XPost: alt.banjo, alt.banjo.clawhammer, rec.music.country.old-time   
   From: ulf.jagfors@telia.com   
      
   Dan Wikes   
   As I am so to speak one-sided in this research I think it could be   
   interesting to read how one of the attendants to the meeting in Gambia this   
   summer describes it.   
      
   Here is what Greg Adams wrote;   
   As a formally trained musician, I did have some trouble reconciling the fact   
   that this music should really be "experienced" and learned through   
   repetition as part of its transmission from person to person. But since we   
   were there only for a short time, I felt cornered into doing what typical   
   Western musicians do-- record it, write it out, and try to analyze it. This,   
   of course, didn't always work as the African sense of pulse is sometimes   
   quite different from Western music.   
      
   As a melodic clawhammer player, and having spent the last 4 years studying   
   stroke style, I felt comfortable with the akonting o'teck technique. Stroke   
   style, in particular, with its melodic nature, playing multiple notes   
   without alternating between the finger and thumb, leading phrases with the   
   thumb, and the frequent use of triplet figures, helped to make playing the   
   akonting more accessible.   
      
   (Note: The terms clawhammer and stroke style are references to down-picking   
   techniques used for playing the 5-string banjo which are remarkably similar   
   to the Jola down-picking technique of playing the akonting, called o'teck   
   [literally, "to stroke"]. Stroke style is considered to be the oldest banjo   
   technique. It was style which the first European American minstrels learned   
   from African American banjo players and subsequently popularized in the   
   1830s and 1840s along with the banjo itself. Stroke remained the principal   
   banjo style until the advent of the up-picking "guitar style" of   
   finger-picking in the late 1860s. The stroke style survived in the folk   
   traditions of the white and black communities of the rural South where it's   
   called clawhammer, frailing, thumping, and so on. Melodic clawhammer is a   
   modern take on this traditional style which first emerged in the 1970s and   
   continues to be quite popular.   
   End Quote   
      
   I have meet a large number stroke style or clawhammer banjo players who have   
   had the opurtunity to play an Akonting. None of them have had any problem to   
   play the Akonting by using the stroke style or clawhammer skill they already   
   have. Well, the high action of the strings has sometimes been awkward for   
   them. Some of them have also learned to play a few of the Jola tunes that   
   of-course by no means are at all exactly the same as the minstrel tunes we   
   play to day. A few Jola tunes we have recorded have similar riffs but I do   
   not claim they are the origin of the minstrel tunes.( Campdown Races and   
   Sourwood Mountain). They just underline the similarites between the Old and   
   New World music.   
      
   And as I have said before, the Akonting is not a banjo. The Akonting is an   
   West African spike gourd lute with three strings of unequal length. One   
   upper short string is a thumb drone string. The other two are melody   
   strings. All strings have the same gauge. Most of the melodies are played on   
   the longest string. Basically they always play the songs in a melodic stroke   
   style. The scale is pentatonic. They use drop thumb, pull offs and sometimes   
   execute triplets but no slides. The first minstrel banjo players did not use   
   slides either and rarely the new added fifth bas string.   
      
   The banjo with a gourd, skin head, flatted neck, tuning pegs and strings of   
   equal lenght plus one drone string was something that came out of the merge   
   of African and Europen instrument traditions. Between the Akonting and many   
   simular gourd instruments in West Africa that were brought to the New world   
   we have at least one hundred years of development of the banjo, playing   
   styles and tunes in the New World. But the banjo stroke style playing came   
   out of the African traditions by the African-Americans and not by any   
   Europen traditions and it was not a white invention.Taking that hundred   
   years into concideration it is remarkable that so much of the old West   
   African stroke style playing technique have been preserved and transfered   
   into the minstrel banjo playing in the mid 19th century.   
      
   Read;   
   - Sinful Tunes and Spirituals by Dena J.Epstein, 1977. ISBN: 0-252-00520-1   
      
      
      
   - With a Banjo on my Knee, A musical journey from slavery to freedom by Rex   
   Ellis, 2001. ISBN: 0-531-11747-2.   
      
      
   Dan, I know that you try to elevate the minstrel frame Banjo to be largely a   
   white invention by playing down influences from the black people. That   
   mistake has already been made once before. Let us try to avoid what a Boston   
   Newspaper wrote 150 years ago.   
      
   " The Dobson Brothers (early minstrel banjo makers) have now elevated the   
   banjo from being a stupid negro invention to be an instrument that can be   
   played in the society of highest fashion and even by a women."   
      
   At least they recognized the banjo to be a "negro" invention. However I   
   believe we can agree on one thing.  I am pretty sure that if the white   
   people had not taking up the banjo from the blacks around 1830-40 and later   
   enhanced the playing and construction it had most probably gone the same way   
   as it did in the Caribbean region, died out. But because of that historical   
   fact any denial that the basic banjo construction and stroke style playing   
   technique did not came out from one hundred years of  black musical   
   traditions is wrong according to my opinion.   
      
   We can not even be sure that it was Joe Sweeny who together with Boucher   
   made the first frame minstrel banjos. It could have been something they took   
   from the blacks making tack head cheese box banjos! And who knows how much   
   of the European folk music traditions that was incorporated in the Black   
   music tradition and already existed before the start of the minstrel period.   
   We do not have a clue. But we know that African-American played a lot of   
   European fiddle music already in the 18th century for the slave master´s   
   dancing parties. We also know that the underclass white and black had very   
   close contacts in the early settlements in North America. That there were no   
   interchange of musical traditions is hard not to believe. When you try to   
   reveal the history it all ends up in striking circumstances and personal   
   notions. The Akonting o´teck and the minstrel stroke style is just one of   
   these striking circumstances that can not be overlooked. You have your   
   opinion made up but most of the banjo community who are interested in this   
   topic have probably another view. Luckily it does not mean they always agree   
   with everything I say.   
      
   Dan, You have to excuse me if I will have some problem to answer all your   
   statements but it take so much time to write these answers for me as English   
   is not my first language. I have to consider the fact that whatever I say or   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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