The banjo was born in the Caribbean in the 1600s, originally created by enslaved Africans and their descendants. The first banjos were gourd-bodied instruments that were strikingly similar to the various different traditional plucked lutes with gourd or calabash bodies still found throughout West Africa today.
In recent years, banjo roots research-- that is, research into the banjo's early history, with a focus on its Afro-Caribbean origins and West African heritage -- has blossomed into a major field of study. It combines seeking out and studying related/parallel "living" music and musical instrument traditions with investigations of the historical record. In addition to classic "desk research," banjo roots researchers also engage in field research-- at present, primarily in West Africa, the wellspring of the banjo's African ancestry.
This site is part of the Banjo Roots Network, a projected series of related sites on MySpace that will explore the many different aspects of the history of the banjo family of plucked lutes as well as serve as a platform for public outreach and education through which we can share the latest findings of recent banjo roots research. The Banjo Roots Network is a 'work-in-progress' being created and hosted by Shlomo Pestcoe and Greg C. Adams. Our hope is that it will serve as a springboard for dialogue and collaboration between researchers within the banjo community as well as scholars working in different, but related disciplines.
(Please note: This site is independent and not affiliated with The Akonting Center for Senegambian Folk Music or its American support group Friends of the Akonting Center (FOAC). The information presented below is offered as a courtesy.)
THE AKONTING CENTER (Mandinary, Gambia)
July 14-16, 2006 marked the official opening in Mandinary, Gambia of The Akonting Center for Senegambian Folk Music, a grassroots, non-governmental, cultural initiative started by Gambian Jola folk music scholar Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta and Swedish banjo historian Ulf Jägfors. It's organized under the auspices of The Chossan Center for Senegambian Culture, a community-based NGO which strives to perpetuate the traditional agrarian way of life and folkways of the various peoples of Senegambia as the foundation for progressive communal self-development on a democratic cooperative basis.
The mission of The Akonting Center is to:
Research, document, and perpetuate the endangered string instrument traditions of the various peoples of Senegambia, such as plucked lutes (e.g. the Jola ekonting [akonting], Manjak bunchundo, Wolof xalam, etc.), bowed lutes (e.g. the Wolof riti, Fula nyaanyooru, etc.), and harp-lutes (e.g. the Jola furakaf, Mandinka simbingo, etc.);
Offer courses on these instruments and their music, taught by tradition-bearers from across the region;
Serve as a performance venue for traditional regional artists;
Serve as a cooperative fair-trade marketplace for traditional instrument makers to sell and distribute their products.
For more information on The Akonting Center, contact:
Daniel Jatta
Jola ekonting (akonting) masters Ekona & Remi Jatta of Mlomp (Casamance) take a break from making akontings to sing and play a traditional Jola song. The ekonting that Ekona is seen here playing (center) was actually made by American gourd instrument maker Paul Sedgwick! (see Paul's blog on this page)
The ekontings that you see being made here are now available from Elderly Instruments!!
The Akonting Center, Mandinary, Gambia, 7/06. (Video by Greg C. Adams)
Inaugural events included The First International Conference on the African Origins of the Banjo. This was the first ever meeting in Africa of scholars and musicians from different parts of the world with their West African counterparts that focused specifically on extant Senegambian string instruments and their kinship with the banjo. Please see the pertaining blogs on this site for reports by participants in this event and their experiences in Gambia and Senegal.
Presenting various types of West African gourd-bodied
folk/artisan plucked lutes at The First International Conference on the African Origins of the Banjo, from left to right: the Jola ekonting (akonting); the hitherto unknown xalam gesere (Gambia), recently discovered by Ben Nelson; and the Frafra koliko (Ghana).
The Akonting Center, Mandinary, Gambia, 7/06. (Photo by Greg C. Adams)
The Akonting Center, Mandinary, Gambia, 7/06. (Photo by Greg C. Adams)
Become a Tradition Sponsor: Please Contribute to The Akonting Center Fund
Please support the vital work of The Akonting Center by donating to The Akonting Center Fund and becoming a Tradition Sponsor. Your generous contribution will go directly to The Akonting Center in Gambia and the ongoing effort to document and perpetuate the string instrument traditions of the various Senegambian peoples. Likewise, it will provide practical support for older Senegambian tradition-bearers as well as encouragement for younger local folk artists to carry on these traditions.
Please bear in mind that, in economic terms, this is an extremely depressed region. A few dollars go a very long way here... literally. Any contribution you choose to make-- regardless of amount-- will be welcomed and fully acknowledged with the utmost gratitude and appreciation.
To make a tax-deductible contribution, please make your check out to Fractured Atlas with "2nd Mind Music/ (FOAC)" in the Memo Section. Fractured Atlas is a non-profit arts support organization legally recognized as a 501c3 public charity.
Please send your check to:
The Akonting Center Fund
c/o Eli Smith
280 Rector Place, 8K
New York, NY, 10280
Please let us know if you would like to be included in our Tradition Sponsors' Honor Roll which is published here (see below) and in all our literature. Also be sure to indicate how you'd like to be credited and if you're making your donation to honor the memory of loved ones or commemorate a joyous occasion such as a wedding, birth, graduation, and so on.
