Few banjo makers produce them on a commercial scale. As country music still fails to properly reckon with its racism, cultural appropriation and white supremacy (of which the banjo is a big part), this project is vital. You can hardly get more connected to the land than that. Editor’s note: Culture is a process of creating, communicating, and contesting values and meanings, a process where something as seemingly small as a lowercase or uppercase letter can convey significant nuances. Photo by Avé-Ameenah Long. In our conversations, she’s often cast the banjo as … Bo & Lebo. The Black Banjo Reclamation Project focuses on building cultural access in Diasporic African communities to traditional indigenous ways. Hannah Mayree representing the Black Banjo Reclamation Project – Talk – Banjo History and Culture: 8:30: Kilborn Alley – Performance: 9:00: Jake Blount – Performance: 9:30: Kyshona Armstrong – Performance: 9:50: Hot Club of Cowtown – Performance Films include Forgotten Farmers: African-American Land Loss, The Young Black Farmers Defying a Legacy of Discrimination, and broadcast journalist Edward R Murrow’s 1960 documentary Harvest of Shame.You’ll also enjoy music by the Black Banjo Reclamation Project plus … “But White people do have a bad habit in this country of taking something from another culture, whitewashing it, and profiting off of it to the exclusion of that cultural community. Through our extensive network across the country, our work promotes conversation and action in healing the ancestral, historical, cultural and racially dividing wounds in this country and the world. All musical instruments are subject to change: today’s Fender Stratocaster, for example, bears little resemblance, visually or sonically, to a C.F. With proper care, that seed will grow into a gourd, which may be harvested in 180 days. In the spirit of inclusivity, we respect the wishes of our collaborators in capitalizing—or not—racial, ethnic, and cultural terms. One day, Mayree hopes to complete the loop and connect with Daniel Jatta and other major figures in West African music and ethnomusicology. We will be hosting one day of live and recorded events on Sunday, November 8, 2020, with an introduction and live recording listening session on Saturday, November 7, 2020 and extra bonus content made available for participants. Finances are uncertain for many right now, so I’m open to negotiating a rate that work with your budget or means. Black Banjo Reclamation Project Jon Langford and Sally Timms Los Coast. Those African instruments never made the journey on slave ships bound for the Americas, but the technology for building them was carried in the heads of the passengers along with their memories of the music. The vibrations are warmer, it’s a little more rooted, and it sounds a lot earthier.”. A recent pre-COVID pilgrimage to the Mississippi Delta inspired this story. After the gourd has been left for about a year to harden and cure, the banjo-building process can begin. We thank you for your support! “This organization at its core is a land-based project,” she added. Introduction by Allison Russell. All ages will have age appropriate activities. This summer, Chapter 510 & the Dept. And if the day ever comes when you’ve grown tired of your gourd banjo, no problem: it’s almost entirely biodegradable. In solidarity, Maggie We decolonize our relationship to creativity from an afro-centric perspective, working to connect people with their … Black Banjo Reclamation Project. The story of the banjo goes back centuries, to West Africa, where folk lute instruments like the Senegambian akonting have long been in use. The inspiration [for the BBRP] is the earth, really, because that’s where the instruments are coming from.”. One way to give the story of the banjo a fresh start is to tell it to kids. It does this in two connected ways: by producing most of the components and by teaching banjo-building skills in community workshops. It’s been a persistent trend throughout the popular music industry for decades.”. It would be a factory-made object with a round wooden or metal body, with a synthetic, drum-like membrane stretched taut across the body, and four or five metal strings spanning a fretted neck. It’s topped off with goat skin stretched across the opening in the hollow gourd body. A vision of banjos coming from the earth may take a number of twenty-first-century people by surprise. A banjoist, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, Hannah shares harmonies through acoustic live vocal looping and reminds us of the empowerment found in our relationship to the earth, music and community. The Black Banjo Reclamation Project considers the ideology of self-determination and functions “through perspectives of Afro-futurism,” a philosophy shaped by black musicians, artists, scholars and innovators who aim to construct how the future could look. No one is suggesting that the banjo and its means of manufacture, along with the music played on it, ought to be immune to evolution and adaptation. Of all the melodic musical instruments in the world, perhaps none is more connected to the land it comes from than the banjo. Doobie Decibel System Duo. He lives in Hong Kong. The Black Banjo Reclamation Project is a multi-cultural collaboration that supports the healing of historical and ancestral trauma in all communities through our relationship with the earth and her people. The mellow, earthy tones should come as no surprise. Love said his self-made instrument allowed him to tune into his ancestors. Either way, the context is almost always White, because for hundreds of years the story of the banjo has been told from an exclusively White point of view. “And we definitely focus on the community that we serve in terms of Black folks.”