banjo
Sign in to saveThe banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of BOPET, where early membranes were made of goat skin.
AI overview
The banjo is a stringed instrument that produces sound by vibrating strings over a thin membrane stretched across a frame, which acts as a resonator to amplify the sound. Historically made with goat skin, modern banjo membranes are typically constructed from BOPET, a synthetic material.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- Instrument.name
- Banjo
- Instrument.image
- Bluegrass banjo.png
- Instrument.image_capt
- A five-string banjo
- Instrument.background
- string
- Instrument.hornbostel_sachs
- 321.312 (resonator) or 321.314 (open-backed)
- Instrument.hornbostel_sachs_desc
- Composite chordophone with a neck that passes diametrically through the resonator, sounded by plectrum, finger picks, or the bare fingers
- Instrument.developed
- 18th century, United States
via Wikipedia infobox
Article
21 sectionsContents
- History
- Early origins
- Minstrel era, 1830s–1870s
- Classic era, 1880s–1910s
- Ragtime era (1895–1919) and Jazz Age era (1910s–1930s)
- Modern era
- Technique
- Modern forms
- Four-string banjos{{anchor|four_string}}
- Tenor banjo
- Six-string banjos
- Banjo family and tuning
- Low banjos
- Long neck banjos
- Banjo hybrids and variants
- Noted banjoists
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- Banjo history
- External links
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of BOPET, where early membranes were made of goat skin.
Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents, and the instrument was strongly associated with black people. In the 19th century, interest in the instrument was spread across the United States and United Kingdom by traveling shows of the highly popular traveling blackface minstrel shows, followed by mass production and mail-order sales, including instructional books. The inexpensive or home-made banjo remained part of rural folk culture, but five-string and four-string banjos also became popular for home parlor music entertainment, college music clubs, and early 20th century jazz bands. By the early 20th century, the banjo was most frequently associated with folk, cowboy music, and country music.