Why Black Banjo:
The Black Banjo List Serve
By Tony Thomas
I started Black Banjo Then and Now because I thought Black banjoists I kept meeting online needed to get together. As well, we soon found other banjoists and scholars needed a place to discuss the African origin and Black legacy of the Banjo.
We needed a place to express the explosion of African American banjoists including African American Heritage Elder Etta Baker, Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Otis Taylor, Sule Greg Wilson, Don Vappie, Dr. Joan, and Rex Ellis, all known in the old-time, blues, classic, and jazz banjo communities. There are others, less famous, we’ve found along the way like Boston civic and cultural leader Dr. Theodore Landsmark, William the Bluegrass picking bailiff on TV’s Texas Justice, Rashunda a former TV anchor from Highpoint, North Carolina now working in Zurich whose online queries got me to launch the Black Banjo Then and Now Group in the first place, elementary school students in Mississippi and Buffalo studying four string banjo, and a young brother in Georgia who wants to play the blues.
I did face bigotry from a small pseudo-redneck element in Banjo L in the month’s before I launched Black Banjo Then and Now. However, banjo-l’s members and its owner handled them and handled them well. I launched Black Banjo, not out of any negative feelings bout Banjo-L as has become the myth, but because of the positive need to gather the Black banjoists and because of a need to focus the discussions others I met on banjo-l and elsewhere wanted to have about Black banjo playing, then and now.