Banjo music possesses a unique power to evoke a bucolic, simpler past. The artisans who build banjos for old-time music stand at an unusual crossroads ”asked to meet the modern musician's needs while retaining the nostalgic qualities so fundamental to the banjo's sound and mystique. Richard Jones-Bamman ventures into workshops and old-time music communities to explore how banjo builders practice their art. His interviews and long-time personal immersion in the musical culture shed light on long-overlooked aspects of banjo making. What is the banjo builder's role in the creation of a specific musical community? What techniques go into the styles of instruments they create? Jones-Bamman explores these questions and many others while sharing the ways an inescapable sense of the past undergirds the performance and enjoyment of old-time music. Along the way he reveals how antimodernism remains integral to the music's appeal and its making.
| ISBN: | 9780252082849 |
| Publication date: | 11th September 2017 |
| Author: | Richard Jones-Bamman |
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 288 pages |
| Series: | Folklore Studies in Multicultural World |
| Genres: |
String instruments Traditional and folk music |