Important and Interesting Thesis on Banjo History

[Joel Hooks]

Here is a thesis on banjo history that I can strongly recommend. I think it is very good and raises many good points of discussion.

It is worth the read.

digitalcollections.wesleyan.ed...ctir-3281

Direct download link to the PDF here:

digitalcollections.wesleyan.ed...0File.pdf

[Richard William Ineson]

Well done for tracking that down Ian. The problem with using  the Parrotophone (N.B. should you decide to go into production, I hereby give you permission to use this as name for the recording device) device for recording music is that the duration of the recording wasn't long enough. Perhaps you could start building them  with increased duration, and then all those who strive to emulate the sound produced by the past masters of the banjo wold be able to fulfil their dreams.

thereallyniceman said:

Perhaps Ossman and FVE had one?... but it seems unlikely ;-)

You could make your own... it seems straight forward enough!

[Richard William Ineson]

I enjoyed reading Ethan's thesis and found it informative and thought provoking. The B.M.G. magazine  C.E.Co. the John Alvey Turner banjo empire, and others, did much to keep the finger style banjo alive  post 1st World War. World War 2 saw many of the B.M.G. clubs close down, and some of them never resumed activity after the war ended. The war changed many things and then TV came along, the 'swinging 60s' etc, and the finger style banjo went into what could have been terminal decline. By the 1990s there was really only the B.M.G. Federation, David Price's 'Banjo Times' and Julian Vincent's Reading Banjo Festival and his 'Banjo Broadsheet' keeping the dying flame flickering. The old London Banjo club, by now renamed the Westminster Banjo Circle was also in extremis. Pat Doyle started publishing the 'The Banjo' as the journal of the Westminster Banjo Circle (renamed the British Banjo Circle in January 1992) and decided that the way forward for the F.S. banjo was to actually present it to the public at very opportunity. To this end the BBC (British Banjo Circle) commended holding regional banjo rallies, one in Backwell near Bristol, from 1992, and one in Ridgeway near Sheffield from 1993. These events were very successful and are still running although the Ridgeway event has been held in Clowne since 2011. The Backwell venue was chosen because Mike Redman, the west country secretary of the BBC, lived nearby, and Backwell was the home of legendary banjoist Horace Craddy. The west country had always had a nucleus of good F.S. banjo players, Will Pettit lived in the area as did the Baileys, T.B.Snr. T.B. jnr. 'Mouse' Bailey, and Frances Bailey, Gordon Dando, Alf Brimble, Tom Barriball, Bill Ball (one of the finest F.S. banjo players of all time) and there will be others whose names have slipped my mind ( what remains of it). Ridgeway was chosen because I lived there and I was willing to organise the banjo rally, Sheffield had never had a B.M.G. club as such, despite notable banjo players David Milner Snr. and Jnr. living there. The BBC banjo rallies definitely revived the fortunes of the F.S. banjo and the banjo in all its forms (Bluegrass, Old Time banjo and Irish tenor banjo included) seemed to enjoy a shared popularity at that time. The F.S. banjo seems to have reentered the the doldrums, a lot of the old players have now departed and a lot of those remaining such as myself do not relish the long cross country journeys any more, my last venture in this  direction was undertaken in June last year, to the B.M.G. Federation summer school event, at Halsway Manor in Devon, featuring Aaron Jonah Lewis, the journey there from near Sheffield, took 5.5 hours and was too much for my poor old frame. Pat Doyle decide to cease publishing 'The Banjo' magazine in 2011, Clem Vickery revived the C.E.Co and the B.M.G. magazine but when Clem passed on the magazine ceased publication.Younger blood is now required to get things going again, we've played our part.

[Michael Anthony Brown]

A tiny contribution to this discussion is that, referring to page 70 of this thesis, Clifford Essex are now selling some items online again on eBay.

[Ethan Schwartz]

Hi all, thank you for your words of encouragement as well as criticism. When I have more time, I can address any specific issues/questions raised here. 

Writing this thesis was no easy task, and if I could go back and repeat the process, there are many things I would do differently. Narrative and symbolism are "sexy" topics in ethnomusicology, but quite messy and subjective when it actually comes to writing about them. My underlying agenda was never to denigrate other branches of the banjo family tree (although I am critical of how they tell the banjo's story) but rather to wag my finger at the fields of ethnomusicology, musicology, and popular music studies for being so UNcritical regarding this particular area. Truly original research topics are precious, yet classic banjo remains wide open; I don't believe the reasons for that are incidental. So if my thesis prompts music scholars to take a closer look (or ANY look, for that matter) at classic banjo, then I consider it a success. Time will tell. I am in the early stages of writing some shorter articles on related topics. 

[Joel Hooks]

Hi Ethan, your thesis and a post John Hoft made on BHO about plectrum banjo has me thinking a lot about a theory of why classic banjo might have vanished.  That theory is based on nostalgia. 

