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There's some salty language ahead. Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch. I'm B.A. Parker. That still sounds bad. Wait, so... I'm learning how to play the banjo. Be kind, I'm not great, and I've been getting some guff about it. You'd be surprised at the amount of attention one gets as a black woman commuting on the subway with a banjo on her back. It's mostly older white guys telling me to keep up the good work.
Like they're passing this baton that's inherently theirs. And to be honest, that's what learning it at home was feeling like. We're a work in progress, people. I mean, there's YouTube tutorials galore, but they're mainly white guys teaching how to be the next Ralph Stanley. It's hard to get that little sneaky lick. slow, but I'll get it as slow as I can. That's me learning how to play the banjo a bit lonely. Come on down, folks!
So when I finally sought out community, I didn't know it would lead me to a banjo toss. Or rather, the banjo toss. It's this absurdist event at the Brooklyn Folk Festival. where competitors toss a banjo on a long rope into the Gowanus Canal. The person who throws it farthest wins free dinner and a show. I didn't do the toss. I was there to spectate and mingle. I play a banjo uke. A banjo ukulele?
And I was kind of overwhelmed by just the sheer amount of people with banjos that were around on this cold November afternoon. Like, dozens and dozens in a circle, jamming together all-knowing Americana songs and Southern spirituals. The juxtaposition wasn't lost on me. I know the history of the banjo. How it comes from West Africa. How enslaved people in the Americas and Caribbean adapted this gored instrument from their homelands into the banjo that we know today.
how the banjo was almost exclusively played by Black folk until minstrelsy. So, I can enjoy myself as one of the few Black people on that cold afternoon, but still feel... A bit of friction. And I needed help reconciling that feeling. So I went straight to the top. I have some notions. Yes, please. Because it's kind of like...
That whole idea of discovery of the banjo, but then that question of like, why don't I know this? You know what I mean? Why is this constantly discovery for us? That's Rhiannon Giddens. She's a Grammy winner, Pulitzer Prize winner, MacArthur Genius Fellow. I am a singer, banjo player, and cultural historian, I guess. Giddens is also the woman who blessed us with the opening riff of Beyonce's country hit, Texas Hold'em.
All in all, Giddens is that girl. For the people who were exposed to my song already, yeah, that's really cool. There's way more people who have no idea who played that banjo. And that's okay. That was by design. Not my design, but... You know, that wasn't the focus of that track. And that's fine. Like, I didn't do it for that reason. I did it because I just want the sound of it out there and I happened to play it. When that song came out...
What I did on my Facebook feed is every day I highlighted a different black banjo player. I saw. You know, because I'm like, this is OK. So if eyeballs are coming my way because of that song, they need to go to the community. And I'm looking to find my place in that community. I've been searching for Black banjo players in my city to no avail. But maybe I'm not searching in the right places.
So this week on Code Switch, I'm learning how to play the banjo and talking to Black banjo players about creating community and reclaiming an instrument that's historically already theirs.
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Suzanne Somers had a great line. She said, you can't play a dumb blonde and be a dumb blonde. Find this interview with Pamela Anderson wherever you listen to Fresh Air. Right now, eyes are on the Black banjo community. That's because beyond Texas Hold'em being nominated for multiple Grammys, Get Into Herself is currently nominated for Best American Roots Performance for a song called The Ballad of Sally Ann. It's a story song about a lynching written by Black country songwriter Alice Randall.
The song was first recorded by a white man 33 years ago. Now Giddens is the first black woman to record it. I'm mostly excited for Alice Randall because it's her song. It's a song about lynching that. you know, finally got a performance by, you know, the Black woman that she wrote it for. So I'm excited for her that this story, which is a very difficult story, has been, you know, highlighted by the nomination. So how did you get into playing the banjo?
I got into playing the banjo through dance. I heard the banjo as a sort of dance instrument, like the claw hammer style, really for the first time. And was like, this is amazing. What is this? This is not bluegrass. I love this, you know, and really just danced to it for a while and then was kind of like, OK, I need to learn how to.
play this and then like as i started to play with the white old-time musicians in the area which they were lovely folks and like they're like well you know the banjo is like african i was like what what are you talking about and then that kind of started me on my you know, my journey of like, oh my God, what else don't I know about my own culture? So Giddens dug into that history. The banjo is an instrument of slavery. It comes out of enslavement. There is no banjo without.
