KRISTINA R. GADDY
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Come in, the stacks are open.

Pinkster, the King of Kongo, and New York

10/19/2022

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     “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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What is an Early Banjo?

9/28/2022

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What is an Early Banjo? An Exploration of an Instrument’s Relationship to Organology and Ethnomusicology

Pete Ross and I presented this at the 2022 American Musical Instrument Society Conference at Studio Bell: The National Canadian Music Centre in Calgary, Canada. ​

It presentation outlines the organological characteristics (how an instrument is made) of early banjos—pre-industrial gourd- and calabash-bodied instruments. It also analyzes whether organology alone can determine if an instrument is a banjo or to what extent we must consider an instrument’s provenance, usage, and cultural context. Using seven images of early banjos and the three confirmed extant instruments, we outline the organological characteristics shared across early banjos, and how those characteristics differ from known African instruments. We also discuss the known cultural context of the banjo, which was created by people of African descent in the Americas and used as accompaniment for ritual dance. Finally, we introduce a newly rediscovered instrument from a collection at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, a watercolor at the British Museum of an instrument once held at the Leverian Museum, and a watercolor from St. Domingue, and we explore whether by using organological characteristics alone we can conclusively say that these three newly discovered sources can be called early banjos.

You can view more of the presentations from AMIS here. 

This is part of Banya Obbligato, a series of blog posts relating to my book Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History. While integrally related to Well of Souls, these posts are editorially and financially separate from the book (i.e., I’m researching, writing, and editing them myself and no one is paying me for it). So, if you want to financially support the blog or my writing and research you can do so here. ​
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Music in Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History

9/26/2022

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The sheet music cover for A.P. Heinrich's The Log House, with a Black man holding a gourd banjo or fiddle peaking out from the house as Heinrich plays violin, 1826. Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection/ Johns Hopkins University Libraries.
Unfortunately, all of the music illustrations got cut from Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History. Here are some of the songs referenced, musical examples of early American music, and other musical transcriptions I've come across recently.

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Images in Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History

9/16/2022

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Du dance from P.J. Benoit's Voyage a Suriname / John Carter Brown Library
     Every time I came across an interesting image during my research, I saved it in case I would need it again, in case I would be able to use it for the book. When it came to discussing which illustrations would make it, I had way too many. As much as I would have liked to basically make Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History an illustrated book, that wasn't what the book was and wasn't what we could do with it.  
    And again, I thought, well, the internet can provide. For one, many of the images that I mention in the book are digitized and available for folks to access. But interesting images that I came across in the public domain I could also put here on the blog, in color and higher resolution. (The ones that are available online but that I do not believe I have permission to share are linked below.)

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Maps for Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History

9/14/2022

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World map / Nova totius terrarum orbis tabula / Amstelodami : Ex officina F. de Wit, [1680?] / Library of Congress
     A good map almost seems necessary for a book of historical nonfiction. Unfortunately for me, the other illustrations in Well of Souls were more important than any map I wanted to include. But, that’s why I have this blog. As easy as it might be to pull up Google Maps, some place names and even landscapes have changed over the last 400+ years. Here are some maps that I came across in my research that helped me understand the places and time periods I was writing about. (Also a quick note: they are not geographically organized, but organized by the chapters to which they correspond.)

These are all in the public domain, and while some are available at the Library of Congress's website (and I've linked to them), others are from books at the James Ford Bell Library/ University of Minnesota Libraries I was able to access while there.


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When is a calabash not a calabash?

9/7/2022

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     When is a calabash not a calabash? It sounds like the beginning to a botanist joke, one that I’m not sure I could find the right pun for. It is also the title of a paper by anthropolgist Sally Price, where she explores the implications of conflating calabashes and gourds on African American and Indian American art and culture. And the answer to the question actually seems to be all the time. I’ve heard calabashes called treegourds and gourds called calabash gourds. Price has an excellent table of the differences between the two fruits, but most simply put, a gourd is Lagenaria siceraria and the fruit of a vine. A calabash is Crescentia cujete, and the fruit of a tree. They are not only totally different plants, they diverge at the taxonomic classification of angiosperm, or flower plant (meaning they have a different order and family). 
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Engraving of Le Calebassier, a calabash tree / University of Minnesota, James Ford Bell Library
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Color engraving of Curcurbita longa (with calebasse mentioned in the caption) / New York Public Library / Public Domain
Why does this matter?

