —David Yezzi, Wall Street Journal An illuminating history of the banjo, revealing its origins at the crossroads of slavery, religion, and music. In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, Kristina Gaddy uncovers the banjo’s key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. Through meticulous research in diaries, letters, archives, and art, she traces the banjo’s beginnings from the seventeenth century, when enslaved people of African descent created it from gourds or calabashes and wood. Gaddy shows how the enslaved carried this unique instrument as they were transported and sold by slaveowners throughout the Americas, to Suriname, the Caribbean, and the colonies that became U.S. states, including Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland, and New York. African Americans came together at rituals where the banjo played an essential part. White governments, rightfully afraid that the gatherings could instigate revolt, outlawed them without success. In the mid-nineteenth century, Blackface minstrels appropriated the instrument for their bands, spawning a craze. Eventually the banjo became part of jazz, bluegrass, and country, its deepest history forgotten.

Author : K. R. Gaddy
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0525555412
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Flowers in the Gutter written by K. R. Gaddy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the Edelweiss Pirates, working-class teenagers who fought the Nazis by whatever means they could. Fritz, Gertrud, and Jean were classic outsiders: their clothes were different, their music was rebellious, and they weren’t afraid to fight. But they were also Germans living under Hitler, and any nonconformity could get them arrested or worse. As children in 1933, they saw their world change. Their earliest memories were of the Nazi rise to power and of their parents fighting Brownshirts in the streets, being sent to prison, or just disappearing. As Hitler’s grip tightened, these three found themselves trapped in a nation whose government contradicted everything they believed in. And by the time they were teenagers, the Nazis expected them to be part of the war machine. Fritz, Gertrud, and Jean and hundreds like them said no. They grew bolder, painting anti-Nazi graffiti, distributing anti-war leaflets, and helping those persecuted by the Nazis. Their actions were always dangerous. The Gestapo pursued and arrested hundreds of Edelweiss Pirates. In World War II’s desperate final year, some Pirates joined in sabotage and armed resistance, risking the Third Reich’s ultimate punishment. This is their story.

Author : Philip F. Gura
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 9780807824849
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book America's Instrument written by Philip F. Gura and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handsome illustrated history traces the transformation of the banjo from primitive folk instrument to sophisticated musical machine and, in the process, offers a unique view of the music business in nineteenth-century America. Philip Gura and Jame

Author : Bob Carlin
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 149308187X
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Banjo written by Bob Carlin and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The banjo is emblematic of American country music, and it is at the core of other important musical movements, including jazz and ragtime. The instrument has been adopted by many cultures and has been ingrained into many musical traditions, from Mento music in the Caribbean and dance music in Ireland. Virtuosos such as Béla Fleck have played Bach, African music, and Christmas tunes on the five-string banjo, and the instrument has had a resurgence in pop music with such acts a Mumford and Sons and the Avett Brothers. This book offers the first comprehensive, illustrated history of the banjo in its many forms. It traces the story of the instrument from its roots in West Africa to its birth in the Americas, through its coming of age in the Industrial Revolution and beyond. The book profiles the most important players and spotlights key luthiers and manufacturers. It features 100 “milestone instruments” with in-depth coverage, including model details and beautiful photos. It offers historical context surrounding the banjo through the ages, from its place in Victorian parlors and speakeasies through its role in the folk boom of the 1950s and 1960s to its place in the hands of songwriter John Hartford and comedian Steve Martin. Folk, jazz, bluegrass, country, and rock – the banjo has played an important part in all of these genres. Lavishly illustrated, and thoughtfully written by author, broadcaster, and acclaimed banjoist Bob Carlin, this is a must-have for lovers of fretted instruments, aficionados of roots music, and music history buffs.

Author : Karen Linn
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 9780252064333
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.3X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book That Half-barbaric Twang written by Karen Linn and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long a symbol of American culture, the banjo actually originated in Africa before European-Americans adopted it. Karen Linn shows how the banjo--despite design innovations and several modernizing agendas--has failed to escape its image as a "half-barbaric" instrument symbolic of antimodernism and sentimentalism. Caught in the morass of American racial attitudes and often used to express ambivalence toward modern industrial society, the banjo stood in opposition to the "official" values of rationalism, modernism, and belief in the beneficence of material progress. Linn uses popular literature, visual arts, advertisements, film, performance practices, instrument construction and decoration, and song lyrics to illustrate how notions about the banjo have changed. Linn also traces the instrument from its African origins through the 1980s, alternating between themes of urban modernization and rural nostalgia. She examines the banjo fad of bourgeois Northerners during the late nineteenth century; the African-American banjo tradition and the commercially popular cultural image of the southern black banjo player; the banjo's use in ragtime and early jazz; and the image of the white Southerner and mountaineer as banjo player.

