Banjo

By the time this instrument was made around 1890, the banjo had traveled from Africa through Southern plantations and minstrel shows to respectable Victorian culture, earning widespread popularity as an "American" instrument along the way. Originating in Africa and brought to the United States as early as the 17th century, the instrument and its music were transformed by white, working-class musicians who made the banjo an integral part of the minstrel shows after the 1840s. Played by a white performer in blackface, the banjo accompanied plantation songs and dances in racist caricatures of African-American culture that white urban audiences flocked to hear. After the Civil War, the banjo appeared as often in the Victorian parlor as it did in the minstrel show. Amateur musicians quickly accepted the banjo as a substitute for the bulky and expensive piano, and innovative makers modified their instruments to make them easier to play. By the time this instrument was made, popular music in America was undergoing rapid change and the banjo was there to keep the beat. The instrument was ideally suited to the punctuated rhythms and rapid chord changes at the dawn of the Jazz Age.