Vance Lowry and the classic banjo?

[RitonMousquetaire]

Hello everybody,

While searching for banjo records on a french radio website I stumbled upon this emission broadcasted in 2013, in which you can listen to two banjo records (which I find really enjoyable), played by Vance Lowry around 1926 : http://www.francemusique.fr/emission/le-fabuleux-monde-des-archives...

While listening to the first one (it starts at 11'53, following a few explanations by the person who curated the program) I thought he was playing a 4-string banjo (wether plectrum or tenor I'm not sure - there are some moments where it also sounds a bit like a 5-string, but I don't know the subject well enough to be sure), but the second (which starts around 12'30) seems to be a 5 string banjo played in the classic way (which would maybe explain that title, "l'harpo-banjo", which can be translated as "the harp-banjo" I think).

I'm quite curious about this player; does anybody knows exactly what kind of banjo he's playing in each of these records? Were his arrangements ever published? Do you have more informations about his life and other pieces or records? There are some informations on his life in France in the programme (where he apparently knew the poet Jean Cocteau), and somebody called Tony Thomas posted some interesting informations on this youtube video in which Lowry's playing can also be heard : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKXzR8a-_DE

Just in case he wouldn't be playing classic banjo and that discussion would be irrelevant to the present website, here is an other broadcast from the same website which features several classic banjo records (and this time I'm sure of it :) ) : http://www.francemusique.fr/emission/le-fabuleux-monde-des-archives...

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

Jody for all I know there may be a thriving and particular Black culture in the Maritimes in general and in New Brunswick where the Bohees are said to hail from in particular.  It is just that the facts are the Bohees parents moved to Massachusetts while they were children. 

In the late 60s and 70s I visited Canada frequently and got to know activists in the Black movement there, but I havent paid much attention to it in the past 40 years.  So there may be a large and thriving Black cultural scene there from the time of the Bohees to to day for all I know.  In the past 20 years, judging from the Internet, Canadian and Black Canadian cultural and educational and civil rights organizations have certainly highlighted the Bohees as part of Canada's Black heritage. 

LOL as  I age, modesty about what I know and greater modesty about what I once knew or remembered, but no longer do, has become a key to not making a fool of myself.,

[Tony Thomas MFA Black Banjoist]

There might be and there might have been and the fame of the Bohees might have precipitated it, but I do not know.