American banjoist Rhiannon Giddens getting an akonting lesson from Jola master musician Remi Jatta.
The Akonting Center, Mandinary, Gambia, 7/06. (Photo by Greg Adams)
TRADITION SPONSORS HONOR ROLL
Our profound gratitude and appreciation to all the generous Tradition Sponsors listed below who've already contributed to The Akonting Center Fund... and to those who are considering becoming Tradition Sponsors as well.
AN EKONTING MASTER'S FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE BANJO
This video was shot July 9, 2004 in Kotu, Gambia, West Africa. I had been taking ekonting (akonting) lessons with Esa Jesus Jah-Jarju all morning and I decided to bring out a banjo that Daniel Jatta had been keeping in Gambia and had loaned to me for my final week of stay. At first, I gave the banjo to Jesus tuned to standard 'G' tuning: gDGBD. He played around with it a bit, but couldn't produce anything coherent. Then, I re-tuned the banjo to what I believed would be an "ekonting tuning" based on analyzing many different ekontings during my stay. This was the tuning I used: g-B-A, where 'g' was the standard 5th string 'g', 'B' was the third string tuned up (from standard 'G'), and 'A' was the first string tuned down (from standard 'D'). Once I showed him
where to fret the first string to get the other two notes which make up the
ekonting scale (5th and 7th frets), he got it, and eventually worked into a
wonderful rendition of his original tune called, Pom Parira.
JOLA GIRLS' DANCES REVEAL CONNECTION TO EARLY AFRICAN AMERICAN DANCE TRADITIONS
At the July '06 opening of The Akonting Center in Mandinary, Gambia, one of the groups participating in the inaugural festivities was Si Jamboukan, a traditional Jola music and dance performance troupe from Casamance (southern Senegal). The Si Jamboukan Troupe features a dance group made up entirely of young Jola girls from the rural district of Mlomp. In a break from performing, the girls got together to dance just for the fun of it like they do back home. Swedish banjo historian Ulf Jägfors was on hand to film the informal dancing.
What's so astounding about this impromptu performance is that it reveals an incredible parallel between these Jola dances and early African American traditional folk dancing.
In the beginning of the video we see the girls demonstrating rhythmic body-patting which they call pat-pat. This is very similar to traditional African American clapping plays-- also known by the more modern term hand jive-- such as patting juba and hambone. As in patting juba and hambone, the Jola pat-pat combines body-patting with a percussive step to keep time.
The girls then gather around and sing dance songs to their own hand-clapping accompaniment, often in complex rhythmic patterns. Each girl takes a turn in the "center" doing a step. This is remarkably like the a cappella African American ring plays that are still preserved in the traditional Gullah culture of the Sea Islands along the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida.
Likewise, you can find parallels in African American tradition for the many of the steps these girls are dancing: the Charleston-- when they crouch down with their legs apart and swing the knees in and out; Buck Dance with percussive heel-and-toe stepping; and Flat-Footing with gliding steps in which the dancer's feet barely lift of the ground.
DANCING WITHOUT DRUMS: THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN JUBA DANCE & THE JOLA GIRLS' DANCES
In the early 19th century, observers of African American slave dancing on southern plantations made note of a specific social dance, the Juba Dance. Unlike other slave dance forms which were reported to have been danced to the music of the fiddle and/or banjo-- often backed-up by a tambourine and/or found-object homemade percussive instruments like the jawbone, bones (clappers), pots, pans, etc.-- the Juba Dance was not accompanied by instrumental music. Rather, Juba (also Juber) was specifically done only to a cappela singing/chanting and rhythmic patting combined with foot stomping accompaniment by a juba "patter" or "beater" and/or a group of patters" or "beaters."
James Edward Hungerford (1814-1883) in his autobiographical novel, The Old Plantation and What I Gathered There in an Autumn Month [of 1832] (published in 1859, the relevant excerpts appear in Readings in Black American Music [1983], edited by Eileen Southern), give us a very vivid description of a slave "juber dance" on a plantation in Maryland in the 1830s:
"Upon benches placed against the outside wall of the hut upon each side of the door sat several older Negroes of both sexes from the neighboring quarters. Ike was singing the words of a jig in a monotonous tone of voice, beating time meanwhile with his hands alternately against each other and against his body. To this music about a dozen or so Negro boys and girls were dancing on the hard-beaten ground before 'The old cabin door.'"
"Their idea of excellence in dancing seemed to be that it consisted in a rapid motion of the feet; and some of the dancers absolutely moved their so swiftly as to cause them to be indistinct in the moonlight; yet even in this rapid action the blows of the feet kept time and tune with the music, and gave it emphasis. The scene was one of hearty glee; all seemed to be enjoying themselves vastly...."
