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.| Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. A Brief History of the Banjo 2. The Old-Time Nation 3. God Is in the Details 4. An Homage to the Past 5. An Apprentice to Ghosts 6. The Banjo's Evolving Story Appendix 1. List of Interviewees Appendix 2. Builder Websites Notes Biblography Index | Klaus P. Wachsmann Prize for Advanced and Critical Essays in Organology, the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), 2018 — the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM)
|Richard Jones-Bamman is Emeritus Professor of Music at Eastern Connecticut State University.