The transatlantic slave trade, so to understand the banjo, I was like, I really need to understand the history that surrounds it. In her research, she found a banjo instruction manual from 1855, the first of its kind. How to play the banjo, how to be a minstrel, like all of these things. And it had all the basics to songs like Yankee Doodle and the Jim Crow Polka. The tunes in that 1855 book are...
really proto-American tunes, old minstrel tunes. I had to throw the words out because it was just so depressing, you know, but really I'm interested in the music, you know, because all the early minstrel. songs that we now call folk songs that we now teach our children, you know, Blue Tail Fly and all that stuff. Those tunes are legit American tunes. You know, they're coming out of that sort of folk soup of music.
And if you don't think you know Blue Tail Fly, you might actually know the lyrics. Because if you grew up in America, you know the songs in that folk soup. When I was young, I used to wait. On my master and give him his plate. And pass the bottle when he got dry. And brush away the blue tail fly. Jimmy Crack Corn and I don't care. Jimmy Crack Corn and I don't care. Jimmy Crack Corn and I don't care.
Blackface minstrel songs like this one are a far cry from the songs used to emote and amuse between work on a plantation. Yes, culture ebbs and flows, but it helps to acknowledge how the banjo changed hands. So in the time leading up to the 1920s, you know, Black people were moving out of the South.
You know, we were like moving in huge numbers as part of the Great Migration for a better life. Right. To escape racism, you know, lynching, whatever. We end up in the north. We end up in the west. We end up in the Midwest. And, you know, we didn't put the banjo down in as much as that a lot of the folks who left, you know, they discover, oh, I'm in a different place. Like music is different here. Like, oh, we don't have corn shuckings anymore. I don't need this.
old banjo you know what i mean like oh they're playing the hip music or this oh this new guitar thing is really cool or you know whatever but there are still plenty of black people still play the banjo but when you get the music industry coming in They would go in and they'd set up and they'd put an ad in the paper, you know, colored performers, you know, come bring your blues on a Thursday. And like, you know.
hillbillies come bring your fiddle tunes on a on a friday and if you're a black fiddler you show up on a friday and they're like well you know blues day was yesterday it's like if you're a black fiddler you're like well i better learn some blues if i want to get a job Between the Great Migration and World War II, a lot of Black musicians pivot and adjust with the times. And it left an opening, particularly with the American folk music revival, to reappropriate things like the banjo.
So we start to hear white artists like Pete Seeger and Alan Lomax turn slave songs into songs for the white working class. And now the way a lot of people view the banjo is... Earl Scruggs. It's Steve Martin. It's Kermit the Frog. But for Giddens, her touchstone wasn't any of these. It kind of all roads lead back to Joe Thompson, really, for me.
Jo Thompson was Giddens' teacher and led her to what would become her famed former string band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Jo Thompson was an African-American fiddler who lived in Mebane, North Carolina, and he was part of a long line of... black string band musicians in a family tradition that kind of stretches back to the time of slavery. But he, you know, Joe was kind of one of the last members of
really wants an enormously thriving Black stream man tradition that stretched all over the country, really. Here's the Carolina Chocolate Drops playing the traditional song Georgie Buck with Joe Thompson. So... For white string band musicians, there were many elders that were still playing that they could learn from and they could be with. But for the Black community, there weren't very many. And so to have somebody like Joe Thompson at...
the time that we had. I mean, he was 86 when we first started playing with him. But I feel like it's one of the most fortunate things that I've had in my life. And I feel like... I'm kind of in a dilemma, you know, because it's something I'm really thinking about a lot with this music. You know, I had a very special experience of...
you know, apprenticeship. And that just, it worked out because I was living in the, I mean, I'm from like, my family's from Mebane, you know, like, you know, I lived 40 minutes away. Like we could meet, like Joe didn't charge us money. Like there was no.
Yeah, I mean, he was there to play. That was his job is to be the community musician. So anybody who came, he would play with. Now we started like we would get gigs and then we would bring him out and we'd give him all the money. You know what I mean?
