Slave banjos

In regard to how banjos made it here from Africa...I recently read that the slavers let the slaves play music occasionally on the voyages, presumably to have some entertainment and break the monotony of the trip. Makes sense...best...Hstick myspace.com/microstick microstick.net

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microstick@... wrote:
> In regard to how banjos made it here from Africa...I recently read that the slavers let the slaves play music occasionally on the voyages, presumably to have some entertainment and break the monotony of the trip. Makes sense...best...Hstick myspace.com/microstick microstick.net

Not if you've seen the plans showing how tightly they were packed into the ships. Perhaps there was a time when the conditions improved a bit and the slaves could bring instruments. Does anybody have more details?

The simple story is always that slaves couldn't bring instruments with them, and were sometimes forbidden from making music. I've also heard that Reggae (or one of its forbears) was taken to the West Indies from Senegal by sailors. So maybe the banjos took a similar route -- from Africa but not with the slaves.

Graham

>> In regard to how banjos made it here from Africa...I recently
>read that the slavers let the slaves play music occasionally on the
>voyages, presumably to have some entertainment and break the monotony
>of the trip. Makes sense...best...Hstick myspace.com/microstick
>microstick.net
>
>Not if you've seen the plans showing how tightly they were
>packed into the ships. Perhaps there was a time when the
>conditions improved a bit and the slaves could bring
>instruments. Does anybody have more details?

I'm sure there was a great variety of types of slave ships
operating at any given time. You had the Spanish, then the
French, then errant sailors from Ireland doing a side job,
and anybody else who cared to give it a try for a buck.

-Carl

Graham Breed wrote:
> I've also heard that Reggae (or one of its
> forbears) was taken to the West Indies from Senegal by
> sailors.

Yeah its called Mento. If you listen to some Ska you can hear its like a mix of Mento and American R'n'B. Ska slowed down and became Rock Steady (1966), which then turned into Reggae (1967 / 68).

Not the best way to listen to it, but one of my ska / rocksteady favourites :

The Pioneers : Long shot kick the bucket

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HeGCzEssgEM

i guess this is going quite off topic now :)

martin.