Early American banjo music is Black music. The banjo was created by enslaved African Americans, and according to the Smithsonian Institute, up until the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively an African ...

Beyonce’s hit “Texas Hold ’Em” opens with a beat seldom heard on hip-hop tracks: the unmistakable clip-clop of a four-stringed clawhammer banjo. It comes via folk icon Rhiannon Giddens, who was ...

Underneath a fingernail moon and the silhouettes of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, Oliver Wood stood onstage at the Earl Scruggs Music Festival and declared, “This one goes out to ...

There could probably be no better evangelist for anything than the immensely respected Rhiannon Giddens, and the banjo is lucky to have her. The singer and multi-instrumentalist has been spreading the ...