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Most of the Irish tenor players in those days were happy to simply to strum the instrument in a guitar-like style.Īs the 1920s dawned, more Irish players started to pick out the reel, jig and hornpipe melodies, embellished with ornaments of several types. The bands that played for the dancers were required to perform both Irish and American music, so they often added a tenor player to the line-up.ĭance bands in England copied the US groups, and their use inevitably spread to Ireland too. The dance halls of Ireland and those across the Atlantic in New York and beyond were the starting point for the traditional tenor instrument we know today. The banjo that ultimately came to be synonymous with Irish musicians was not the version with five strings (as favoured by the minstrels and hillbillys) but was a four-stringed tenor design. Over in Ireland the instrument was not embraced as part of the traditional music canon until the mid-twentieth century.īefore then, the instrument lurked on the periphery, being played by music hall performers and itinerant musicians. Development of the Banjo in Traditional Irish Music Virginian Joe Sweeney was the highest-profile minstrel performer, and his popularity contributed to the rise of the instrument, inspiring 1850s instrument designers to work on a five-string version.
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The instrument we know today was undoubtedly modified from the African-American blueprint by the minstrels. Minstrels fused classic African rhythms with forms of music from Europe, the result of which was pivotal to the development of American-style popular music. However, by the latter half of the nineteenth century, the majority of black musicians had cast it aside in favour of the guitar.Īnother reason for its decline in popularity was the unpleasant fact that the banjo had become closely associated with the shocking racial stereotypes perpetrated by the players in black-face who performed in the popular minstrel shows at that time.Īs shocking as it seems now, this type of ‘entertainment’ was wildly popular in both America and elsewhere in the world for more than a hundred years.
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On contemporary instruments, the short ‘drone’ string is the final of five strings, though those dating from the eighteenth century had just three long strings plus the chanterelle.īefore the onset of the Civil War in America, the banjo was seen as a quintessentially African-American musical instrument. The high thumb string and the downward playing action both originated in traditional African music. In the older styles, the other strings are played with the middle or index finger using a downward action. The higher string is the one nearest to the thumb of the player, and this string is struck continuously during play.
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Chequered History in Irish MusicĪ classic banjo has a short, high-pitched chanterelle (string) that ends at a peg located on the side of the neck, plus a number of strings of full length. Unlike the lutes from Africa, though, these early American incarnations, the ancestors of the Irish tenor banjo, were tuned with pegs similar to those found on a violin. Strings were made of tough fibrous materials, including gut, hemp, thread, or even plaited horse hair.
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The earliest versions often had a sound box crafted from a dried-out gourd with the end cut off, an animal skin drumhead and a fretless neck. The imported slaves made the instruments based on memories of the ones played in their African homelands. The origin of the Irish traditional music instrument as we know it today can be traced back to the southern states of America.