I'd like to go back to the G Banjo before I finish & just say that anyone who is interested in the music of Appalachia should read "Celtic Music in Appalachia, Part II: Early Instrumental Music" by Charles H. Ball:

Here are a couple of short extracts to give you a flavour of the piece:

"The Scots Irish introduced the Fiddle into Appalachia it's true, but it was the The African Americans (although few, by comparison with most of the South) who introduced the banjo, which was perfectly suited to play the fiddle tunes and which could be home-made even easier than could the fiddle. The skinhead fretless banjo is still to be found in the hills of Appalachia.

The banjo played a profound part in the first, and perhaps greatest, transformation of Celtic music into Appalachian music. The banjo was constructed with one string shorter than the other four (or sometimes three) strings. This gave rise to the characteristic boom-tiddy, boom-a-tiddy rhythm characteristic of "clawhammer" style. This rhythm, when transferred to the fiddle, gives rise to the shuffle stroke, the characteristic bowing style of Appalachia. It is the shuffle stroke which, more than anything else, differentiates Appalachian dance tunes from the Irish or Scottish tunes."

So you see, the Banjo was actually introduced to Scots-Irish folk long after they left these shores. As for the assertion that the Scots-Irish were responsible for introducing the Fiddle to Appalachia, go to the page here on the Fiddle, to see one or two interesting thoughts on that idea.

You might also like to check out the page on this site which looks at Old Time Music:

You can watch twelve video clips of Clawhammer Banjo tunes being played here:

Here is a fascinating video on the 'History of the Banjo':

I hope that has cleared up any questions you may have had, regarding the Banjo.

"Of all the myriad variety of West African plucked lutes, the Jola 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 akonting, called o'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 akonting o'teck 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 the individual melody 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.

It was the stroke style of banjo down-picking that European American performers-- the blackface minstrels-- initially learned from African American musicians as they first adopted and popularized the instrument in the 1830s and '40s. This was the prevalent form of playing the 5-string banjo until the advent of the "guitar style" of up-picking in the late 1860s, which is called finger-picking 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.

Remarkably, the Jola o'teck technique of playing the akonting is the only extant down-picking style of lute playing found in all of West Africa thus far. Even more pertinent to the ongoing search for the banjo's ancestors, it's the only West African lute with a banjo-like short "thumb string" which is played in this manner."

To listen to the 'Akonting' in action go to

To learn more go to: BANJO ANCESTORS - 'THE LUTES OF WEST AFRICA'