downstroke-origins · conway-odell1998-black-banjo-songsters

Many are still unaware that Africans brought the gourd ancestor of the banjo with them, in their minds and sometimes in their hands, to the New World in the seventeenth century. ... The fretless, short-drone-string banjo with its “thumping,” downstroke playing style, its special tunings, and its repertory of lyric banjo songs, can still be found among both Southern Whites and Blacks. ... Early accounts show Blacks sang lyric improvisatory songs and played for dances on a three- or four-string gourd banjar covered with a skin head, and strung with horsehair, hemp, or catgut. It had a short thumb-string drone and was played in a style similar to downstroking “clawhammer”—the oldest style used by both Whites and Blacks. ... The banjo and the African American “knocking-on” or “thumping” playing style began to take hold among Whites by the 1830s.