So that's the kind of way we could pay him back. And there were a lot of cultural exchanges that we had during those times that you cannot get in a formal classroom. You know what I mean? It's a totally different ball of wax. What I hear from folks.
In the community, in our community who are learning this music, it's not like, oh, I just want to play the banjo so I can play some tunes. It's like there's this connection, right? There's this historical connection. There's this cultural connection. There's this ancestral connection. And that's a different thing to me. I feel like Gidden's lucked out early and found her community. But for me, I'm still looking for mine.
I've been putting out a bat signal trying to find black banjo players in New York City. And when I talked to Giddens, that community was still eluding me. Until I found someone who showed me I was going about it the wrong way. Maybe we're learning songs that, you know, have been sang for hundreds of years, you know, because so much of that comes from Black people, they should have the option of being in a Black space. That's coming up. Stay with us. If you love NPR podcasts,
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The winner will play a Tiny Desk concert and a U.S. tour. To learn more, visit npr.org slash tinydeskcontest. Here's some news that really stinks. Garbage is responsible for 20% of planet warming methane emissions. That's why All Week Here and Now is looking at ways people are cutting back on waste. Robot dogs hiking landfills.
textile recyclers melting down old clothes, dumpster divers scoring big, and builders deconstructing homes instead of demolishing them. You can hear all that by following our podcast. It's called Here and Now. anytime. Parker. Just Parker. Code switch. I've been talking to banjo goat Rhiannon Giddens about the Black history of the banjo. So I'm at the beginning of my banjo journey, and I've started taking lessons. And, like, I'm in a group course, and it is a majority white people.
And, like, I'm in this room. I am very aware that I'm a black person. And we're, like, playing, like, down by the riverside. And so I'm like, there's, like, this... I'm enjoying myself, but there's also this kind of cognitive dissonance that I'm experiencing of like a group of white people teaching me like Black Southern songs. Yeah.
Tonight I have a recital, which is coincidental to this interview, and I'm stressed. It's a group recital, so it's an adult showcase. But we're going to perform Georgie Buck. Which, I don't know, it just seems like a Black Southern song that I'm going to perform with a group of white people. in front of another group of white people. And I'm trying not to get too much in my head about it, but I'm also very aware of that history while I'm learning. It's very fraught.
It's very layered. It's very much you have to kind of hold things simultaneously, if you know what I mean. You know, there is a shared common Southern heritage. of music and culture right that everyone you know has pieces of and things have gone back and forth between cultures and all this kind of stuff and that is the same for the music
And you can go, OK, this is something that belongs to all of us. But also, given the way that the history has been taught, given the way that we have been erased from this history, you feel that otherness for a music that supposedly. is from your own, you know what I mean? It's from your own ancestral history. So I'm like, come to my house and I'll teach you Georgia book. We'll just sit and play Georgia book. You know what I mean?
That's what I'm interested in, is this, if you really want to learn in a context of being a black string band musician, then we have to figure out ways of passing this on. within our, you know what I mean? Like in addition to taking classes, in addition to, you know, being in, you know, you know, being in that recital or whatever, but like, how do we do it when there's so few of us?
Yeah, I mean, I like I know I'm not going to get any kind of like historical context when I'm taking the course right now, but I know that I'm going to get some kind of technical skill, although I mean. Thank goodness the Georgie Buck I gotta learn. All I gotta do is a G and an E minor the whole way through. And that is okay with me.
Your journey is your journey. As long as you end up playing the banjo, it doesn't really matter how you got there. So after I talked to Giddens, I performed in my first recital. It was nerve-wracking. But it was a group of us, and the audience was very kind. And finally, the songs I'd heard not so long ago at the banjo toss were at my fingertips. albeit a little clumsily.
