International Jazz Banjo Newsletter

Several of us Eddie Peabody fans connected with the National Four-String Banjo Hall of Fame Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma, USA, have been attempting to restore the three early Vitaphone film shorts that Eddie made with his partner Jimmy Maisel in the 1920's before they completely deteriorate with old age. We have already done with his film "Banjo Land", made in 1928. These were made with the picture on film and the sound on a large phonograph disc which was synchronized with it when played. Our group of about half a dozen Peabody fans had put together the $4500 to have the restoration done at the film library of the University of California in Los Angeles. We had been told that the Library of Congress had the film and a private collector had the disc. They were to be combined at the lab onto new film with the sound cleaned up digitally. However, when the disc box labeled "Banjomania" was opened, it had the disc of "Syncopating Sensation," the third short for which the film has not been found yet. Efforts over here to find the correct disc have so far proved futile and as a last resort we are trying overseas because we know it originally had a world-wide circulation. The banjo discography book which was started by Brian Rust and subsequently finished by Uli Heier and Rainer Lotz, lists the disc with so much detail (on page 342) that I theorize that the compiler or a co-operating collector must have seen it. While the disc is originally on Vitaphone, the entry after listing the tunes says "on cover of Lindstrom 2103 ...synchronized disc for a film short entitled "Banjomania." That sounds very Swedish to me! The tunes listed were:- Sad n' Blue, Me and My Shadow and You Don't Like It , Not Much!. A later film short that Peabody made was also called "Banjomania", but it is not the same one. Anything anybody can do in helping would be appreciated. I am especially interested in this project because I knew both Eddie and Jimmy in their later years and even got to jam with Eddie a couple of times when he performed in Minnesota.

On another matter, I am in the final stages of a banjo history book that I have written called "The Banjo Entertainers: Roots to Ragtime." It is the result of many years of in-depth research. Sufficient evidence of the appearance of banjo-like instruments in the New World beginning with 17th Century slave trade from West Africa has been presented in previous writing on banjo history to make it unnecessary to recap it in detail here. This includes the report of a "banza" at a slave dance in Martinique in 1678, Sir Hans Sloane's descriptions of banjo-like stringed instruments with gourd bodies played by African slaves when he was in Jamaica in 1687, mention of a "banjer" in a 1754 Maryland newspaper article about a runaway slave and the instrument's debut under its modern day name of "banjo" in 1774 in the journal of Philip V. Fithian in Virginia, also in the journal of Nicholas Creswell in Maryland. In efforts to trace the African origins of the banjo, the five-stringed halam (or xhalam), as played by griots of West Africa, has been favored as one of the African instruments that could be considered an ancestor. An African lute, similar to the halam is the "bania", has a body usually made from a gourd. More recently, a lesser-known African musical instrument has been identified as having even greater similarities in structure and playing style to its American cousin. It is the "akonting" (also spelled ekonting), a gourd body stringed instrument of the Jola tribe of Gambia. Like the banjo of early American minstrel days, it has a drone string and is played with a down striking motion of the right hand index finger. Interestingly, the Jola word for papyrus, the material of the akonting's dowel stick neck, is "bangoe". The present-day akonting has three strings, two melody strings in addition to the drone thumb string. Earlier akontings had four strings. The harp-like Malian "ngoni", which has a combination of open and stopped strings on a gourd body, has also been suggested as a possible influence in development of the American five-string banjo.
Much information comes from presentations by Swedish banjo historian Ulf Jagfors, a leader in field research on the akonting, at the Banjo Collectors Gatherings in the United States in 2000, 2001 and 2002. His associate in this research has been Daniel Jatta, a member of the Jola ethnic group, who plays the akonting and now resides in Sweden. I am trying to do this book as accurately and fully documented as possible, something that has not always been case in earlier writings on banjo history. I had hoped to have the book out by this gathering in December but it looks now like it won't make it until early next year. If you are interested in placing a reservation for a copy of this book, please contact schreyer@aol.com
Best Regards, Lowell Schreyer