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The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, in modern forms usually made of plastic, originally of animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans and had African antecedents.
Another pre-civil war banjo was made by A.B. Bullock in Rhode Island; the 1854-made fretless banjo has a metal body with bolts to adjust the tension of the skin head. [17] A post-Civil War banjo on display from the 1880s used a wooden hoop tacked to the instrument's body on the outside to adjust the skin-head's tension. [18]
Joel Sweeney. Joel Walker Sweeney (1810 – October 29, 1860), also known as Joe Sweeney, was an American musician and early blackface minstrel performer. He is known for popularizing the playing of the banjo and has often been credited with advancing the physical development of the modern five-string banjo.
The Vega name was subsequently licensed to a number of American and international companies. In 1989, the Deering Banjo Company purchased the Vega name. They currently produce Vega banjos reminiscent of the instruments Vega made during the 1960s folk revival. Vega trumpets and cornets were on par with the highest quality brass horns of their time.
Samuel Swaim Stewart (January 8, 1855—April 6, 1898), also known as S. S. Stewart, was a musician, composer, publisher, and manufacturer of banjos. [3] He owned the S. S. Stewart Banjo Company, which was one of the largest banjo manufacturers in the 1890s, manufacturing tens-of-thousands of banjos annually. [4]
Banjo music originated informally as a form of African folk music over a hundred years ago probably in the sub-Saharan region.When the Americans forced African slaves to work on the plantations, banjo music followed them, and stayed primarily a form of African folk music, up to the 1800s.
Bacon brought in David L. Day as vice president of the company, and the banjos that were made under Day reached the top of the market. The high-end banjos that the Bacon Banjo Company made during the Jazz Age were highly decorated with gold plating, engraving ebony, ivory. They were made to sparkle in the hands of entertainers on stage.
The Kay name (and some of its trademarks, such as Knox were acquired by Teisco importer, Weiss Musical Instruments (WMI, by Sylvain Weindling and Barry Hornstein), [1] who put the Kay name on the Teisco products beginning in 1973, and continued on through the 1970s. [19] [20] In 1980, A.R. Enterprises (Tony Blair) purchased the Kay trademark. [20]