Banjo music possesses a unique power to evoke a bucolic, simpler past. The artisans who build banjos for old-time music stand at an unusual crossroads ”asked to meet the modern musician's needs while retaining the nostalgic qualities so fundamental to the banjo's sound and mystique. Richard 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.

BanjoCraft is a brief look at banjo making in the small shop. This book is intended to to be accessible to banjo people and wood workers of all skill levels. BanjoCraft contains 50+ full color photos and 46 pages of detailed banjo making knowledge. BanjoCraft guides the reader through the process of making an open back banjo, from raw wood to a finished instrument. It focuses on building techniques and considerations that are specific to banjo making and does not delve deeply into sub-topics such as fretwork, inlay, or how to use a protractor. In composing this book it was our goal to provide general considerations, instructions, and techniques while encouraging the reader to get to work in the shop and cultivate experience of their own.

The setup, maintenance, and restoration of the five-string banjo. An indispensable guide for the amateur as well as the professional repair person. Every procedure is clearly explained and illustrated with detailed photographs and diagrams.

Building on his 2006 book, Which Side Are You On?, Dick Weissman's A New History of American and Canadian Folk Music presents a provocative discussion of the history, evolution, and current status of folk music in the United States and Canada. North American folk music achieved a high level of popular acceptance in the late 1950s. When it was replaced by various forms of rock music, it became a more specialized musical niche, fragmenting into a proliferation of musical styles. In the pop-folk revival of the 1960s, artists were celebrated or rejected for popularizing the music to a mass audience. In particular the music seemed to embrace a quest for authenticity, which has led to endless explorations of what is or is not faithful to the original concept of traditional music. This book examines the history of folk music into the 21st century and how it evolved from an agrarian style as it became increasingly urbanized. Scholar-performer Dick Weissman, himself a veteran of the popularization wars, is uniquely qualified to examine the many controversies and musical evolutions of the music, including a detailed discussion of the quest for authenticity, and how various musicians, critics, and fans have defined that pursuit.

The story of the banjo's journey from Africa to the western hemisphere blends music, history, and a union of cultures. In Banjo Roots and Branches, Robert B. Winans presents cutting-edge scholarship that covers the instrument's West African origins and its adaptations and circulation in the Caribbean and United States. The contributors provide detailed ethnographic and technical research on gourd lutes and ekonting in Africa and the banza in Haiti while also investigating tuning practices and regional playing styles. Other essays place the instrument within the context of slavery, tell the stories of black banjoists, and shed light on the banjo's introduction into the African- and Anglo-American folk milieus. Wide-ranging and illustrated with twenty color images, Banjo Roots and Branches offers a wealth of new information to scholars of African American and folk musics as well as the worldwide community of banjo aficionados. Contributors: Greg C. Adams, Nick Bamber, Jim Dalton, George R. Gibson, Chuck Levy, Shlomo Pestcoe, Pete Ross, Tony Thomas, Saskia Willaert, and Robert B. Winans.

From his birth in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1947, to his 2020 album featuring the music of Lee Hammons, Wayne Howard has lived an exceptionally creative life. He seemed to be eternally present at fiddle festivals, involved in the creative forces working to preserve Southern Mountain music. In 1969, he relocated to West Virginia and was introduced to the Hammons family by Dwight Diller. Howard then recorded Lee, Sherman, Burl, and Maggie Hammons playing music and telling stories. Howard then became a professional computer programmer, a vintage book collector, and a woodworker, before turning to writing about the Hammons family, and producing CDs of their stories and music. This biography follows the threads of music and folklore through Howard's life, celebrating his profound knowledge that does much to sustain the interest of those who seek out Appalachian tunes, songs, and stories.

This is a biography of Dan Levenson, an old-time banjo and fiddle player from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Between 1987 and 1991, Dan worked for Goose Acres Folk Music Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where he dove deeply into old-time music. In the late 1980s, he formed the Boiled Buzzards; they recorded four albums between 1989 and 1994 and were a consistently active presence at old-time music festivals. He also played with Bob Frank during that time as one-half of the Hotfoot Duo. In 1995, he teamed up with Kim Murley and recorded New Frontier: Instrumentals from China and America. Levenson undertook his first cross-country trip as a solo performer in 1996. His traveling workshop "Meet the Banjo" ran with the sponsorship of Deering Banjos from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Dan recorded three projects in the first five years of the 2000s and began editing the quarterly "Old Time Way" section for Banjo Newsletter in 2005. He continues performing old-time music, teaching fiddle and banjo, writing instructional and repertoire books featuring banjo and fiddle tunes for Mel Bay, and making plans for more old-time music projects.