"As soon as she joined the throng, Clotilda, without a moment's pause, whirled herself among and through the crowd of dancers, till, having the opposite side to that at which she had entered, she turned and faced them, and began to recite the following verses in a shrill sing-song voice, keeping time to the measure, as Ike had done, by beating her hands sometimes against her sides, and patting the ground with her feet. An interval of some seconds between the verses afforded time for dancers to follow the direction given in each; but the beating of the hands and feet continued without intermission. It should be understood that, in making the imitations mentioned below, the dancer has to take care that the motions of his feet keep time to the measure...."
It's interesting to note that as the Juber Dance finished, the "juba beater" Clotilda announces, "'Now, you kin dance your jigs un reels.... Uncle Porringer, wone-you gib er fiddle tune?' The fiddle was soon brought from Uncle Porringer's quarter, which was near, and the young Negroes arranged themselves for a dance, a lively and rattling jig tune was struck up...." Clearly, a very strict distinction was made between the Juba Dance and the fiddle-accompanied jigs and reels.
At this point it's important to stress that the stage versions of the Juba Dance seen in blackface minstrel shows from 1843 on had very little to do with the actual dance of the slaves as described above. The Juba Dance of Minstrelsy-fame-- like the minstrel show "Walk Around"-- was just a platform for showcasing the musical, terpsichorean, and, most of all, comic talents of the members of the minstrel troupe. Unlike the slaves' a cappella Juba, the minstrel Juba Dance was invariably done to accompaniment of the banjo and/or fiddle.
As to why the slaves used only body-patting and hand-clapping for the Juba Dance, the conventional wisdom traces the roots of this to the aftermath of the 1739 slave uprising known as The Stono Rebellion, when drumming among the slaves was banned, ostensibly, to prevent signaling. According to this hypothesis, the slaves developed body-patting and hand-clapping accompaniment for dancing in lieu of the banned drums.
This reasoning is based on the assumption that the dancing of the enslaved Africans and their descendants was centered around drumming, which, in turn, stems from the rather simplistic generalization that all African dances are drum-based. However, as we can see from the dancing of the Jola girls in this video, there are traditional West African dance forms that are done to clapping and/or patting without drums or instrumental accompaniment of any kind. Of course, this is not to say that the Jola don't have drum-based dances; there's a rich Jola drumming tradition known as bougarabou and dances to go along with it. Still, what we see here indicates that West African dancing is a lot more varied in form and style than the stereotypical cultural pigeonholing has allowed.
In the context of slavery in America, the ban on drumming was not universal. For instance, in New York State in the 18th and early 19th centuries, African-rooted drumming by enslaved and free Africans Americans was reported at Pinkster celebrations in the Albany area and New York City. Yet, the presence of drumming here apparently had no bearing on the development of African American traditions of backing up solo dancing with just rhythmic body-patting and hand-clapping.
In The Market Book: A History of the Public Markets of the City of New York (1862), Thomas F. DeVoe described slaves from Long Island dancing in Lower Manhattan at Catherine Market on Catherine Slip prior to the abolition of slavery in New York State in 1827:
"The Negroes who visited here were principally slaves from Long Island, who had leave of their masters for certain holidays, among which Pinkster was the principal one... So they would be hired by some joking butcher or individual to engage in a jig or break-down, as that was one of their pastimes at home on the barn floor, or in a frolic...."
"Being several together in parties, each had his particular 'shingle' brought with him as part of his stock and trade. This board was usually about five or six feet long, of large width, with its particular spring in it, and to keep it in its place while dancing on it, it was held down by one on each end. Their music or time was usually given by one of their party, which was done by beating their hands on the sides of their legs and the noise of the heel."
Rhythmic body-patting and hand-clapping to accompany solo dance continued in African American tradition well into the 20th century. In Mike Seeger's documentary Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance: Buck, Flatfoot and Tap (1987), African American traditional musicians/dancers Quentin "Fris" Holloway, John D. Holeman and Algae Mae Hinton demonstrate the way buck and tap dancers, back in the day, used to provide their own accompaniment when there wasn't a musical instrument around by taking turns at "patting" back-up for each other.
While the Juba Dance disappeared by the end of the 19th century as social dance styles changed, Patting Juba survived in African American tradition as solo hand jive, like the related Hambone, and a children's singing/dancing game, what tradition-bearer Bessie Jones called a clapping play. For more information, please check out the book Step It Down: Games, Plays, Songs & Stories from the Afro-American Heritage (1972, 1987), by Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes
The songs on our MP3 player are recent non-commercial field recordings of traditional Jola musicians playing their people's folk lute, the ekonting (akonting). Cuts 2-4 were recorded by British banjo historian/banjoist
Nick Bamber and are presented here with his kind permission as well as those of the artists.
WHAT'S UP WITH THE DIFFERENT SPELLINGS?
Like most West African ethnic languages, the Jola language, in its various different forms-- primarily Jola-Fonyi (the most widely spoken form of Jola and one of the twelve officially recognized languages of Senegal) and Jola-Kasa-- was not originally written. As a result, how transliterated Jola words are spelled may vary, even though they are pronounced the same when spoken. For example, one of the most common Jola surnames is pronounced jah-tah and is spelled Jatta in The Gambia, while in Senegal, it's Diatta.
