International Jazz Banjo Newsletter

On December 10th, 2005, at the 8th Annual Banjo Collectors Gathering, Gambian Jola folk music scholar Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta and Swedish banjo historian Ulf Jägfors met with two American roots music advocates Shlomo Pestcoe and Professor Tony Thomas (who is the Founder/Coordinator of the Black Banjo Then & Now and The Association of Traditional Association of Tradiitional Black String Players\String Players) to discuss ways of supporting the ongoing fieldwork by Jatta and Jägfors studying the Jola akonting, the West African folk lute considered to be a possible living ancestor of the banjo, and other lute traditions found throughout West Africa. It quickly became clear that the most pressing need was to aid The Akonting Center: The Senegambia Center for Folk Music Research and Education(SCFMRE), a non-governmental grassroots cultural initiative in Mandinary, Gambia, started by Jatta to research, document, and perpetuate the various string instrument traditions of the Senegambia region.
The result was the creation of a North American support group, Friends of the Akonting Center (FOAC). Others from the American banjo community active in FOAC include: Ed Britt, Dr. Joan P. Dickerson (a pioneer of the recent movement of African American musicians and scholars to reintroduce the banjo into their
community's rich musical culture), Rebecca Dixon, Paul Sedgwick and Eli Smith.
The first task FOAC has set for itself is raising funds for The Akonting Center. Its most immediate goal is to provide economic support for Daniel Jatta's effort to record and document Sagari Sambo, the oldest living master and tradition-bearer of the Jola akonting. Likewise, FOAC will be supporting The Akonting Center's International Conference on the African Origin of the Banjo, July 14-16, 2006, which will mark the official opening of the Gambian cultural institution.
For more information, please contact:
Shlomo Pestcoe
135 Amity Street, #1A
Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA
(718) 875-8847
or visit www.shlomomusic.com