Rethinking Black Banjo Heritage
Maya Brown-Boateng, PhD student in ethnomusicology, Department of Music
The banjo has been expropriated from its African roots, first exploited in American popular culture in minstrel shows, then appropriated in white music styles such as bluegrass. As part of reclaiming the banjo as an instrument, a music and a history, Brown-Boateng studies how to recenter and rethink race in the erasure of Black banjo performance and the efforts of Black banjoists today to perpetuate Blackness through banjo histories and sounds. Brown-Boateng, a teaching fellow in ethnomusicology, received a 2021 Fulbright fellowship to conduct research in Jamaica.
An accomplished banjo player herself—she won an ALL FRETS foundation grant in 2019 for her playing—Brown-Boateng studies coalition building among Black banjoists and the changing meanings of Blackness and banjo performance in the United States and Jamaica.
“My dissertation is titled ‘Following the Sounds of the Banjo,’ reflecting the significance of this instrument,” she explains. “It has taken me on a journey through peculiar moments in history, curious performance spaces and critical discourses regarding difference and meaning making.”
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