The Banjo: America's African Instrument

A cultural history tracing the banjo from its West African origins — gourd instruments of the Jola and related peoples — through its transformation in the Caribbean (where it was known as the 'banza' in Saint-Domingue) and the United States, arguing that it is fundamentally an African instrument whose Black creators were systematically erased through minstrelsy and later appropriation. Dubois uses the instrument's trajectory to reveal the Afro-diasporic innovation at the heart of American music, with particular attention to its role in enslaved communities and maroon camps in the Caribbean.