"That Half Barbaric Twang" and Why Your Friends Think That Only Hillbillies Play the Banjo

There's a lot I didn't know about the banjo. Or about writing a blog post. This being my first post, I don't really have my bloglegs yet and this one kind of got away from me. It's a bit, um. Long. If you read it, you'll probably understand what the book was talking about pretty well but skimming it and looking at the timeline will also be educating without taking you an hour. Again, with this being the first post I'm still kind of experimenting with everything but, for now, the order for this will be:

What I Thought of the Book
A Summary of the Book
A Timeline of Dates from the Book
Lingering Questions
Conclusions Drawn as they Relate to Bluegrass

If you only read one thing read the conclusion. That's the whole point of this blog. For the next post, I'll try to make the conclusion longer and the summary brief. The timeline is also pretty neat and it took me a long time so it would make me feel better to know someone looked at it. Please feel free to comment on this post and tell me how right or wrong you think I am. I also highly encourage you to please share this with anyone who you think will enjoy it. I'm low key trying to build a network of people who will correct me all of the time but its in your best interest to help me because then you'll know too (see "jam nuggets"). Also, it was just or will soon be my birthday! Consider donating as a way to support this blog if you like what your read!

Thanks so much for checking this out I'm excited to share this stuff with you!

The Book

That Half-Barbaric Twang is a book about the history of the banjo in American pop culture. Written by Karen Linn, an archivist in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, this book was published in 1994 so I think some of the information in the book has become a little more common knowledge since it was published. I knew about Joel Walker Sweeney adding a string but not the short string, I was aware of the banjo's tie to minstrelsy, and I had seen Throw Down Your Heart so I was aware of its African roots but I really had no idea how point A connected to point B. This is a very thorough and well-researched book that went to great effort to really trace the path of the banjo through American history and pop culture. It provides really wonderfully thought-provoking and well-documented arguments for why certain feelings about the banjo exist today which was exactly what I was looking for. Reading this book I was hoping to find some sort of reasoning behind people's prejudices and common reactions to the banjo today and I think the book presents some interesting information on this topic.