With the recital being the end of my classes, I started looking for other avenues to learn, and I found Hannah Mayree. They're a musician and a teacher. I started and run an organization called the Black Banjo Reclamation Project. Hannah's creating spaces for Black banjo players to come together, which is a change of pace from how Hannah was introduced to the banjo. Hitchhiking around the country. I got into the banjo as a person that was traveling through American society in the folk tradition.
came across it like in the wild, if you will. In my mind, now I'm picturing you like hopping on the railways at this point, like the raconteur playing the banjo. Well, I don't know what a... rock and tour is but i have rode some trains in my day and you're like a like an actual folk hero I asked Hannah about their goals for the Black Banjo Reclamation Project. I think there's a few. One of the outcomes, in theory, would be for Black people to have the experience.
of pursuing and stewarding folk music while being in Black spaces. So maybe we sit around a fire, maybe we're learning songs that, you know, have been sang for... hundreds of years you know i think people should have the option of doing that because so much of that comes from black people they should have the option of being in a black space and that's what i feel like the advocacy work has been
of Black Banjo Reclamation Project is making more spaces, more comfortable spaces for Black people to just pursue cultural learning and have it not be out of context. Hannah invited me to an online banjo study group that they run. Just a Zoom call once a month, and each person on the call gets to share what they're working on, banjo-wise.
Hi, I'm Parker. She, her. I'm in Brooklyn, in New York, and I've had a banjo for a bit. A friend gave me her banjo, but I'm still very... uh novice at it so yeah i'm just so excited to be here uh yeah I didn't expect to be on a call with over a dozen black banjo players from all over the country of different ages and backgrounds and skill levels, all seeking community.
It's what I'd desperately been looking for. I wasn't alone. I wanted to thank you for inviting me to your class because now I have something to look forward to the first Saturday of every month. Yes, I mean, I enjoyed the class that I had before. I would go to a physical space, we'd play. Again, I was like, I'm a black person. But like...
I was seeking out other Black banjo players, and I wasn't getting anybody. And in one meeting... being in your study group, met like three people in my city, and now we've got plans that we're going to meet at the end of the month. And like bring our banjos and talk and like have community. And I just really wanted to thank you for that because like that was like.
Such a joy and such like an incredible opportunity. I'm so glad to hear that. I mean, that that is definitely my intention. And I feel like if that is happening, then like. what is happening with Black Banjo Reclamation Project is working and it's like fulfilling its cause, you know? Is there anything you think I should work on before our next study session? Like, do you, what do you think I should work on?
have to answer that a little more specifically. Like I would be asking you questions about what you were working on in the class and stuff. And I'm still working on my, like, like my, my, uh, my chords in the key of G. That's what I'm still like really working on. I feel like you're at work right now, but I would be like, yeah, just whip out your banjo real quick and just show me, you know, or whatever. It's right here. I don't mind embarrassing myself. It's okay. Alright, so, like...
I keep wanting to use my thumb, and I know I'm not supposed to use my thumb. And you can. I mean, have you ever seen how, like, Jimi Hendrix plays guitar? Well, he was left-handed, though. But, like, there's different... there's blues fingering for guitar for example where you can like grip your thumb around it if you can make it work if that's your anatomy then like that's what it is
you can slow it way down because you want to be able to make all of the beats consistent. So if you have to go this slow... In order to get the chord change on your left hand, you want to do it at like the slowest pace that will allow you to have fluidity. The fluidity has never even occurred to me until you just showed me. Because I'm trying to go.
I actually heard about the Black Banjo Reclamation Project because a listener told me that I needed to check it out. Hannah said that they got the urge to create the project in 2018. I was coming out of an artist residency where... I was learning a lot about different types of harm that white people cause to Black people in artists' spaces. And it really just dawned on me to be like...
I need to be asking people for banjos. That was just the first initiative of it, was receiving banjos in the name of reparations and distributing them to Black people who had expressed. explicitly that they wanted to be on a journey with the banjo now hannah didn't give me a banjo but they've welcomed me into this space and encouraged me to respect this instrument that i feel this connection to
Respect, which Hannah feels like should be the bare minimum. Like how many times have you been subjected to hearing... a joke about a banjo from a white person, little do people actually stop and think this is actually like offensive. It turns out. There are endless jokes that are all basically alluding to the same thing, that banjo players aren't very smart and that the banjo sounds annoying. When you're talking about an instrument that has already gone through so much insult.
