While not a true native of America, the banjo as we know it developed in the United States from the primitive folk instrument which was introduced to our country by African slaves in the mid-1600s. From those humble roots, the banjo's 350 year evolution often mirrored both the changes in our culture as well as those in American popular music and entertainment.
THE EARLY YEARS
1650 - 1850
A Slave Birthright
Although often referred to as the only musical instrument native to America, the banjo’s ancestry can actually be traced to many countries. Drum like instruments with strings attached are mentioned in the earliest recorded histories of many Far East, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and African civilizations. Early banjos derived their distinctive sound and appearance by being constructed from hollowed out gourds, turtle shells or tree trunks with the skin of a snake, cat, goat or ground hog stretched on top and secured with copper tacks or nails. A handle or neck was attached which usually held three or four strings made from horsehair, hemp fiber, twine or animal intestine. Tuning and the manner of playing primitive banjos was determined by either the musical development in a particular geographic region or the personal preference of the player.
Such were the banjos which were introduced to America in the mid-1600s by Africans who were brought to this country in bondage by the slave trade. Called varying names such as banza, banjar, bangoe, banshaw, bangie (and others), the first American banjos were constructed by memory of similar instruments which were indigenous to the African culture at the time. With standardization in banjo tuning, construction and playing technique still more than one hundred years in the future, these elements in primitive banjos suited the player and were passed down from generation to generation along with an ever growing repertoire of songs - many illustrative of a life in slavery.
For those first nearly two hundred years of its evolution in America, the banjo remained a folk instrument, made by hand and played mostly by and for slaves as they entertained themselves with song and dance. As most chroniclers of the 18th and 19th century were unconcerned with the goings on in slave quarters, published historical accounts regarding the banjo from this period are scarce. In contrast, it was often noted in white periodicals of the time, that - to American’s of European ancestry - the banjo was little more than an oddity, a “musical outcast, lowlier than the fiddle - which many righteous people know to be from the devil.”
Through those many years in which the banjo helped to provide respite for those enduring an intolerable situation, its enthusiastic sound became part of a nation in growth. This earliest chapter in American banjo evolution saw the country emerge from British colonialism to independence. From European governed territories to United States. And, for the black culture, from bondage to the brink of freedom.
Although the banjo had not yet been accepted as a legitimate musical instrument, the African/American culture’s important role in its early development in America is unquestionable.
THE MINSTREL AGE
1830s - 1870s
From The Plantation To The Stage
During its first 200 years in America, the banjo was primarily an instrument of the black slave culture. In the early 1800s, there began to be considerable interaction between whites and blacks - particularly in the enjoyment of music and dance. Unfortunately, when the music of a banjo would result in a frolicking dance by a group of slaves, white people observing the phenomenon would often conjure up a distorted image of the life of a plantation slave as being one of carefree existence. This whimsical outlook of the white man’s slave became the stereotypical black on whom minstrelsy was based.
Although white performers had begun appearing in blackface as a gimmick before the American Revolution, it was not until the 1830s that the comic antics of a black caricature - often playing a banjo - began taking center stage at entertainment events. Like minded individual minstrel musicians and performers began banding together and, with the 1843 debut of the Virginia Minstrels, the minstrel show was born. For the next 50 years, hundreds of minstrel groups with names such as Christy’s Minstrels, Buckley’s Serenaders and The Congo Melodists, took the popular entertainment form to every corner of our land as well as overseas.
One of the first - and certainly the most well-known - of the minstrel banjoists was a white Virginian named Joel Walker Sweeney. Learning to play the banjo in the 1820s from the black men working on his father’s farm, Sweeney’s impact on the Minstrel Age was significant. Although not the “inventor of the banjo” (as he claimed), Sweeney is credited with popularizing the five-string banjo via his extensive travels. The ensuing
demand for banjos was met with Sweeney’s contracting of a Baltimore drum maker, William Boucher, to manufacture banjos for public sales - a major step in the banjo’s evolution away from being an exclusively homemade folk instrument. Sweeney’s further impact was felt as the instructor of several later prominent minstrel banjo players including Dan Emmett (composer of Dixie) and Billy Whitlock. Whitlock, in turn, taught Thomas Briggs who, in 1855, published the Briggs’ Banjo Instructor, the first widely accepted banjo tutor to disseminate standards in banjo tuning and playing technique.
The Civil War became an unwitting participant in the evolution of the banjo with banjo players of all backgrounds - North and South, black and white, coming together and ultimately sharing knowledge and appreciation of the instrument. With the war fought and emancipation won, soldiers returned home, spreading this newfound banjo knowledge throughout the growing United States.
