Is the banjo Irish?

Where does the banjo actually come from?

West Africa. The banjo is descended from a family of plucked gourd lutes, of which more than sixty distinct types are found across the region, and it reached the Americas in the memories of enslaved Africans rather than in their luggage. Almost nobody could carry an instrument. They rebuilt them from memory.

The closest known relative is the akonting, a three-stringed lute of the Jola people of the Gambia: a long neck, a body made from a calabash gourd, a goat skin stretched over it, and a short thumb string that is not fretted. Players on both sides of the Atlantic have remarked on how alike the building and the playing are.

What emerged in the Caribbean and colonial North America was the gourd banjo: gourd body, hide head, fretless neck, a bridge that floats on the skin rather than being fixed, and that short thumb string carried over intact. From the earliest references in the seventeenth century through to the 1830s the banjo was an African American instrument with a West African heritage, and nothing else.

That short thumb string is the ancestor of the fifth string on a modern 5-string banjo, which still sits at the fifth fret with its own peg and still drones. It is the oldest thing on the instrument.

How did the banjo get to Ireland?

On tour, in 1844. The Virginia Minstrels, an American troupe who had staged the first full minstrel show in New York on 6 February 1843, crossed to Ireland the following year and played Dublin, Cork and Belfast. Their line-up was banjo, fiddle, bones and tambourine.

What they brought was a fretless five-string, and it arrived as an accompaniment instrument rather than a melody one. Irish musicians who picked it up over the following decades used it to back singing and dancing, which is what it had been doing on stage.

Fretted banjos followed from the late 1870s, and that mattered more than it sounds: frets put every note in tune for you, which is what eventually made the instrument usable for fast melody by players who had learned by ear.

When did the tenor banjo arrive?

The early 1900s, and it was not designed for Irish music at all. The four-string tenor grew out of the eight-string banjolin, first drawn up in 1885 by John Farris of Hartford, Connecticut, and by the early twentieth century the four-string tenor was the mainstream instrument. It was built for dance bands and for jazz, where it had to cut through a room full of horns.

It reached Irish music through those same dance bands, not through the tradition. The first Irish tenor banjo on record is James Wheeler in 1916, accompanying the button accordion player Eddie Herborn on what is the earliest disc of Irish traditional music.

Note what he was doing on it: accompanying. For its first decade in this music the tenor banjo was still a rhythm instrument.

When did it start playing tunes?

The late 1920s, in the hands of Irish-American recording musicians. Players began picking out jigs and reels with ornamentation instead of strumming behind somebody else, and the Flanagan Brothers are the clearest example: Mike Flanagan took the melodic line while Joe and Lou played underneath him. Neil Nolan, Michael Gaffney and Bill Whelan were all playing tenor banjo before the Second World War.

Then the 1960s folk revival made it ordinary. Barney McKenna of The Dubliners is credited with establishing GDAE as the tuning, which is fiddle tuning an octave lower, and that single decision is what made the instrument fit the music properly. Tunes fall under your fingers in the shape a fiddler already plays them.

From a fretless five-string carried into Dublin by a blackface troupe in 1844, to a 19-fret four-string playing reels in GDAE, is about a hundred and twenty years.

1. 17th century onwardGourd banjos in the Americas

   Built from West African memory by enslaved Africans. Gourd body, skin head, fretless neck, a floating bridge and a short thumb string.

2. 6 February 1843The first minstrel show

   The Virginia Minstrels stage it at the Bowery Amphitheatre in New York. Banjo, fiddle, bones, tambourine.

3. 1844The banjo lands in Ireland

   The same troupe tours Dublin, Cork and Belfast. Fretless five-string, used for accompaniment.

4. Late 1870sFrets arrive

   Fretted banjos start being used in Irish music. The note is now either right or you are on the wrong fret.

5. 1885 to early 1900sThe four-string tenor appears

   Grown out of John Farris’s banjolin designs and built for dance bands and jazz, not for this music.

6. 1916First Irish tenor banjo recording

   James Wheeler accompanies Eddie Herborn on the earliest disc of Irish traditional music. Still accompaniment.

7. Late 1920sIt starts playing the tunes

   The Flanagan Brothers and their contemporaries pick out jigs and reels with ornaments instead of strumming behind them.

8. 1960sGDAE, and it becomes ordinary

   Barney McKenna establishes fiddle tuning an octave down, and the folk revival makes the tenor banjo a mainstream tune instrument.

So is it an Irish instrument now?

Yes, in every sense that matters, and no in the sense people usually mean. It is not ancient here and it is not native here. It has been played in Irish music for roughly a hundred and eighty years and playing tunes for about a hundred, which is longer than the button accordion has been in widespread use and about as long as anyone alive can remember.

A tradition is not a list of objects. It is what people do, and Irish musicians have done something with this instrument that nobody else does: tuned it in fifths to match a fiddle, played single-line melody on it at speed with a plectrum, and built an ornament vocabulary around the triplet that exists nowhere else in banjo playing.

The honest answer to somebody asking whether the banjo is Irish is that the instrument is West African, the route was American, and what is done with it here is Irish.