Over thirty years ago James F. Bollman began to assemble what has become this country's largest collection, in public or private hands, of rare nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century banjos and banjo-related materials. In addition to approximately 300 instruments made between the 1840s and 1920s, he holds thousands of photographic images (including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes, as well as photographs in various paper formats), lithographed sheet-music covers, trade catalogs and other advertising ephemera, periodicals devoted to the banjo trade, decorative ceramics and statuary, paintings, toys, and more.
Now, in an unlikely collaboration between a world-renowned collector and a
cultural historian, much of Bollman's collection can be enjoyed in
America's Instrument: The Banjo in the Nineteenth Century,
by Philip F. Gura and James F. Bollman. The book vividly relates the
history of the production, distribution, and marketing of the banjo over
the course of the nineteenth century. With over 250 illustrations--97 color and 156 black and white illustrations of vintage instruments and banjo players, including many rare, previously unpublished daguerreotypes--America's Instrument brings to life a fascinating aspect of American cultural history.
Gura and Bollman chart the evolution of "America's instrument," the five-stringed banjo, from its origins in the gourd instruments of enslaved Africans brought to the New World in the seventeenth century through its rise to the very pinnacle of American popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Throughout, they look at how banjo craftsmen and manufacturers developed, built, and marketed their products to an American public immersed in the production and consumption of popular music.
Surprisingly, despite the banjo's centrality to early American music and culture, there has been no detailed study of the instrument's transformation from American folk instrument into sophisticated parlor and orchestra instrument. The strength and novelty of the book can be found in the authors' attention to such primary sources as the instruments themselves; daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, and other contemporary photographs of banjos and banjo players; and other graphic materials.
Gura and Bollman are both avid banjo players and performers. Their
enthusiasm for the instrument is apparent in the vividly related history
of the banjo's rise in American popular culture. Within the narrative they discuss minstrel shows, musical taste, how American interest in popular music coincided with the expanding economy of the time, and the transformation from handcrafted to factory-produced instruments. By the end of the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of banjos were manufactured and shipped all over the world. It was not until the rise of ragtime and jazz in the 1920s that the banjo was displaced from its high place of honor as "America's instrument."
Philip F. Gura is professor of English and American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is an old-time music enthusiast. James F. Bollman is co-owner and manager of the Music Emporium in Lexington, Massachusetts. He plays clawhammer banjo and has been collecting and researching banjos and banjo-related ephemera for more than thirty years.
Banjo-related links
Cybergrass: The Internet's Bluegrass Music Source
The Old Time Music Home Page
Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine
Bluegrass World Web - Association Links
Banjo Newsletter
The Pinecone
Council of Traditional Music
Mugwumps Online
Doc
Watson--American Folk Music Legend
Planet Bluegrass Homepage
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