black-banjo-decline · conway-odell1998-black-banjo-songsters

Black banjo playing began to decline in the first decade of the twentieth century. In the context of minstrel stereotyping, memories of slavery, urbanization, industrialization, increasingly restrictive Jim Crow laws, and other political and economic pressures, Black singers refashioned their lyric songs into an assertive social commentary that laid the foundation for the emergence of the Blues. Black banjo players hung their banjos on the wall and began to accompany their songs on the now inexpensive and readily available mail-order guitar. There were few commercial recordings of Black banjo made in the 1920s and 1930s, and by the 1970s when Cece met the North Carolina musicians, the tradition had all but died out.