The same is true when it comes to the very name of this ethnic group: pronounced 'joh-lah', it's spelled Jola in The Gambia and Diola in Senegal. It should be noted that in Casamance (southern Senegal), which has the largest Jola population, the designation Joola was once used in certain areas. However, nowadays this term has pretty much given way to the aforementioned designation Diola as the preferred appellation throughout that region.
(Note: In Guinea-Bissau, the Jola are called something altogether different: Floup. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to encounter the Jola and they were the source of the term 'Floup' [also Falupo, Feloop, Floop, etc.], which is how the Jola were designated in many European sources on through the early 20th century. However, as most of the members of this people prefer the appellation Jola for describing their ethnicity, that's what we use here.)
The name of the Jola folk lute is pronounced 'eh-kon-ting'. It has been transliterated as akonting, ekonting, econtine, kotin and so on. In Casamance (southern Senegal)-- the heartland of Jola culture and its folk lute tradition-- the preferred spelling for the instrument's designation is ekonting. This being the case, ekonting will be our 'default' spelling of the Jola folk lute's name from now on.
Ekonting (akonting) master Ekona Diatta (Jatta) of Mlomp,
Casamance (southern Senegal) performing the traditional Jola song Gambia during a visit to neighboring Gambia in July 2007. Sitting next to Ekona on his right is his cousin, Gambian Jola scholar/musician Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta. The video was shot by American old-time banjoist/fiddler
Chuck Levy on 7/18/07 at his hotel close to Mandinary, Daniel's home village in The Gambia.
A leading physician as well as an accomplished musician, Chuck was in The Gambia for two weeks in July '07 as part of his effort to establish AIM for Africa Akonting/Banjo Collaborative, a partnership and cultural exchange program between Florida arts and health care organizations, on the one hand, and
The Akonting Center for Senegambian Folk Music (Mandinary, Gambia. See column on the left) and the Royal Victorian Teaching Hospital (Banjul, The Gambia), on the other.
To see more of Chuck's wonderful videos of his trip to The Gambia-- including some great footage of Jola ekonting music and traditional dancing, as well as Fulbe (Fula) fiddle music-- please visit:Gambia Videos
Jola ekonting (akonting) player Jo Diatta from Youtou in Casamance (southern Senegal) performs a traditional song from his home village, Ampa Youtou (Child of Youtou), with family and friends. Jo's brother Paul Diatta is heard singing, off-camera, later in the film-- first in falsetto, then in his natural voice. Dakar, Senegal, 7/06.
This video was shot and edited by Swedish banjo historian Ulf Jägfors. To see Ulf's other field-recorded videos of traditional West African music and dance, please visit:
www.youtube.com/user/UlfJagfors
THE EKONTING
A 'LIVING LINK' TO THE BANJO'S WEST AFRICAN HERITAGE
The
ekonting (akonting) is the traditional folk lute of the Jola (also Diola, Joola, Floup), a West African people found in Casamance (southern Senegal), The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau. It's a banjo-like plucked spike lute with a skin-headed gourd body, an upright bipedal floating bridge, and three strings of varying lengths, the longest being the first string (closest to the player's lap). The top third string (closest to the player's chest) is short, similar to the short "thumb string" on the 4-string early gourd banjo (c.1690-1840) and its offspring, the 5-string banjo, which first emerged in the United States during the early 1840s.
The Jola ekonting (pronounced 'eh-kon-ting'; plural, si'konting [pronounced 'see-kon-ting']) is part of a unique subgroup of the West African plucked spike lute family from the Upper Guinea Coast region of Greater Senegambia (the eminent West African historian Boubacar Barry's appellation for the historic lands that include present-day Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Mali, and Mauritania). In addition to the Jola ekonting, this Upper Guinea Coast/ Greater Senegambia group includes five other very similar gourd-bodied 3-string lutes:
The bunchundo of the Manjak (Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, Senegal)
The ñopata of the Bujogo (Bijago Islands [Guinea-Bissau])
The busunde of the Papel (Guinea-Bissau)
The kisinta and kusunde of the Balanta (Guinea-Bissau)
These are just the ones that are currently known. It's very likely that, in the course of ongoing field research, more previously unknown ethnic traditions of related gourd-bodied lutes will be found in the Upper Guinea Coast/ Greater Senegambia region.
All of these instruments are classified as folk lutes; that is, they're played by vernacular 'folk' musicians for whom music-making is not a vocation. This is in sharp contrast to the music cultures of many other West African peoples in which playing plucked lutes is the purview of music/word artisans, be they griots (i.e. members of the music/word artisan castes of certain Islamized peoples who share similar rigid tripartite caste systems) or non-griot professional/semi-professional musicians and praise-singers.