Folk music, ragtime piano, plectrum, and old time banjo all have one thing in common-- nostalgia was a driving factor in their revivals.  And the new versions that were based on nostalgia tend to be what is remembered.  The original form of "oil time" was driven by nostalgia, so that is kinda a double whammy. 

Try and find a Boomer plectrum banjoist that did not participate in the Shakey's/mustache Styrofoam hat and striped vest nostalgia of the 60s and 70s.  The ragtime piano revival did a similar thing.  Old time wore overalls and straw hats. 

But classic banjo never had a nostalgic revival.  Classic banjo does not conjure up "the olde timey days"

[Jody Stecher]

You're on to something valid here, Joel, but not quite on the mark about the "original form" of old-time music. As a genre name used for selling records, yes, nostalgia is the driving force. But amongst the music practitioners who were recorded by the record companies in the 1920s and 30s( and amongst the greater number who were not recorded) much of the music they played was innovative and often new. There was an element of nostalgia in some of the repertoire. There was also an element of continuity, of perceived stability. But there was a strong element of *now*.  

I don't know the origins of the term "old time music" but it is widespread and it applied to disparate musics.  In the upper midwest of the USA it means polka music.  "Old time fiddling" in Canada means something different from what it means in different regions of the USA. And in Appalachia, a place mistakenly identified as the sole region where fiddle and banjo was played and ballads were sung, there were musical styles that today are identified as "old time" that the players had a different idea about. To them they were playing the latest up-to-date, hip, modern stuff anyone ever heard.  The same was true all over Texas, in different ways.

This is all true but you are right that nostalgia was one of the driving forces in *some* of the revival versions of what is most often called old-time music.  In other versions people continued to make new tunes and songs and innovate within the parameters of the style(s).  They still do. The music was and is sung and played because it was and is still valid for the musicians. The majority of old-time musicians I met in the 1950s, 60s and 70s did not wear costumes. Same is so today. 

Joel Hooks said:

Hi Ethan, your thesis and a post John Hoft made on BHO about plectrum banjo has me thinking a lot about a theory of why classic banjo might have vanished.  That theory is based on nostalgia. 

Folk music, ragtime piano, plectrum, and old time banjo all have one thing in common-- nostalgia was a driving factor in their revivals.  And the new versions that were based on nostalgia tend to be what is remembered.  The original form of "oil time" was driven by nostalgia, so that is kinda a double whammy. 

Try and find a Boomer plectrum banjoist that did not participate in the Shakey's/mustache Styrofoam hat and striped vest nostalgia of the 60s and 70s.  The ragtime piano revival did a similar thing.  Old time wore overalls and straw hats. 

But classic banjo never had a nostalgic revival.  Classic banjo does not conjure up "the olde timey days"

[Ethan Schwartz]

Re: nostalgia, I would assume that it's a driving force behind ANY sort of revival. But when it comes to something like old-time music, especially today, my sense is that it's less about nostalgia for "the good old days" (which, as we are increasingly cognizant of, were very much NOT good for large swaths of the population) and more about the values and experiences that the music represents. Certainly many of the younger generation of old-time players are self-aware that they're participating in something of an invented tradition, which goes against notions of authenticity.

For me, the question is less about nostalgia and more along the lines of, "what itch does this music scratch that other musical practices cannot?" For old-time music, I think the sense of communal ownership is attractive (a tune may be from a particular place geographically, and it may have been sourced from a particular player, but ultimately, no one "owns" it, even if they did in fact compose it); I think the mode of transmission is attractive (learning tunes connects you to other people); I think its spontaneity is attractive (you can meet people and immediately play together without having to "plan" the music or deal with notation); I think its accessibility is attractive (there's a sense that anyone can learn it, you don't need to be an "educated" musician to enjoy making music). I could list other reasons as well, but the point is that none of these are necessarily about nostalgia, even if people commonly associate them with an idealized vision of how people made music in the past. 

So we could flip that around and ask, "what itch does something like classic banjo scratch that other musical practices cannot?" 

[Ethan Schwartz]

Quite right! But on the other hand, sometimes that process of (re)compartmentalization lets us to see things differently, leading to new insights. One of the things I make a point of doing is defining classic banjo as both a historical phenomenon and a living tradition; most authors just assume the former -- and fall into the trap of presentism -- but incorporating the latter shifts the whole conversation (if something is a living tradition, how can you possibly make authoritative claims about "how things were" without consulting its current participants?). But yes, there's no escape from the subjectivities inherent to categories and definitions. We should use whatever categories are useful to us while staying aware that they are subjective. 

Mike Bostock said:

This question harks back to the recent discussion of genre labels. We seem to have a human need to select and compartmentalise.  On one level that is a quite understandable 'shorthand' means of conveniently isolating and 'identifying' what we are interested in. But that device of isolation itself requires simultaneously overlooking contemporary related activity that isn't an exact 'fit' with whatever is artificially and selectively held up as the 'defining' criteria.

From the perspective of historical evidence a need to isolate and 'identify' typically leads to the paradox of a 'black and white' picture. Whereas in life most activity when examined is a far more complex kaleidoscopic interrelationship of shades.