banjo

The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and in modern forms is usually made of BOPET, where early membranes were made of goat skin.

AI overview

The banjo is a stringed instrument that produces sound by vibrating strings over a thin membrane stretched across a frame, which acts as a resonator to amplify the sound. Historically made with goat skin, modern banjo membranes are typically constructed from BOPET, a synthetic material.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Key facts

Instrument.name: Banjo
Instrument.image: Bluegrass banjo.png
Instrument.image_capt: A five-string banjo
Instrument.background: string
Instrument.hornbostel_sachs: 321.312 (resonator) or 321.314 (open-backed)
Instrument.hornbostel_sachs_desc: Composite chordophone with a neck that passes diametrically through the resonator, sounded by plectrum, finger picks, or the bare fingers
Instrument.developed: 18th century, United States

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image: Bluegrass banjo.png

Show 5 more facts

Commons category: Banjo family instruments
Hornbostel-Sachs classification: 321.322-8
Commons gallery: Banjo
exact match: wordnet-rdf.princeton.edu/wn30/02787622-n
Unicode character: 🪕

Sources (5)

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Article

21 sections

Contents

History
Early origins
Minstrel era, 1830s–1870s
Classic era, 1880s–1910s
Ragtime era (1895–1919) and Jazz Age era (1910s–1930s)
Modern era
Technique
Modern forms
Four-string banjos{{anchor|four_string}}
Tenor banjo
Six-string banjos
Banjo family and tuning
Low banjos
Long neck banjos
Banjo hybrids and variants
Noted banjoists
See also
References
Further reading
Banjo history
External links

Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents, and the instrument was strongly associated with black people. In the 19th century, interest in the instrument was spread across the United States and United Kingdom by traveling shows of the highly popular traveling blackface minstrel shows, followed by mass production and mail-order sales, including instructional books. The inexpensive or home-made banjo remained part of rural folk culture, but five-string and four-string banjos also became popular for home parlor music entertainment, college music clubs, and early 20th century jazz bands. By the early 20th century, the banjo was most frequently associated with folk, cowboy music, and country music.