The Jola, Manjak (Manjaco, Manjago), Bujogo (Bijago), Papel, and Balanta are neighboring rice-farming peoples with similar cultures and social systems. Their traditional village-based agrarian societies are non-hierarchical without the tripartite caste system of their Mande, Wolof, and Fulbe (Fula, Fulani, Peul) neighbors. This being the case, these peoples have no griot caste nor do they have traditions of professional/semi-professional music-making and praise-singing (i.e. composing and performing laudatory songs for gratuities). Amongst the Jola, Manjak, Bujogo, Papel, and Balanta, playing the lute-- like all other forms of music-making-- is a vernacular social activity open to all, rather than being the exclusive domain of specialist music/word artisans.
At first glance, the folk lutes of these peoples look practically identical. They all are 3-stringed with a drum-like gourd body and a large bipedal floating bridge that sits on the body's head. These instruments all have a long full-spike neck that rests in parallel groves, set in the upper rim of the lute's gourd body, and extends the body's full length to pass over its tail end. As on all West African plucked spike lutes, the necks on the folk lutes of the Upper Guinea Coast/ Greater Senegambia are devoid of frets. Likewise, their strings are affixed to the neck and tuned by means of sliding tuning rings made of knotted cord, leather or fabric.
An interesting footnote: The neck is made from a thick stalk of papyrus, known throughout Senegambia by the Mande term bang (also bangoe, bangjolo, bung, bungo). Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta-- the Jola scholar from Gambia who, in the mid-1980s, pioneered the research and documentation of the ekonting and bunchundo-- has suggested that the word 'bang' and its many variants may have been the root for the appellation banjo as well as its cognates banja, banjar,
bangar, bangil and so on.
With the one exception of the Balanta kusunde, the top third string (closest to the player's chest) on all of these instruments is short and played 'open' (i.e. not noted by being stopped by the player's fingers). On the kusunde, the first string (closest to the player's lap) is the short open string, just like on plucked spike lutes exclusive to griot lutenists with three or more strings (e.g. the Wolof xalam, the Bamana/Maninke n'goni, the Fulbe hoddu, the Soninke gambare, etc.).
Yet, there are significant differences between the various members of the Upper Guinea Coast/Greater Senegambia subgroup of the West African plucked lute family. By way of example, let's look at the discrepancies between the Jola ekonting, Manjak bunchundo and Bujogo ñopata:
String Configuration. The string configurations on the bunchundo and ñopata consist of two long strings of equal length and a short top third string (closest to the player's chest). This is achieved by using the tuning ring of the shorter of the two long strings to 'capo' the longer string, thereby equalizing the lengths of the two strings. On the bunchundo, the first string is the longest and is capoed by the second string's tuning ring, while on the ñopata it's just the opposite.
Conversely, on the ekonting-- reflecting the more common West African approach to lute stringing-- the lengths of its three strings vary exponentially from its top short third string to its first string which is the longest. This being the case, it could be argued that the bunchundo and the ñopata are more like the 4-string early gourd banjo and the later 5-string banjo in this respect than the Jola ekonting.
Playing Technique.
Noting the Strings (Typically, left hand). On both the bunchundo and the ñopata, noting consists of the two long strings being stopped simultaneously at the same place by a single finger barring both strings. In sharp contrast, on the Jola ekonting only the first string (the longest closest to the player's lap) is stopped; the second and third strings are always played open.
Ekonting music is more melodic in nature than that of the bunchundo and ñopata. Its pentatonic melodic compass consists of five notes: the three open strings plus two additional stopped notes on the first string.
Sounding the Strings (Typically, right hand).
Unlike the Manjak bunchundo, on which the player employs 2-finger up-picking (i.e. finger-picking) to sound its strings, both the Jola ekonting and Bujogo ñopata are down-picked.
Down-picking is the playing technique that the first European American banjo players initially learned from African American musicians in the early 19th century. Referred to as stroke style, it was the most prevalent form of playing the 5-string banjo until the 'guitar style' 3-finger up-picking overshadowed it, beginning in the late 1860s. Nineteenth century stroke style has survived to this very day in the folk traditions of both the black and white communities of the rural South, where it's commonly referred to as frailing, clawhammer, thumping, and so on.
In down-picking (also referred to as down-stroking), the instrument's strings are sounded the fingernail of a single finger (either the index or middle finger) striking a long string in a downward motion, like a plectrum. This action is immediately followed by the player's thumb catching on the top short 'thumb string' to create a rhythmic back-beat accompaniment. In some forms of down-picking, the thumb also comes down to pluck one of the longer strings in a technique Pete Seeger dubbed drop-thumbing.
As stated, the Jola ekonting and Bujogo n'gopata are both down-picked. In the traditional oo'teck style of playing the ekonting, the striking finger (index or middle finger) down-strokes the first string (the ekonting's stopped melody string), while the thumb alternates between the third and seconds open strings. Conversely, in playing the n'gopata, the striking finger alternates between the first and second strings but the thumb stays on the top third string.
In both the Jola and Bujogo approaches to down-picking, we find close parallels to the various forms of banjo down-picking.
