FOR ORIGINAL SOURCE CLICK HERE

Bill Graham is a freelance outdoor writer, photographer, bluegrass musician and singer-songwriter.

Gibson folks changed the world.

Therefore I'm peering at every house and street corner sign as I drive into Kalamazoo, Mich., looking in this vintage factory town for clues about the people who built the mandolins, banjos and guitars that helped spawn the music I adore.

My final destination is 225 Parsons St., once Lloyd Loar's lair.

The motel clerk's directions are a bit off, so I get to see plenty of the town from one edge to the other. I like the historic parts with well-built working class houses and a bit fancier ones down the block for the managers and merchants. I'd enjoy driving through Kalamazoo and looking around even if the Gibson Mandolin and Guitar Manufacturing Co. had not begun building instruments here in 1902.

Thoughts about this pilgrimage actually began a few days before at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, Mich., where I attended a

Original Source:http://www.standingstones.com/banjo.html

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The early origins of the instrument, now known as the banjo, are obscure. That its precursors came from Africa to America, probably by the West Indies, is by now well established. Yet, the multitude of African peoples, languages, and music make it very difficult to associate the banjo with any specific African protoype. From various historical references, however, it can be deduced that the banjar, or bangie, or banjer, or banza, or banjo was played in early 17th century America by Africans in slavery who constructed their instruments from gourds, wood, and tanned skins, using hemp or gut for strings. This prototype was eventually to lead to the evolution of the modern banjo in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Until 1800 the banjo remained essentially a black instrument, although at times there was considerable interaction between whites and blacks in enjoying music and dance—whites usually participating as observers. What brought the instrument to the attention of the nation, however, was a grotesque representation of black culture by white performers in minstrel shows.