Like specifically through minstrelsy and then to have somebody make jokes like, oh, how does the banjo, whatever. I don't know what the hell you're saying, but it's not something that's supporting my motherfucking banjo journey. Part of Hannah's journey involved learning how to make banjos. I have learned to make a banjo because I wanted to create banjos, but also because I wanted other people to have that.
that knowledge, and I didn't want that knowledge to feel like it was being hella gatekept. They say they get requests all the time from Black folk who want gored banjos, seeking a more traditional kind of instrument. These instruments are hard to come by and expensive, so they run workshops to help people build them. But everyone's journey is different. I'm not making a banjo.
I'm going to buy a banjo from somebody. A white dude made my banjo. Full stop. Rhiannon Giddens' banjo is also a very old school style. A style directly from 1858. because she feels a cultural and ancestral connection to it. The instrument itself is just a totally different kind of banjo. Despite the fact that it was used by Blackface minstrels, it was also played by...
African-American banjo players like this was just the it was the tool it was the banjo of the time and for me it felt like a warmer way into dedicating my life to the banjo than the modern banjo which has so much modern caricature around it modern ideas media manipulation around that image of what a banjo player is and who a banjo player is but those caricatures aren't my idea of a banjo player
I mean, in the past, you've got Dink Roberts, you've got Elizabeth Cotton, you've got Etta Baker, and now Rhiannon Giddens is my gold standard. But while searching for a Black banjo community, I realized that whether you're starting out or have become the premier banjo player in the culture, that need for connection persists. This music didn't come from a star-making machine. It came from community.
It came from working class people making a life together. And the more that we try to make it fit into that music industry model of one person at the top, the music's going to die. The music needs community. It needs sharing. It needs collaboration. Or it will turn into something that we do not recognize. This coming April, Rhiannon Giddens is hosting her first festival called Biscuits and Banjos.
It's an entire weekend of Black folk artists coming together and vibing in community. She's even reuniting on stage with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I'm so happy you're learning the banjo. Keep up with it. If you come to Biscuits and Banjos, we'll sit down and have a little have a little moment. Banjo moment. And Hannah Marie with the Black Banjo Reclamation Project has created monthly spaces for culture and connection. And.
The community building worked because I finally found some people I was looking for. Oh, hi! Hi, I'm Parker. Nice to meet you. I met with four other Black banjo players from the study group. We met in person with our banjos and just played. C. C? No, okay. Let me see your C. And that's our show. You can follow us at Instagram at NPR Codeswitch. If email is more your thing, ours is codeswitch at NPR.org. And subscribe to the podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also subscribe to the Code Switch newsletter by going to npr.org slash Code Switch newsletter. Just a reminder that signing up for Code Switch Plus is a great way to support our show and public media and... We get to listen to every episode sponsor free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash code switch. This episode was produced by Jess Kung and myself. It was edited by Courtney Stein. Our engineer was Josephine Neonai.
Special thanks to Jeff Wiley, Kyle Tiggs, Alina Migoni, Skylar Swinson, Kayvon Jones, and a very special thanks to Diane Wu for giving me her banjo. The song you're hearing right now is from Hannah Mary. And a big shout out to the rest of the Code Switch Massive. Christina Kala, Xavier Lopez, Leah Dinella, Dahlia Mortada, Viralyn Williams, and Jean Demby. I'm B.A. Parker.
Hydrate. How do you take care of your nails? Sorry. I just rip them off on the left hand and then I just, you know, try to, I don't like. I don't unzip my pants like with my pointer finger because that's my banjo nail. That's commitment. Yeah, there's no magic. It's just, you know, you just try to take care of it, you know. But I can also play without it. You have to eventually.
Play without the nail. And it's a duller sound, but, you know, whatever. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation. Working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. And if you enter NPR's Tiny Desk contest between now and February... February 10th, you could be next. Unsigned musicians can find out more and see the official rules at npr.org slash tiny desk contest.
Hey, it's Robin Hilton from NPR Music. Many years ago, I helped start the Tiny Desk concert series. And right now, NPR is looking for the next great undiscovered musician to perform behind the famous desk. Think you've got what it takes? Submit a video of you playing an original song to the Tiny Desk contest by February 10th. Find out more and see the official rules at npr.org slash tinydeskcontest.