(Photo by W. Weinstein)
Performing with Sufferin' Succotash, TheTwo Boots Brooklyn Tent. The 7th Heaven Street Festival. Park Slope, Brooklyn, 6/18/06
Banjo Roots Research Initiative & The Banjo Roots Network
In 2008, I formed a unique scholarly partnership with my colleague Greg C. Adams, Banjo Roots Research Initiatives. Our first effort was the ongoing project of creating the Banjo Roots Network, a projected series of related sites on MySpace that will explore the many different aspects of the history of the banjo, its Afro-Creole origins in the Caribbean in the 17th century, and its deep roots in the West African family of plucked lutes.
The principal objective of the Banjo Roots Network is to be a platform for public outreach and education through which we can share the latest findings of recent banjo roots research. Likewise, we hope that it will also serve as a springboard for dialogue and collaborations between researchers within the banjo community as well as scholars working in different, but related disciplines.
While BRN is still very much a 'work-in-progress', we currently host three active sites. Please be sure to visit them:
Banjo Roots: Banjo Beginnings, "African American Origins, West African Roots"
Banjo Roots: West Africa, "Exploring the Banjo's West African Heritage"
Ekonting, "A Link to the Banjo's West African Heritage"
Photo postcard. Vermont, USA, 1907. (Collection of Shlomo Pestcoe)
I've been performing old-time country, early blues, Louisiana Cajun/ Black Creole, French Canadian, Jewish klezmer, Tejano/Norteno, and lots of other kinds of ethnic/regional traditional music since the early 1980s. My instruments include: fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, cuatro, button accordion, concertina and more.
A choice selection from my personal collection of antique and vintage photographs and postcards depicting musicians and their instruments from around the world. For image captions, point and hover your mouse over the given image. To enlarge, click on the image. Enjoy!
(Copyright © 2007 Shlomo Pestcoe. All rights reserved. Please do not copy or publish any of these images without permission or credit. Please contact me at info@shlomomusic.com with all inquiries and comments. Thanks!)
Back in the '90s, I achieved some local fame as a "kids 'n' family" music edu-tainer here in the Big Apple. Best known for my work as The Music Man at The Children's Museum of Manhattan and The Children's Museum of the Arts, I was also the lead instrumentalist/principal songwriter for The Imagination Workshop Band (1996-2001).
I'm a founding member of Gillygaloo, which was one of NYC's foremost "kids 'n' family" music groups, performing grownup-friendly folk roots music for kids of all ages. I was also the fiddler/leader of Sufferin' Succotash, a renowned local string band which performed old-time country, early blues and old-style Louisiana Cajun/Black Creole music from the 1920s, '30s and beyond.
Aside from performing, I teach guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and ukulele For more information, please email me at: info@shlomomusic.com
I was the first Curator/Photo Archivist of The Musical Eye, the Musurgia collection of antique photographic images of musicians and their instruments from around the world. That position is now held by my dear friend, musical colleague, and fellow Brooklynite-- the wonderfully-gifted singer and guitarist Mamie Minch.
(Photo by W. Weinstein)
Replica of the gourd banjo seen in The Old Plantation (South Carolina, c.1777-1794), the oldest depiction of a banjo in North America. Made by John Steven Foster of Sherbrooke, Quebec in 1999. Purchased from Elderly Instruments' Vintage & Used Instrument List. Special thanks to Stan Werbin.
For more information on the anonymous folk painting The Old Plantation and what it can tells us as the earliest visual chronicle of African American music and dance in North America, please see my blog on the Banjo Roots MySpace Music site: The Old Plantation: A Banjo Roots Perspective
In addition, I research and write about ethnic/regional folk/vernacular musical instruments and traditions from around the globe. Recently, I've been working with other researchers delving into the origins and organology of the lute family of string instruments found the world over.
Lute Family String Instruments: Plucked Lutes & Bowed Lutes (Fiddles)
Another choice selection from my personal collection of antique and vintage photographs and postcards depicting musicians and their instruments from around the world. For image captions, point and hover your mouse over the given image. To enlarge, click on the image. Enjoy!
(Copyright © 2007 Shlomo Pestcoe. All rights reserved. Please do not copy or publish any of these images without permission or credit. Please contact me at info@shlomomusic.com with all inquiries and comments. Thanks!)
One of our primary areas of research is investigating the banjo's early history and the roots of this quintessential American instrument in Africa and the African Diaspora.
The Banjo & Its West African Ancestors
A selection of images that focus on the early gourd banjo (c.1620-1840) and its descendants: the 5-string banjo, the 4-string tenor & plectrum banjos, and banjo hybrids (e.g. the banjo-mandolin, banjo-guitar, and banjo-ukulele); the banjo's forebears in the West African plucked spike lute family; and the banjo's cousins, the Gnawa guinbri (Morocco, Algeria) and the gombri (Tunisia), North African plucked lutes of West African heritage.
My colleagues in this endeavor include, to name but a few, my good buddies:
Ulf Jägfors, noted Swedish banjo historian/collector and intrepid globe-trekking early plucked lute hunter.
Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta, the Jola scholar/musician from The Gambia who pioneered the research and documentation of his people's folk lute, the ekonting (akonting), as well as the various folk lutes of the other peoples of Senegambia.
Nick Bamber, a British classic banjoist and historian of the zither banjo who has been doing vital field research and documentation of traditional gourd-bodied West African lutes-- e.g. the Jola ekonting (akonting), Manjak bunchundo, the Pepel busunde, etc.-- in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau. In the Summer of 2006, he discovered in the Bijago Islands off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, two hitherto unknown siblings of these instruments: the Balanta kusunde
and Bujogo (also Bijago) ñopata.
Greg C. Adams, an expert player in the 19th century "stroke style" of 5-string banjo "down-picking" who's also quite adept on the Jola ekonting. Greg created and maintains the Banjo Sightings Database with acclaimed early banjo maker/historian George Wunderlich. This online banjological resource center offers an incredible wealth of historic period art, illustrations, and documentation tracing early banjo history from the instrument's beginnings in the Caribbean in the 17th century on through the American Civil War.
Paul Sedgwick, a renowned banjoist and gourd instrument expert/maker who plays, teaches and makes the Jola ekonting.
Banjoist/banjologist Ed Britt, an authority on the history and design of 19th century American banjos.
(Photo by Greg C. Adams)
Jola ekonting (akonting) players from Casamance (southern Senegal) visiting The Akonting Center. Manidary, Gambia, 7/06.
I was a principal consultant for the Brooklyn Children's Museum
on musical instruments and traditions from around the globe for the current permanent music exhibit component of BCM's recent massive renovation and expansion (2005-2008). This was a reprise of my role in the creation
of the previous permanent music exhibit, Music Mix, back in 1998.
The current music exhibit is called World Brooklyn: Global Beats and features the work of musicians from a variety of ethnic traditions found in Brooklyn and greater New York City. Some of the performers profiled include:
Tony DeMarco,
one of NYC's finest Irish fiddlers and a leading master of the Sligo style.
The Chinese Music Ensemble of New York, one of the foremost traditional Chinese music orchestras in North America.
Gokh-Bi System, a unique West African rap group from Senegal which features the Jola ekonting folk lute.(Note: An ekonting will be one of the musical instruments featured in
the exhibit, a gift of Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta and
Ulf Jägfors.)