Looking at the entirety of sub-Sahara Africa, traditions of plucked lutes predating first contact with Europe in the 15th century and the subsequent Transatlantic Slave Trade can only be found in West Africa. And it is from West Africa that many of the millions of victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade were abducted and transported to the New World.
Here, then, is the ancestral homeland of the banjo.
The earliest forms of the banjo were plucked spike lutes with three to four strings (the top string being a short "thumb string"), drum-like gourd bodies, animal hide "heads" (soundtables), and fretless stick necks. Enslaved Africans in the Caribbean began making and playing these instruments sometime in the early 17th century.
Comparing these early slave banjos to extant African string instruments, it's clear that they are most likely descended from the many different types of similar gourd-bodied folk and artisan lutes found throughout West Africa, like the Jola ekonting (akonting) and its aforementioned Upper Guinea Coast siblings. Other varieties include the Frafra koliko (Ghana), The Kotokoli (also Tem or Temba) lawa (Togo, Benin and Ghana), the Gwari kaburu (Nigeria), and the Hausa gurmi, komo, komsa and wase (Nigeria, Niger, Ghana), to name but a few.
The one distinguishing feature of the early gourd banjos that was passed on to their offspring, the 5-string banjo, is the top short drone string. This string is either called chanterelle or the "thumb string" in the banjo player's vernacular. You can clearly see the short thumb string on the early 4-string banjo depicted in the anonymous folk painting, The Old Plantation (c. 1777-1794), one of the oldest depictions of a banjo in North America. (See the above illustration.)
(Note: The 5-string prototype of the modern banjo-- the "tack-head banjo" with a wooden "cheese box" rim-- didn't appear until the early 1840s. This was the instrument popularized by the blackface minstrels in the 1840s and '50s.)
Even more telling is the fact that this feature is also found on the Jola ekonting (akonting), the Manjak bunchundo, the Papel busunde, the Balanta kisinta, and the Bujogo ngopata. A short thumb string also appears on all the various kinds of wooden-bodied lutes that are exclusive to the griots -- for example, the Bamana (Bambara) ngoni, the Wolof xalam, the FulBe hoddu, and the Soninke gambare. However, on several ethnic variants of the griot lute, the shortest string is not necessarily the top "thumb string." On most forms of 4-string and 5-string griot lutes, there are two short strings-- the top thumb string and the first string. The shortest of these is the first string-- the string closest to the player's lap. The thumb string is longer than the first string, though it's shorter then the two main melody strings. Both of these two short strings serve as unstopped drones.
The top short "thumb string" seems to be a feature unique to West African lutes which have three or more strings and are played with the fingers. Conversely, it's not found those lutes which are played with a flat-pick type plectrum such as the single-string gambra of the Mauritanian
Haratin and most kinds of 2-string lutes like the gourd-bodied koliko of the Frafra (Ghana) and the wooden-bodied garaya of the Hausa (Nigeria, Niger, and Ghana).
For more on the early banjo and its West African roots, please visit our sister sites in The Banjo Roots Network on MySpace:
Gambian Jola folklorist/musician Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta playing the his people's folk lute, the ekonting (akonting), Stockholm, Sweden, 1999. Behind him is a print of The Banjo Player (1856) by America's first noted genre painter
William Sidney Mount (1807-1868) of Setauket, Long Island (New York). Here we can see that both Daniel and the banjo player depicted in the painting are down-picking their instruments. Daniel is using oo'teck, the traditional Jola technique for playing the ekonting, while the banjo player employs stroke style, the earliest documented form of playing the 5-string banjo. For a comparative analysis of these two forms of down-picking, please check out Greg C. Adams' blog on our sister site Banjo Roots: From Africa to the New World: Starting A Conversation-- Early Banjo & West African Ekonting Playing Techniques. (Photo by Ulf Jägfors)
The Playing Technique Connection
Jola 'Oo'teck' & Banjo Down-Picking
Of all the myriad variety of West African plucked lutes, the Jola
ekonting (akonting) stands out as the one instrument today that bears the strongest resemblance to the early gourd banjos. We see this not just in its phsyiology but also in the traditional technique used to play the ekonting, called oo'teck (literally, "to stroke"), which is basically the same as the stroke style, considered to be the oldest extant technique for playing the
banjo.
Both the ekonting oo'teck playing technigue and the banjo
stroke style are forms of down-picking, a technique in which the fingernail of a single finger-- either the index or middle finger-- is used to strike one of the long strings in a downward motion, like a plectrum. This action is immediately followed by the player's thumb catching on the top short "thumb string" to create a rhythmic back-beat accompaniment. The thumb also comes down to pluck one of the longer strings in a technique called drop-thumbing in banjo parlance.
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Remi Jatta of Mlomp, Casamance (southern Senegal) gives the "kan-jan-ka" tuning of the ekonting and demonstrates the Jola oo'teck technique of down-picking with drop-thumbing. (Note: Remi starts off his demonstration with a break down of his picking sequence in which the thumb string is plucked first. However, when he plays up to speed, Remi does lead off with the striker-- in Remi's case, the middle finger-- hitting the first melody string first, followed up by thumb laying down a back-beat, the same as in banjo down-picking.)
