Kristina R. Gaddy - Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjos Hidden History

WELL
of
SOULS

Uncovering the Banjos Hidden History

KRISTINA R. GADDY

W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

Independent Publishers Since 1923

To

MR. BAPTISTE

WILLIAM

TOBY

PRINCE

JOB

GEORGE

BLACK BILL

AND ALL OF THE KNOWN AND UNKNOWN BLACK MUSICIANS THROUGH WHOSE HANDS BANJOS PASSED.

The banjo is a tricky instrument. It is a physical object with skin, wood, gut, metal; it is a means to make music, rhythmic, melodic, drones, arpeggios; it is an emblem of culture, of nationalism, of ephemeral yet deeply rooted heartstrings and of made-up histories used as weapons. Its got a lot going on. Anybody who studies the banjo knows they are walking into a swamp of unknown players, scraps of primary sources, dead ends, flashes of brilliant understanding and also of utter despair. How is something so integral to American culture so badly understood and so widely misrepresented? It has taken a small army of dedicated researchers to correct the recordto do good work in the world of the banjo is to have insatiable curiosity, exacting patience, and an awareness of where you are as the observer. All of these things, plus an excellent writing style, sense of humor, and keen brain; yes, its demanding! And Kristina Gaddy has it all in spades. And boy are we banjoists lucky to have her.

When I first started my banjo journey I had no idea where it would take me; I just knew I loved the sound. But as I played more, and learned the history, and as I picked up older styles of banjo and began to take in the warm sound of older-styled wooden-rimmed and gourd instruments, more akin to the instruments that Kristina begins with in her book than the ones you hear in modern banjo music today, I became aware also of an extra-musical feeling when I played. An urge to make little musical offerings when I picked up the instrument. An eventually unshakeable belief that when I played my banjo, I was connecting with my ancestors in a way I can only describe as spiritual. But I never really talked about it too much because of the image the banjo holds in popular consciousness; even if you can get past the pickin and grinnin sometime goofball image of the banjo, its touted mainly as a great dance instrument; and sometimes it gains a soulful aura when a singer-songwriter uses it to sing a plaintive air, or a traditionalist croons a lonesome ballad. But nowhere is it talked about as a ceremonial instrument, a spiritual instrumentuntil Kristinas painstaking yearslong work to document this unbelievably important aspect. Reading Kristinas book was like being told, Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clausyou knew it all along. That yes, this precious artifact was more than a dance instrument for our peoplethose feelings could be footnoted! It was incredible. It was unexpected. It was so needed, especially now, in these contentious timesconnections to the past that are joyous and beautiful and deep should be treasured. Such as this book. Treasure the knowledge about to unfold before youI know I do.

Centered between two small houses somewhere in swampy lowlands next to a creek, three people begin to dance. A woman in a green dress bends over slightly. She lifts her heels, stirring the sandy ground beneath her feet. Suspended between her hands, she holds a white-and-blue-striped cloth, pinched by her index fingers and thumbs. She raises and lowers her hands, shaking the cloth in front of her. She wears an apron, a scarf around her shoulders, and a scarf around her head tied at the back. Next to her, another woman dances, a cloth outstretched between her hands. They dance on their toes. They look like they are floating. The women face a man. Hes bent over too, with a dark wooden dowel in his hands. He raises and lowers the staff as he moves his feet, his blue jacket rising as he lifts his arms, his bare feet and red pants gliding across the makeshift stage.

Two instruments drive the music of this dance. To the left of the dancers sits a man with a drum pressed between his knees. He holds a slender stick in each hand, beating out a rhythm. To his right, a man in a hat sits with the round body of a stringed instrument squarely in his lap. The tan, dried gourd amplifies the sounds that burst from the strings.

To modern eyes this instrument may not look like a banjo. It has no circular wooden body, no metal parts. Instead, a flat piece of wood bisects a round gourd, forming the neck and sound chamber. A piece of animal skin sits taut across a circular hole cut into the side of the gourd, a skin that creates the top of the instrument and the soundboard. Around this white circle, the maker has cut intersecting lines into the gourd. Strings extend from the bottom of the gourd, across the soundboard, over a bridge that holds them up, and along the board-like neck to where it comes to a triangular point. Here, at the headstock, three cylindrical shapes stick out from the piece of wood. The strings attach to these tuning pegs; turning the pegs allows the musician to tighten and loosen the strings to the pitch he wants. Halfway down the neck is another peg, for a shorter string. The short string, flat fingerboard, skin soundboard, and tuning pegs are some of the banjos defining characteristics.

When the white slaveowner John Rose saw this scene of enslaved Black people before 1790, he felt it was interesting enough to commit to paper. He dipped his paintbrush in a rich red for one mans coat and a warm tan for the stringed instrument, the drum, and a ceramic vessel by the banjo players feet. Rose was an amateur, but he painted details like the patterns on the cloths the women tied around their hair and the pegs and sound holes of the banjo. There is care in this work: in his brushstrokes and with the peoples movements. Looking at it, you feel almost instinctively that something significant is happening.

Nearly 150 years later, in 1935, art curator Holger Cahill had the gut feeling that the watercolor was important and bought it on behalf of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who was collecting American folk art for an exhibit in Williamsburg, Virginia. The watercolor was unlike anything Cahill had seen, and its depiction of uncaricatured Blacks in the early United States still makes it unique. In the years since it was first displayed, the image has gained the title The Old Plantation and has been reprinted in books, on museum walls, and on CD and record covers. This rare piece of art is one of the most significant images of early African American music and dance in North America, and one of the earliest images of the banjo. It was not until the early 2000s that decorative arts librarian Susan P. Shames discovered that Rose was the artist. She considered that the painting demonstrates one of the closest links between the cultural life

Most scholars and historians have assumed that what Rose painted was a social dance or a secular celebration. Some have suggested that two of the dancers are jumping the broom, a marriage ceremony among enslaved Blacks in the United States. This reading seems wrong. The painting has no broom. Moreover, the broom ceremony was not a tradition in Africa, hasnt been documented during the period of the painting, and is a folk custom likely introduced to the Americas by Europeans. Other scholars have simply accepted that the painting depicts an African dance, even though searches for an analogous dance in Africa have yielded no results.

I n 2017, my partner Pete Ross and I wandered through the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which explores eight hundred years of Dutch history through the visual and decorative arts. After hours spent looking at old masters and other paintings from the Northern Renaissance, we heard an announcement that the museum would close in half an hour. We looked over the map, trying to decide which of the myriad rooms to visit before we had to leave. Tucked away in a corner on the first floor was a room with art from former Dutch colonies.