Dr. Grauer's Column - National Banjo Day

National Banjo Day: Celebrating Hand-Made Music and the Roots of Learning
By Stuart Grauer

(Background track to put on as you read this story:   
YouTube: Sunrise Over the Grassland - Calm Morning Banjo and Harmonica)

There is a day for almost everything, not just dogs, and today April 8 (as I write this) marks National Banjo Day. It’s a fine excuse, if we need one, to celebrate the joy of the old-time tradition of making music by hand. It’s good to take a day to unplug and honor not just that unmistakable old “front porch” twang but to find ways to keep the heritage alive.

To study our heritage is about as fundamental to what educators and schools are charged with doing with a rising generation as anything I know of.

I have no idea why I love the banjo and its sound. I’ve made two of them, sort of. My first was a rough attempt fashioned from an old tambourine—before I knew what I was doing or why. But something about it went through me. My newest (Piscah brand) banjo was made from some of my favorite woods, gathered near Asheville, North Carolina—deep in Appalachia, where folks still play the ballads and laments that came over on the ships from Celtic lands. Those lands are part of my own heritage, and maybe there’s something in my genes that resonates when those woods and drum head are sounding out, especially accompanying the fiddle. All I know is that this instrument connects me to something old, deep, and real. There simply has to be some kind of etymological connection between “real” and “hand,” and I want my students to experience this kind of connection as a basic part of their education. But there is much more to warrant an annual national banjo day.

The banjo has deep roots in African traditions. Enslaved Africans brought with them the memory of gourd-bodied, skin-headed instruments—like the akonting and ngoni—which were plucked or strummed with a drone string, something like the banjo’s high-pitched fifth string today. In the cultural mixing bowl of the Americas, African Americans adapted and built the first American banjos, often from gourds, stretched animal skins, and strings handmade from the guts of sheep or goat. They did this with creativity and resilience, sometimes underground and in secret, drawing not only from their own heritage but from an awareness of European stringed instruments they encountered, such as the fiddle or lute.

Go to The Grauer School's music room and there you’ll find a handmade zither/lute-type instrument I bought from a Hadza tribesman in Tanzania, in the Great Rift Valley of Africa after hearing him play around the campfire. It’s simple—just a few strings stretched over a hand-carved gourd—but when you pluck it or bow it, the sound is stunningly familiar. I recorded that tribesman, so you can click here to listen to the music file [Hadza tribesman, campfire zither and voice, collected 2012 by Stuart Grauer, Great Rift Valley, Tanzania], and hear the music at an African tribal campfire. Close your eyes and you could be in the hills of Appalachia.

These handmade instruments are not simple objects to be inherited—they are original cultural creations that continue to evolve. (I don’t use goat strings or gourds on my banjo, though you can still find this.) The banjo, in its earliest American forms, was a New World instrument—sometimes called the only authentically U.S.-created instrument—and it was a profoundly African American creation, rooted in survival, expression, surely some pain that may have become blues, and craft. It’s a part of all of our histories.

Note: Of course, Indigenous Americans had their own rich musical traditions and instruments, too, going further back.

Don’t even get me started about American history. It can be told almost in its entirety through the banjo: the moans of slavery on Southern plantations, the early mountain settlers sounding out on the porches and hollers around Appalachia and bringing influences from Scots-Irish and African traditions; the shanties the New England whalers played on the only instrument many ships had; the hopeful trail music of the forty-niners heading west in a prairie schooner “with a banjo on my knee.” The Civil War era was practically orchestrated by the banjo, echoing through encampments with tunes like Soldier’s Joy, joyful sounding tunes with devastating stories, that are still played routinely all over the country 150 years after being composed and that convey whole worlds in song. From there, banjo found its way into the saloons and homes of coal miners where it is still celebrated in festivals all over Appalachia, then later resounded through vaudeville theaters and lively ragtime ballrooms at the turn of the century. It was carried onward by the folk revivalists of the 1960s who encapsulated America's musical heritage, and still resonates today on street corners and in modern bluegrass and old-time music festivals. All these chapters of our collective past have been scored and remembered through banjo tunes and songs.

I’ll never forget my first full-scale banjo project, taken from the appendix of Pete Seeger’s banjo book (that I still have). I was 98% finished, screwing in the tuning peg on the 5th string, and—"crack”—a fracture opened up. I was in my neighbor’s wood shop, and he could see that it was like a crack had gone through something I loved, through my whole body.

He said, “The trouble is, you love it too much.” It wouldn’t be the last time. But pretty soon we found a way to patch it up and I still have and love that instrument and consider it an heirloom. Making an acoustic instrument from harvested wood—walnut, maple, or cherry—is an act of connection to nature and place. It’s also interdisciplinary: part science, part art, part history.

That tradition of making something whole with your hands is what we lose when intelligence is increasingly artificial, i.e., Artificial Intelligence. In schools—especially secondary schools where teens in classrooms and online might feel disconnected from the physical world—the act of building or simply playing an acoustic instrument (like the banjo) can be transformational. I’ve loved The Grauer School’s guitar making classes we’ve offered from time to time. They teach patience, rhythm, need I say hand-eye coordination, and the joy of real craftsmanship—sound coming not from circuits, but from hands, tension, natural elements, and air.

I hope traditional music won’t stay confined in our music room, either. It can make its way into history class, where students can trace the movement of the folk instruments across continents, understanding migration, cultural blending, and appropriation. And if you’re still unsure if we could use a National Banjo Day, especially in schools, consider:

—In English, they can study the old ballads, or they can write their own ballads rooted in local stories or the old stories they collect from elders.

—In math and physics, rhythms and tuning systems offer up conversations about patterns, fractions, frequency, and acoustics.

—In environmental science or shop, I hope our students will find a way to study local woods and sustainable harvesting while building simple instruments from scratch.

I personally am not sure why math or spelling are all that much more important than America’s historic and only indigenous instrument. Handmade music in our schools, not just as an elective or add-on, is always a grounding force across the curriculum—more than a cute elementary school singalong. When students pluck a note on a handmade instrument (as all banjos are) or hear the echo of centuries in a folk song, they’re not just learning about the world, they’re participating in it. It’s expeditionary learning, born of direct experience.

In any case, I can think of news that is a whole lot less inspiring to read about today than Banjo Day. So, every April 8, and thereafter, I hope you let the banjo or other acoustic instrument ring out—on porches, in classrooms, and on campuses. The resonance of strings, the shaping of wood, and the shared silence even before a note is played all are moments I want for every student and teacher.

Alright, maybe this is getting long, but what I'm mainly trying to express is that I know of nothing more interesting or valuable in human life than connecting the conscious with the subconscious. This connection is where the greatest learning, inspiration, and creativity reside—and, I think, it’s also where love lives. These traditional instruments tap into something deep within the subconscious, at least for me. That sound, crossing oceans and centuries, reminds us that music carries memory, maybe even some kind of shared, collective-memory or epigenetic expression. And sometimes, even before we understand it, it carries us across worlds and then back home again.

Thank you for reading, and please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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