Bluegrass and folk music are as quintessentially American as apple pie, baseball, and Chevrolet. The banjo, the darling instrument of these genres, is just as iconically American. Yet few people realize that such an essentially American instrument can trace its origins across the Atlantic, to the west African nation of Senegal and an instrument called the xalam and its cousins.
What is a Xalam?
Xalam is a term used by the Wolof people of Senegal and describes a stringed instrument with a wooden, ovular body that serves as a resonating chamber, like a small acoustic guitar. One to four strings are attached to the neck (sometimes called the geeni xalam, or “xalam’s penis”) and body using cow leather straps, and the wooden resonating chamber is covered by a cowhide stretched taut. Only one or two of the xalam‘s strings are used to play melodies; the remaining strings are tuned to octaves to provide harmony, not unlike the banjo’s floating drone string. The strings of the xalam were typically made of horsehair until relatively recently, when nylon strings became widely available in Senegambia.
The xalam is a Senegambian favorite along with its cousins the kologo and molo of Ghana and Nigeria, respectively. However, the kologo and molo usually have bodies made from hollowed out gourds instead of wood. The wood construction of the xalam is echoed in the wooden resonator at the back of most banjos, and the resonating chamber of modern banjos is covered with a Mylar drum head reminiscent of the cowhide stretched across the wooden frame of the xalam.
The Senegalese displaced by the transatlantic slave trade brought their musical instruments and traditions across the sea with them, and just as they had to adapt to life in the New World, so the xalam was adapted and appropriated into the banjo of today. Most enslaved Africans used hollow gourds covered in animal hide to construct instruments in the Americas as a demonstration of solidarity and cultural unity, providing an outlet for artistic expression familiar to those taken from the Senegambian region. The gourd bodies were eventually replaced by wooden ones, and a fifth drone string was added, though scholars are conflicted on whether the drone string was an Appalachian invention or an African import.
Senegal to New Orleans
The proto-banjo was played primarily by displaced Africans along the Mississippi River and especially near New Orleans, where over 100,000 enslaved Africans were bought and sold, the majority of which were Senegambian. Historian Cecilia Conway places New Orleans as the hub from which the banjo spread outward, first up the Mississippi River and then into Appalachia, notably before minstrelsy made the banjo a popular instrument throughout the United States.
One of the earliest mentions of what would become the banjo in the New World comes from the diary of a man named Henry Latrobe. Latrobe wrote in 1819 about his experience with African music in New Orleans, and was particularly taken by a stringed instrument “which no doubt was imported from Africa. On top of the finger board was the rude figure of a man in a sitting posture, & two pegs. . . .to which the strings were fastened. The body was a calabash.” Latrobe’s entry is accompanied by a drawing showing a two-stringed instrument which is remarkably similar to a banjo and which is likely one of the many African-influenced instruments which was hybridized in North America into the modern banjo.
The banjo began to increase in popularity in the mid 19th century with the advent of traveling minstrel shows, in which white actors who had often spent time with and learned the musical techniques of African slaves colored their faces black and imitated Africans for the amusement of white audiences. The banjo was a popular instrument among slaves, so it was only natural that minstrel shows began to use banjo music in their performances. The “downstroke” strumming pattern commonly used on the banjo was passed to whites by black banjo players; many of those white people went on to become minstrels and further popularized the banjo and the unique strumming pattern employed on it.
The Modern Banjo
The man typically given credit for bringing the banjo to the masses is Joel Walker Sweeney, a minstrel performer who learned the banjo from slaves on his father’s Virginia plantation. Sweeney travelled the country with circuses and on his own, performing minstrel shows that involved songs played on the banjo. He is believed to have taught many other prominent minstrels how to play the banjo, but at any rate he was certainly the most famous minstrel operating before the Civil War.
As minstrelsy became a more popular and lucrative form of entertainment in the United States, more and more people from surprising places flocked to the U.S. to cash in on the trend. The most famous minstrel troupe in New Orleans, the Congo Melodists, was created by a family from England, the Buckleys. George Buckley, the troupe’s banjo player, was tutored by Sweeney; in fact, it is hard to find mentions of prominent minstrel banjoists that weren’t affiliated with or taught by Sweeney. Buckley was allegedly among the first to play the banjo like a fingerpicked guitar, rather than using the clawhammer or downstroking techniques typically employed at the time (this fingerpicked style is now known as “Scruggs style” picking, named for Earl Scruggs, an influential 20th century American banjoist. It is the most popular banjo technique used in bluegrass music).
It was with the explosion in popularity of the banjo in the United States and Britain that the banjo’s form began to change into what we recognize as the banjo of the modern age. Increased production of banjos meant that their designs could be experimented with and streamlined, from the introduction of metallic elements which give the banjo its characteristic twangy sound, to elaborate inlays along the fretboard and on the back of the resonating chamber which are staples of top-quality banjos today.
From the minstrel shows the banjo swept across the nation, finding a home in such diverse genres as jazz, Zydeco, bluegrass, country, and even rock and roll. The enduring legacy of the banjo is one of colonialism and adaptation, of flexibility in the face of hardship. The banjo is truly an American instrument, a product of colliding cultures and experiences that together create something novel. Like comfort food or the blues, the banjo was conceived in the meeting between diasporic African populations and European Americans, underwent years of adaptation, and emerged as an emblem of American culture. Like so many other aspects of American culture, though, we must remember that the roots of this iconic instrument lie an ocean away, on the coast of Africa.
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