Early American banjo music is Black music, developed by enslaved Africans and rooted in Black culture through the early 1800s ...

Constructed from a type of gourd called a calabash ... particularly when the instrument, traditionally played in the steadily warm weather of Africa, experiences cold climates.

Eight women in brilliant batik wraps danced in a circle, shaking beaded gourds, pounding skin drums or dipping and ... many with strong West African accents. And with that, music director Russell ...

But how the cultivated bottle gourd became such a ubiquitous human tool -- a drinking vessel, musical instrument ... too short and too cold to grow this African native so far north.

Love said his self-made instrument allowed him to tune into his ancestors. “I’m an African in America. I don’t play from a colonized approach. Playing a fretless gourd banjo has given me a ...

Of West African origin, the dried gourd percussion instrument is also known as cas cas or kashaka, and hails from countries, including Ghana, Senegal and the Ivory Coast. Once completely invested ...