This is the second in a three-part video series on playing the akonting created by Ulf Jägfors. To see the other installments in the series as well as Ulf's other field-recorded videos of traditional West African music and dance, please visit:
www.youtube.com/user/UlfJagfors
It was the stroke style of banjodown-picking that European American performers, who came to be known as blackface minstrels, initially learned from African American musicians in the early 19th century. This was the most prevalent form of playing the 5-string banjo until the advent of the "guitar
style" of up-picking in the late 1860s, which was also called finger-picking, the term we use nowadays. The stroke style of down-picking has survived to this very day in the folk traditions of both the black and white communities of the rural South, where it's commonly referred to as frailing,
clawhammer, thumping, and so on.
(Note: In the 1840s, the banjo was thrust into the international spotlight by the emergence of minstrelsy, America's first homegrown pop music form to be exported and become a global craze. Minstrelsy also presaged ragtime, blues, jazz, rock and hip-hop as the first contemporary African American vernacular music to be appropriated, "refocused," and "repackaged" for mass-marketing the world over by the mainstream music industry. Prior to minstrelsy, the banjo was a folk instrument exclusive to African American and African Caribbean musicians.)
A good illustration of the close parallel between the Jola oo'teck technique of down-picking the ekonting (akonting) and the 19th century stroke style of down-picking the 5-string banjo is the above photo of Gambian Jola scholar/musician Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta. In the background is a reproduction of The Banjo Player (1856) by William Sidney Mount (1807-1868) of Setauket, New York. Note that Daniel and the banjo player are both down-picking their instruments. Here we can see the two main picking hand positions common to both banjo and ekonting down-picking: Daniel uses his index finger as "the striker," while the banjo player uses his middle finger. The dead give-away that tells us the banjo player's preference in striking fingers is the position of the index finger-- it's pointing downwards so that it clears the strings. You'll see both banjo and ekonting players do this if their middle fingers are the strikers. A clear illustration of this hand position is the above video of the young Jola ekonting player Jo Diatta (Jatta) in which Joe down-picks with his middle finger as the striker.
Recent field research indicates that the playing techniques of down-picking and drop-thumbing probably originated in West Africa. In addition to the Jola ekonting, down-picking is also the playing style for several other West African folk/artisan lutes such as the Bujogo ngopata (the Bijago Islands off the coast of Guinea-Bissau), Gwari kaburu (Nigeria), and the Dogon konou (Mali).
Likewise, it is used to play the Gnawa guinbri (also known as the sintir or hajhuj) of North Africa. The Gnawa are a North African Muslim brotherhood as well as an ethnic group made up of descendants of slaves and soldiers brought across the Sahara from West Africa. Tradition has it that their plucked lute, the 3-string guinbri, is West African in origin. This is very evident in the fact that the guinbri's strings are affixed to the neck with West African-style tuning rings. Furthermore, in common with most plucked lutes from the Upper Guinea Coast region of West Africa, the guinbri has a short drone string. However, in the guinbri's case, it's the middle string.
While down-picking is used to play all these lutes, drop-thumbing is far less common. For instance, in the down-picking style used to play the ngopata, the thumb stays on the short thumb string. Similarly, the thumb is used to play top third string-- which is a long bass string-- of the North African guinbri. On the other lutes mentioned, only the striking finger is used.
By contrast, the Jola oo'teck style of
down-picking the ekonting incorporates the same drop-thumbing-- i.e. the thumb coming down from the top "thumb string" to pluck a long string-- found in all styles of banjo down-picking. Significantly, the Jola ekonting is the
only West African lute with a banjo-like short "thumb string" which is played in this manner.
Down-picking can also be seen to a lesser extant in the playing techniques of the griots. However, the main griot playing technique is actually a 2-finger up-picking (also referred to as finger-picking in banjo parlance). Griot 2-finger up-picking consists of the index finger plucking upwards on a melody string. This is immediately followed by by the thumb plucking downwards on the top string. The index finger than brushes down all the strings in a strum.
It's interesting to note that the griot 2-finger up-picking technique is remarkably similar to traditional 5-string banjo 2-finger up-picking, in particular those regional styles with an index finger lead. Like down-picking, this form of banjo 2-finger up-picking may well have originated in West Africa.
To learn more about the many different kinds of lutes found throughout West Africa and their connection to the banjo, please visit: BANJO ANCESTORS: THE LUTES OF WEST AFRICA
Jola musician Bouba Diedhiou performing on the entofen form of the Ekonting Casamançais (Casamance-style akonting). The entofen ekonting is distinguished by an oval-shaped gourd body. Casamance, Senegal, 2005. (Photo by Nick Bamber)
THE EKONTING TODAY
In the mid-1980s, Gambian Jola scholar/musician Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta first pioneered the research and documentation of his people's folk lute, the ekonting (akonting). At the time, the tradition of making and playing the instrument was relatively unknown outside of the rural Jola villages. Even within these communities, there were very few young people interested in carrying on the ekonting tradition.