. “Correcting the history of the banjo and making it clear that this instrument, so central to American cultural history that so many White people have their personal identities wrapped up in, is in fact African American, forces a shift in understanding the country’s history as well as personal cultural identifications,” Ross claimed. Black Banjo Reclamation Project founders Hannah Mayree and Carlton “Seemore Love” Dorsey, with banjos made by Brooks Masten of Brooks Banjos in Portland, Oregon. Quite literally, every main component of a gourd banjo—one that’s built in the manner of its African precursors—arises from the land. The Black Banjo Reclamation Project is in the process of expanding their reach by working with partners in the Caribbean as well as Black farmers in Virginia and Alabama. One solution for lowering the price of entry is to make a banjo of your own. This journey of musical and cultural rediscovery begins by simply planting a seed in the ground. It takes two people to stretch an animal skin tightly over the opening in the banjo’s gourd body. In an interview via Zoom she said, “We want to inspire everyone to reach back to who their ancestors were, and who we are now, and how we can honor that and bring integrity back into what we’re doing with music. It’s providing lesson space, facilities, teaching, and teachers, and the instruments themselves, to … “Everyone that’s part of this project is offering something that is furthering our healing as a community,” Mayree said. In recent decades, scholars and master musicians such as Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta have kept alive the traditions of these instruments, which ethnomusicologists worldwide are finally recognizing as living ancestors of the banjo. By the early twentieth century, the mass-produced banjo had become a symbol of White supremacist culture—so much so that in later decades people sometimes had difficulty accepting the fact of its African origins. We delve into the complex lives of individuals and communities to find what inspires and motivates people as they respond to animating questions at the center of contemporary life. The average American, if asked to conjure an image of a banjo, would likely picture the modern version of the instrument. Join our mailing list and help us with a tax-deductible donation today. Gardening, tanning, and woodworking with hand and power tools are all skills applied in building a banjo. In fact, she calls it “part of the colonization of the instrument.”, Veteran banjo builder Pete Ross agrees. We tell unforgettable stories about people, ideas, and a wide array of arts and traditions that help us explore where we have come from and where we are going. Like most gourd banjos, Love’s has a wooden neck, wooden bridge, and wooden friction-style tuning pegs. And local organizations Don't Shoot PDX, Black Resilience Fund, and Unite Oregon, Wa Na Wari (Seattle). Honor Black History Month with a dive into the history and legacy of Black farming in the United States and globally. In the mid-1800s, minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment, where White performers in blackface played banjos and sang and danced in a caricature of Black music and culture. In addition to well-known names such as Emmylou Harris, Rhiannon Giddens, Yola, and Buddy Miller, we’ll be treated to the Black Banjo Reclamation Project, Sierra Ferrell, and some exciting duos I like a lot: Jon Langford & Sally Timms, Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert, Laurie Lewis & Nina Gerber, and The War and Treaty, among others. She is the founder of the Black Banjo Reclamation Project: Cultural Reclamation through Reparations ~ Cultural Revival Through Community. The 10-year-old teamed up with musician Hannah Mayree, co-founder of the Black Banjo Reclamation Project, and the two met every week online to work on their song. The banjo has been on a diasporic journey the same way that many of us and our bloodlines have been. Let's take action in support of Black lives! It’s the indelible link to the continent of Africa, the geographic and cultural origin of that range of instruments which have evolved into the modern banjo. As a result, regardless of the style, most banjo music today is played on factory-made fretted instruments—or, for the lucky few, on banjos crafted by high-end luthiers commanding thousands of dollars. The Black Banjo Reclamation Project is a vehicle to return instruments of African origin to the descendants of their original makers. At Smithsonian Folklife, we include many perspectives as we build cultural understanding. “All of us are farmers, and all of us are herbalists, and we work with plants and food sovereignty, increasing our ability to have self-determination through plants and through the earth and through natural things. “Music, like food and language, is a fluid culture, and folk music picks up all kinds of influences as it moves through time and different communities,” she said via email. Hannah Mayree is the founder of the Black Banjo Reclamation Project and an Oakland, California-based singer-songwriter and banjo player. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with Hannah Mayree, founder of the Black Banjo Reclamation Project, quite a bit about her unprecedented campaign to put banjos back into the hands of Black people. North American Indigenous Flute vs. “Native American Flute”: A ...>, In the Days of Peony Flowers: A Contemporary Reflection on Chinese>, Kulning: The Swedish Herding Calls of the North, A Choral Reckoning with the Imperfect History of the United States, Ashley Minner, Reclaiming Space for the Lumbee Indians of Baltimore, The Folkloric Roots of the QAnon Conspiracy, Restoring a National Treasure, Stone by Stone. Gourd banjos are not often heard in American music today, if only because they’re relatively hard to come by. Led by teaching artist Tiffany Golden, the students in Song & Story Camp wrote original songs that were composed and recorded by their musicians.These songs represent the world we are living in today. 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