White minstrel entertainers co-opted the banjo from slaves from the 1800s into the early 1900s. 'You can’t talk about the history of the banjo, if you can’t talk about racism, slavery,' a scholar says. Now, a digital museum aims to tackle that history.
Marc Fields and his production team are inside historian and collector Jim Bollman's storied Arlington home. They know the drill by now. This time, Bollman sits patiently on a stool with his rare, pre-Civil War banjo balanced on his knee as they set up their shot.
“Being an old fuddy-duddy, and being electronically challenged, all my information is on three-by-five cards in the collection,” Bollman said, laughing, “and yet he can bring that to the digital age.” “I think we’re right to feel uncomfortable about it,” he said. “Let’s face it, the whole American entertainment industry was founded on the minstrel show. For better or for worse, that’s a good starting place for understanding a lot of things that have happened since then.”
“You can you can look at the detail all the way down to the grain of the wood, the brackets, the hardware,” Fields explained. Then he does something you'd never be able to do in most museums — he flips the instrument over so we can see the maker’s signature on its back. “So now the banjo not only becomes something that he can express himself culturally with, it becomes something he can use to communicate who he is, it also can become something that gives him upward mobility,” Ellis said.The banjo was also a ticket to a more independent life for child performer Lotta Crabtree. She got her start entertaining miners during the California Gold Rush.
“So the first time that I saw a woman who was playing the banjo, the first time I saw a black banjo player, that was a challenge to the stereotypes that I had associated with the instrument,” Clarke said.Bollman said he’s come up against those ideas plenty of times.
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