As the banjo took its place as an icon of American popular music during the Minstrel Age, it evolved physically to reflect the advances in banjo making and the needs of its players. The rustic appearance of primitive banjos was replaced with the familiar round bodied instrument which, by the 1870s, had acquired a fretted fingerboard as well. Along with the physical changes, the sociological changes resulting from the coincidental cultural exchange during the Civil War led to “proper” society elevating the banjo from its earlier perceived place in “the depth of popular degradation” to a position of acceptance and respectability. Soon to be gone was the minimal musicianship and low comedy associated with the minstrel show. The stage was set for a new age of refinement in banjo performance and design - The Classic Era.
THE CLASSIC ERA
1880s - 1910s
A Universal Favorite
Following the Civil War, there was a definite effort to "legitimize" the banjo and make it a classical instrument - much like the violin of Europe. This movement - initiated by white people of European descent, demonstrated an infatuation with the instrument juxtaposed to a long-standing sentiment that the banjo was a "musically feeble gadget of the lower classes." A gradual softening of this stance was facilitated by the adaptation to the banjo of playing techniques and repertoire associated with its socially acceptable cousin, the classical guitar. With the 1865 publication and widespread acceptance of a method book by Frank Coverse which outlined this new, more refined, approach to the banjo, high society was ready to adopt the banjo as its own.
Unlike the present day, entertainment in a Victorian Era home was a family event centering around the parlor. Displaying the fruits of musical training - an essential element in a proper upbringing at the time, family members would entertain each other with musical renditions of light classics, marches, and popular dance tunes of the day. Although the piano, guitar and violin had been the parlor instruments of choice, the versatile banjo quickly became a universal favorite - particularly among young ladies. Outside of the home, the banjo turned out to be the basis for many satisfying social situations as well. By the late 1800s, countless banjo clubs had formed around the country and leading colleges and universities all had a banjo orchestra of their own. At last, the socially elite thought it fashionable to play the banjo!
The Classic Era also produced many legendary solo concert performers who were inspired by this 
pinnacle period in banjo refinement. In the hands of artists like Alfred A. Farland, Vess Ossman, Fred Van Epps and Frederick Bacon, the once humble five-string banjo became a virtuoso vehicle capable of valid renditions of the most challenging works by master composers such as Beethoven, Paganini, and Mendelssohn. With such musicianship requiring more refined instruments, manufacturers of the period such as S. S. Stewart, William Cole and A. C. Fairbanks responded with master works of innovation and decor, examples of which are still regarded as the epitome of the banjo making art.
While the banjo had found its acceptance in legitimate music circles during the Classic Era, by the 1890s musical tastes were again changing. Taking a rhythmic cue from the syncopated strokes of the banjo, the black culture again played a role in the evolution of American popular music with its new invention - Ragtime. Although a cause for anguish among many a classically trained Victorian Era musician, the exciting new musical style was perfectly suited to the classic five-string banjo. During the first decade of the 20th century, the bright tempo and ragged meter of Ragtime all but replaced waltz and polka as the dance music of America.
While the Classic Era represented a definite high point in the sophistication of banjo performance, manufacturing and popularity, the instrument continued an evolution which was literally intertwined with the development of American popular music. With the popularity of Ragtime and its offspring - Jazz, came the promise of yet another evolutionary change for the banjo - and its greatest triumph - The Jazz Age.
THE JAZZ AGE
1910s - 1930s
Ultimate Perfection
Prior to the Jazz Age of the 1920s, the banjo - by definition - was an instrument with five-strings. Those strings, made of natural fiber, were plucked with the bare fingers to play the refined dance and light classical music heard in America's parlors and concert halls at the turn of the 20th century. However, as Ragtime prepared proper society for the dramatic changes about to occur in
the dance music of America, the banjo experienced an extraordinary and rapid evolution as well. This transformation, seemingly necessary for the banjo's basic survival, resulted in its greatest triumph.
In the early 1900s, a new dance craze - centering around the Latin Tango - coincided with the introduction of brass and reed instruments in the typical Ragtime dance orchestra. In an effort to simply be heard, classic five-string banjo players began experimenting, often removing the fifth string altogether and replacing the remaining four natural fiber strings with strings made of steel. For additional volume, rather than plucking the steel strings with bare fingers in the traditional manner, they were strummed with a plectrum or "pick." As the long neck of the classic five-string banjo was not made to supporting the 
tension of steel strings without warping, banjo designers tried a shorter neck, similar in length to the mandolin. That connection was taken a step further by tuning the four strings of the short neck banjos in musical intervals identical those used on the mandolin. All of these experiments came together with the 1907 introduction of the banjorine by the J.B. Schall Company of Chicago - the first true jazz age banjo.