This was especially true amongst the Jola in Daniel's homeland, Gambia, where the Jola are an ethnic minority representing just 10% of that country's total population. Confronted with mounting social and economic pressures, traditional Jola culture in Gambia seemed destined to wither away, bit by bit, and eventually disappear. In this context, there was little hope for the survival of the ekonting, its music and lore.
Daniel describes the situation as follows:
"The akonting (ekonting) is now very rare in Gambia. When I was a child, many people played it. One could not count the number of people in my village who could play. Today, I know of only one akonting master left in Mandinary-- Sagari Sambo-- and he is in his late 80s!"
While Daniel set about his work to preserve and perpetuate the ekonting in Gambia, the instrument was faring a little better in neighboring Casamance (southern Senegal), the crucible of the tradition. Unlike the Gambian Jola, the Jola are the largest ethnic group in Casamance with something like two-thirds of the total population of that region. This is the heartland of the Jola people and culture, especially in Lower Casamance, the region along the southwestern shores of the Casamance River.
According to some tradition-bearers, the actual birthplace of the ekonting is the village of Kanjanka in Lower Casamance. The name of the instrument's home village is recalled in a common tuning pattern for the ekonting's three open strings (from the 3rd short "thumb" string to the 1st long string): kan (the 5th note of the scale, tuned an octave higher), jan (root note), ka (flatted 7th note).
From 1982 to 2004, Casamance was ravaged by a bitter and bloody armed conflict between Casamançais seperatists and the Senegalese government. As a result, many Jola were forced to flee their ancestral villages. The outlook for the perpetuation of the Ekonting Casamançais tradition and traditional Jola culture into the New Millennium seemed very bleak indeed.
Some of the thousands of Jola refugees fled to Gambia or Guinea-Bissau. Others ended up in Senegal's capital city, Dakar, and Ziguinchor, the adminstrative seat of Casamance. Many brought their ekontings with them and continued to play music from home for the entertainment of family and friends. Meanwhile, quite a few traditional players still remained in their villages in Casamance and managed to keep Ekonting Casamançais tradition going despite the challenging circumstances.
In the '90s, a Dakar-based African Hip Hop group Gokh Bi System aka GBS emerged which featured an ekonting player, Sana Ndiaye. As GBS was composed of young men from different ethnic backgrounds who grew up in the same neighborhood in Dakar, they dubbed their unique musical style, Ekonting Rap after the Jola instrument. To their way of thinking, the ekonting was emblematic of Senegal's multicultural heritage.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
Thanks to the crucial ground-breaking work of Daniel Jatta-- as well as the vital efforts of Swedish banjologist/researcher Ulf Jägfors, British banjo historian
Nick Bamber, American old-time country musician/scholar
Ben Nelson, banjo and ekonting player/builder
Paul Sedgwick, banjoist/fiddler/singer Rhiannon Giddens
and others-- there is growing global awareness of ekonting (akonting) and its siblings in the large diverse family of West African
folk/artisan lutes, which have been hitherto overlooked. These instruments are just now beginning to get the
international recognition and attention they deserve as living
ancestors of the
banjo. Many museums around the world have updated their collections to include the ekonting and other members of the West African folk/artisan lute family, while banjo historians and
ethnomusicologists have begun to broaden the range of their focus to take these instruments into consideration.
Yet, there's still a great deal of work to be done to ensure the continuity of these traditions.
Because all West African
folk/artisan lutes
belong to traditional musical cultures based primarily in poor rural villages, they face the ever present
threat of obsolescence and extinction in the rapidly changing social-economic milieu of this region.
In the case of the Jola ekonting,
despite growing world-wide awareness of the instrument, there's very little documentation of its traditional
music and lore. As of this writing, except for a few field recordings on tape in private collections (e.g. the sound samples for this site), there are no publicly accessible recordings of
Sagari Sambo-- the oldest master of the ekonting who's currently in his 80s -- and
other ekonting tradition-bearers such as like Ekona Jatta (Daniel Jatta's cousin), Remi Jatta (Ekona's nephew), Paul Diatta (also Jatta, no relation-- Jatta is a very common Jola surname. Paul is the brother of Jo Diatta, the ekonting player in the video above.), and Esa Jesus Jah-Jarju.
To facilitate the study, documentation, and perpetuation of the Jola ekonting (akonting), the Manjak bunchundo, and other string instrument traditions of the various Senegambian peoples, Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta and Ulf Jägfors have initiated The Akonting Center for Senegambian Folk Music in the village of Mandinary, Gambia. For more information on this project and how you can aid in this effort, please see the sidebar on the left.
THE DOWN HOME RADIO SHOW: A new series of radio programs on American ethnic/regional folk and world music traditions. The first program was devoted to the ekonting (akonting) and its music.
Thanks a million Ekonting for joining our ministry of Blues. It's all about peace, love, understanding, and GROOVE! Hope to perform for you sometime. Wishing you the very best in Blues and life! -Big Daddy
