sung from African-American sheet music
When did blackface clowns first appear with banjos? This instrument was needed for the act. But where could one acquire a banjo in the 1830s? Did they make them? How did they learn how to play and what would the playing style have been? A great deal of assistance would be needed by good banjo makers and players.
The creation of American jazz, blues, swing, rap, and hip hop started long ago when African song and dance was combined with European styles. In the West Indies and throughout the Americas wherever slaves were kept, there was an interaction between white and black. I think of it as understudy. Two films show blacks in charge of plantation music, Gone With the Wind and Twelve Years a Slave.
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