Browsing Category

Bio

Bio

A Fun Banjo Week…..aren`t they all?

September 24, 2013

The Royal Couple of the banjo community were featured artists at our local Blues & Roots & Barbecue Festival last week. The husband and wife duo of Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn skillfully performed a perfect and magical marriage of claw hammer and 3 finger Bluegrass picking styles to a spellbound and appreciative audience.IMG_2260 - Version 3 Proud parents of a 4 month old boy, the two spouses enthralled their listeners with warm and joyful music, song, and humor in an sunny outdoor concert under a clear autumn sky.

 

 

Meanwhile, back at the Banjo Rehabilitation Center, students from the nearby university school of journalism interviewed the BRC founder in his workshop for a radio story on the 5 string, its music, and musicians- like those mentioned above.IMG_2696 - Version 4

 

Bio

End of summer postcard

August 13, 2012

The Banjo Rehabilitation Center was briefly closed for a short mid August vacation. Beneath towering palms on a deserted beach in San Diego at daybreak, the BRC founder leisurely polished-up some rusty mandolin chops, as puzzled seagulls swooped overhead.

Only a few weeks earlier in Chicago, as seen in the below video clip, our Senior Vice-President of Sales danced joyfully to the music of her father and grandfather at our CEO’s birthday party.

Only a few days ago, our Senior VP of Sales celebrated her birthday overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and our CEO watched her blow out the candles.

Refreshed by the holiday, the BRC workshop staff wishes our readers a happy summer season.

 

 

Bio

Quarter Tones in the Desert Sun

July 14, 2012

In Petra, Jordan, the BRC founder listens to an Arabic musician play a spike fiddle called a rabab, rababah, or rbab. This banjo-like instrument is used to accompany poetry recitation and played with a horse hair bow.  The Bedouin version, as seen here, has a rectangular sound chamber covered with a skin and a solitary horse hair string. Although quarter tones of Middle Eastern music are foreign to the Western ear, they are occasionally  heard in the American blues genre when a guitarist “chokes” a string for a whining-crying effect or when a harmonica player “bends” a note.

Bio

Banjo twang heard in faraway Lands

May 8, 2012

Not surprisingly, the banjo has figured its way into the Israeli music scene as evidenced by this cover photo on an entertainment guide published recently in Tel Aviv.

Although the not too distant Dead Sea is the lowest place on earth (400 meters below sea level), the BRC founder uplifts himself by reading the Banjo Newsletter while mud bathing on the Jordanian shoreline.

P.S. Shoppers  check-out the BRC banjo on e-bay May 12th-19th (sold).

Bio

Documenting the banjo’s arrival in the Americas

November 17, 2011

In this recent article (click to read) in the Wall Street Journal, the essayist wrongly asserts a disconnect between classic novelist Jane Austen and the banjo, and this inaccuracy must be politely rectified. The journalist declares, “The banjo is the musical equivalent of the battle ax: metallic, obvious, lethal and usually wielded by someone who has not read Jane Austen.” In the attached newspaper photo from the Bath Chronicle (September, 2006), the BRC founder appears dressed in seafaring costume at the 2006 Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England.  Jane Austen, a musician who played the piano forte daily, was probably familiar with the banjo. In her novel “Mansfield Park,”  one of the characters travels to the West Indies, a geographical incubator for banjo culture.

By ordinance in Martinique in 1654 and 1678, more than a century before Jane Austen put pen to paper, it was not permissible for slaves to gather and dance to the music of the “banza.” Although prohibiting the celebration African banjo music, this unfortunate statute is probably the first historical notice documenting the banjo’s original trans-Atlantic arrival in the Americas. The BRC founder and his spouse attended the 2006 Bath Festival dressed as Captain Fredrick Wentworth and Anne Elliot from the beloved Jane Austen novel “Persuasion.”