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Pinkster, the King of Kongo, and New York

10/19/2022

“Wait, is his name Charles or is the name of the king King Charles?” someone asked me after reading a draft of Well of Souls. In Albany, New York, the most well-remembered King of the African American Pinkster celebration was Charles, but Albany wasn’t the only place that had Pinkster celebrations and Charles wasn’t the only king.
In Antiquities of Long Island from 1874, Gabriel Furman writes that although at first Pinkster, “the day of Pentecost,” was celebrated by Black and white New Yorkers, it “eventually became entirely left to the former,” and was never as popular on Long Island as it was in Albany. On the hill where “the Capitol now strands,” booths were set up and Black people came from near and far to celebrate. The dance as he remembers it was called the “Toto dance,” which was danced to “a hollow log, with a skin of parchment stretched over one end, the other being left open, on which they beat with a stick, making a rough, discordant sound,” a drum Furman calls the “banjo drum.” [1]

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Essential Banjo History Reading List

10/12/2022

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The essential banjo history reading list.

Whether or not you’ve read Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History, there are some other great books on banjo history that informed my research you should check out (many of which go beyond the early period I write about). If you have more suggestions, leave them in the comments below!

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Come in, the stacks are open.

Pinkster, the King of Kongo, and New York

Essential Banjo History Reading List

Come in, the stacks are open.

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