Jones-Bamman ventures into workshops and old-time music communities to explore how banjo builders practice their art. His interviews and long-time personal immersion in the musical culture shed light on long-overlooked aspects of banjo making.
What is the banjo builder’s role in the creation of a specific musical community? What techniques go into the styles of instruments they create?
Jones-Bamman explores these questions and many others while sharing the ways an inescapable sense of the past undergirds the performance and enjoyment of old-time music.
Along the way he reveals how antimodernism remains integral to the music’s appeal and its making. He also delves into the omission of African Americans — the originators of the banjo — from both the instrument's popular history and the nostalgia engendered by the music, and the role contemporary banjo builders are playing to rectify this situation.
"The issues raised by Jones-Bamman and the information he provides to aid in their discussion have never been brought together in one volume. A significant addition to the literature."
— Bob Carlin, author of Banjo: An Illustrated History
Richard Jones-Bamman is emeritus professor of music at Eastern Connecticut State University.
Additional Information