Today, one of Andrew's readers hit on the banjo as a metaphor - and more than a metaphor - for American multiculturalism. Perceived (mistakenly) by some as a fundamentally culturally white instrument at the heart of bluegrass music, it is only a white instrument because it was adopted from slaves who brought the banjo with them from Africa. Reading this during lunch today, I was impacted by the truth of the post, but also by its incompleteness, for the banjo is currently undergoing a revival as a traditionally African and American instrument.
So I quickly (though not quickly enough, but more on that in a moment) prepared the following email to Andrew:
If you want to complete the circle on the post about the banjo as an African instrument, you really need to check out the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a wonderful Durham-based African-American band recapturing the black (pre-Bluegrass) tradition in banjo. It's fantastic and fun and playful and simultaneously black and country and multicultural and as American as you can possibly get. I can't hear it without a smile and pride in being an American. And tapping my feet.
I've been enjoying CCD for a couple of years now, one of the highlights of my time as a member of eMusic.com (which was, for a while, filled with great discoveries like CCD, but those discoveries became harder and harder for me to find, until I gave up my membership). And so I also sought out a few links to youtube videos of CCD to include in my email, including performances at UNC and Duke, and a short, Emmy-award winning biographical film about the group.
Which was all well and good, but while I bounced my head and danced in my seat, listening to CCD on my iPod and playing various youtubes, someone else was beating me to the punch. I sent my email about CCD to Sullivan around two o'clock. Well, I popped on The Dish around 3pm and noticed that Andrew had now posted about CCD - but someone else's email, not mine, around 2:30 in the afternoon, likely before he would have seen my email!
But I could outdo Andrew, and vowed that when I got home I would fire up the Mac, sitting inspired next to my banjo, and write up something that talked about the even broader multicultural nature of the banjo - from Alison Brown's jazz-inspired banjo to Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet's mingling of American folk banjo with Chinese cultural music, to banjo wiz (and sometime Sparrow Quartet member) Bela Fleck and his exploration of various musical genres and the role of the banjo in those worlds, including his recent foray (yes, I heard it on NPR) into bringing the banjo back to Africa.
You know what's coming, right? In the interim, Andrew had already posted about the documentary on Bela Fleck bringing the banjo back to Africa.
At some point, I will sit down and really address the multicultural aspects of the instrument, with more about how Abby has made the banjo not just a metaphor for multiculturalism but also an ambassador for American culture to other parts of the world. The Sparrow Quartet were, in fact, the first U.S. musicians to ever officially tour Tibet on a government-sponsored cultural mission. Pat Robertson would find Abigail Washburn's words about breaking down cultural walls horrifying; I find them an extraordinarily beautiful statement of what it really means to be an American.
I would post about that (although, as you know, I have already in the past), that is, if Andrew - through his prolific reader mail - hasn't beaten me to it by then.
It must be nice having Andrew's massive audience to keep him ahead of me, and to do it full time.
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