Just as the Civil War was a turning point in the development of the banjo, World War I played a similar role. American soldiers, turning their back on European culture, favored American jazz - craving its upbeat and carefree feel both as they fought on foreign soil as well as when they returned to the U.S. following the war's end in 1918. The music of the jazz age became synonymous with the sound of the new four-string tenor and plectrum banjos. The Charleston-esque rhythm of the era made the banjo the most popular instrument in country and its players the mainstream pop music icons. While difficult to comprehend, vaudeville banjo stars such as Eddie Peabody and Roy Smeck were every bit as popular as any of today's entertainment superstars.
And the banjos of the jazz age! During the 1920s, the
banjo reached a level in design and manufacture that can only be described as perfection. With the demand for ten of thousands of instruments, manufacturers dedicated all of their resources to banjo design and production. In addition to perfecting the banjo as a musical instrument, the ornate decoration adorning the instruments reflects the artistry of their creators as well as the demand to produce a dynamic visual impact on a large theater audience in that era before television and sound films. It is a generally accepted fact that manufacturers of the jazz age produced the finest banjo that have ever been - or ever will be - made.
Although fondly remembered, the 1920s was also a lawless decade in which many widely accepted social, business and political values were cast aside in the midst of post-W.W. I euphoria. The resulting catastrophic collapse of the stock market and Great Depression which followed marked the end of the jazz age - the final years in which the banjo held a place of prominence in American popular music. By 1940, for all practical purposes, the banjo was dead.
POST W.W.II
1940s - Present
Rebirth and Reaffirmation
The end of the Jazz Age marked the last time that the banjo, in any of its evolutionary variations, played an integral role in American popular music. During the late 1930s and through the 1940s, the sweet and swinging sounds of Big Band era orchestras such as Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman demanded the banjo be replaced with the guitar. By W.W. II, most banjo manufacturers of the Jazz Age had either gone out of business or turned their manufacturing facilities over to the war effort. Consequently, in the 1940s it was virtually impossible to purchase either a new banjo or the strings and celluloid picks to play a prewar instrument. However, following W.W. II the banjo, in several forms, experienced a rebirth and reaffirmation of its rightful place in America's musical heritage.
Influenced by the five-string folk banjo styles still being played in the Appalachian and Ozark mountains, banjo player Pete Seeger 
introduced the masses to that style and was a major force behind a new national interest in folk music. This movement involved both serious study by ethnomusicologists as well as commercial success, giving birth to such groups as The Weavers, The Kingston Trio, The Limelighters and, later, Peter, Paul & Mary. Seeger's method book, How To Play The Five-String Banjo, first published in 1948, not only documented many obscure folk styles but was the only banjo instructional publication available to an entire generation.
Another completely new identity for the banjo came from North Carolina in the person of Earl Scruggs. Heavily influenced by the classic five-string banjo of nearly seventy years earlier, Scruggs updated the style using a banjo fitted with steel strings which he played with individual picks fitted to his thumb and forefingers. Scruggs' lightning fingerpicking patterns became a sound synonymous with another emerging musical style known as Bluegrass. While beginning its life in the 1940s 
as a relatively obscure folk style often associated with country music and musicians, by the mid-1970s the Bluegrass movement had become close to mainstream in popularity and nationwide in scope. Two 1970s Bluegrass flavored hit banjo recordings - Scruggs' Foggy Mountain Breakdown (from the film Bonnie & Clyde) as well as Dueling Banjos (from the film Deliverance) - cemented the general public's immediate association of the banjo with Bluegrass music - a perception which continues to the present day.
However, throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, jazz age four-string banjos also enjoyed a resurgence of popularity as part of the post-W.W. II nostalgia boom ignited by the 1948 hit recording of I'm Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover. Big city nightclubs such as The Red Garter, Your Father's Mustache and Mickie Finn's Speakeasy along with high-fidelity recordings which featured jazz age banjos playing songs of the Gay 90s and Roaring 20s added fuel to the momentum and, by the mid-1960s, a popular song title - The Banjo's Back In Town - became the mantra of 
many a jazz age banjo player. The popularity of this trend was proven in the late 1960s when the national chain of over 500 Shakey's Pizza Parlor's insisted that the sights and sounds of the jazz age banjo be an essential part of every restaurant.
Although finding success in many specialty and nostalgia driven identities, the banjo in post W.W. II America has not yet experienced the mainstream popularity it enjoyed during its golden era of the Jazz Age. However, via its association with the Celtic music which Ireland now shares with the world, the banjo is now seen by, quite possibly, its greatest audience to date ... and its evolution continues.
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