Author : Cecelia Conway
Publisher : Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN 13 : 9780870498930
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia written by Cecelia Conway and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the Upland South, the banjo has become an emblem of white mountain folk, who are generally credited with creating the short-thumb-string banjo, developing its downstroking playing styles and repertory, and spreading its influence to the national consciousness. In this groundbreaking study, however, Cecelia Conway demonstrates that these European Americans borrowed the banjo from African Americans and adapted it to their own musical culture. Like many aspects of the African-American tradition, the influence of black banjo music has been largely unrecorded and nearly forgotten--until now. Drawing in part on interviews with elderly African-American banjo players from the Piedmont--among the last American representatives of an African banjo-playing tradition that spans several centuries--Conway reaches beyond the written records to reveal the similarity of pre-blues black banjo lyric patterns, improvisational playing styles, and the accompanying singing and dance movements to traditional West African music performances. The author then shows how Africans had, by the mid-eighteenth century, transformed the lyrical music of the gourd banjo as they dealt with the experience of slavery in America. By the mid-nineteenth century, white southern musicians were learning the banjo playing styles of their African-American mentors and had soon created or popularized a five-string, wooden-rim banjo. Some of these white banjo players remained in the mountain hollows, but others dispersed banjo music to distant musicians and the American public through popular minstrel shows. By the turn of the century, traditional black and white musicians still shared banjo playing, and Conway shows that this exchange gave rise to a distinct and complex new genre--the banjo song. Soon, however, black banjo players put down their banjos, set their songs with increasingly assertive commentary to the guitar, and left the banjo and its story to white musicians. But the banjo still echoed at the crossroads between the West African griots, the traveling country guitar bluesmen, the banjo players of the old-time southern string bands, and eventually the bluegrass bands. The Author: Cecelia Conway is associate professor of English at Appalachian State University. She is a folklorist who teaches twentieth-century literature, including cultural perspectives, southern literature, and film.

Author : Laurent Dubois
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674968832
Total Pages : 374 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Banjo written by Laurent Dubois and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-14 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American slaves drew on memories of African musical traditions to construct instruments from carved-out gourds covered with animal skin. Providing a sense of rootedness, solidarity, and consolation, banjo picking became an essential part of black plantation life, and its unmistakable sound remains versatile and enduring today, Laurent Dubois shows.

Author : Robert B Winans
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252050649
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Banjo Roots and Branches written by Robert B Winans and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the banjo's journey from Africa to the western hemisphere blends music, history, and a union of cultures. In Banjo Roots and Branches, Robert B. Winans presents cutting-edge scholarship that covers the instrument's West African origins and its adaptations and circulation in the Caribbean and United States. The contributors provide detailed ethnographic and technical research on gourd lutes and ekonting in Africa and the banza in Haiti while also investigating tuning practices and regional playing styles. Other essays place the instrument within the context of slavery, tell the stories of black banjoists, and shed light on the banjo's introduction into the African- and Anglo-American folk milieus. Wide-ranging and illustrated with twenty color images, Banjo Roots and Branches offers a wealth of new information to scholars of African American and folk musics as well as the worldwide community of banjo aficionados. Contributors: Greg C. Adams, Nick Bamber, Jim Dalton, George R. Gibson, Chuck Levy, Shlomo Pestcoe, Pete Ross, Tony Thomas, Saskia Willaert, and Robert B. Winans.

Author : Christopher Dickey
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439129592
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Summer of Deliverance written by Christopher Dickey and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summer of Deliverance is a powerful and moving memoir of anger, love, and reconciliation between a son and his father. Hailed as a literary genius of his generation, James Dickey created his art and lived his life with a ferocious passion. He was a heavy drinker, a destructive husband and father, a poet of grace and sensitivity, and, after the publication and subsequent film of his novel, Deliverance, a wildly popular literary star. Drawing on letters, notebooks, diaries, and his explicit conversations with his father, Christopher Dickey has crafted a superb memoir of the corrosive effects of fame, a moving remembrance of a crisis that united a family, and an inspiring celebration of love between father and son.