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Historic Cultural Connections of the Mardi Gras Indians

8/31/2022

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Listen to this post:
PictureAn Indian marches during the Super Sunday before St. Joseph's Night in 2019.

     You can’t talk about the cultural traditions of New Orleans without talking about the Mardi Gras Indians, who also call themselves Black Indians and Masking Indians. But because the first account of a banjo in New Orleans comes from 1819—just before the banjo was to transform into a wooden-rimmed stage instrument—and because the banjo doesn’t exist in the tradition of Masking Indians today, I couldn’t easily or naturally bring this tradition into Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History.
     At the beginning of my research, I was interested by the Indians seemingly close connections to other traditions that I had researched where the banjo did appear, like Junkanno (John Canoe) and Carnival in the Caribbean. In my previous blog post, I wrote about the Backstreet Cultural Museum and Mr. Sylvester Francis’s work to preserve the costumes of the Mardi Gras Indians. When I talked with my friend Tom Piazza about wanting to see the Indians as part of my research, he said that while they come out at Mardi Gras, St. Joseph’s night and the Sunday before were really the time to see them. After I saw them and continued to see references to similar outfits and processions in the Caribbean, I couldn't help thinking that this was a shared tradition, even if the specific evidence for how it was shared hasn't been well documented.

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The Backstreet Cultural Museum: A Neighborhood Cultural Library

8/24/2022

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[This was originally presented at the American Folklore Society Annual Meeting in 2019 in conjunction with what I wrote about Het Koto Museum in Suriname. Mr. Francis died in 2020 and the original museum building was damaged by Hurricane Ida, but they gained a new home in July 2022. However, I’ve kept the piece in present tense as I wrote it at the time.]
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Most days, Mr. Francis was at the museum to greet visitors. In 2019, I asked him for a photo in front of the museum and to sign my copy of Fire in the Hole.
     In an unassuming former funeral home on a quiet street in New Orleans, Louisiana’s Treme neighborhood, another community-driven museum preserves and documents material culture. Through collecting and showcasing the intricately crafted suits and outfits of the Mardi Gras Indians, Mardi Gras gangs, Baby Dolls, and Second Lines, Sylvester Francis is preserving and promoting the unique traditions of African Americans in New Orleans.
​     The former funeral parlor is almost overstuffed with colored feathers and beads, sewn onto armature in flat and three dimensional figures. Funerals and Second Line parades happen year-round, so many people drawn to the Backstreet Cultural Museum come for this room. Here, Francis has collected suits from tribes across the city for preservation and education. The Mardi Gras Indians or Black Indians of New Orleans only make their appearances during Carnival celebrations, St. Joseph’s Night, or Super Sundays. These traditions evolved from the African American music and dance in New Orleans, often associated with Congo Square.

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Willem Van de Poll's Maroon Dancing in Suriname

8/17/2022

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On the way up the Suriname River, a bar in a Maroon village that served Parbo Bier. When we traveled to Suriname in 2018, guides and guidebooks alike made it clear that taking photographs of Maroons in their villages was unacceptable.
     There was a point—well, I’ll be honest, there were many points—where I was getting out every book from the academic and local libraries in Baltimore about Suriname, Haiti, Jamaica, Caribbean dance, Vodou, Obeah, and so many other subjects vital and tangential to Well of Souls. At the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, I found a copy of Willem Van de Poll’s Surinam: The Country and Its People. I didn’t know anything about Van de Poll, but the 1951 publishing date intrigued me. In a 1941 paper by Harold Courlander, I found a reference to a gourd banjo in Haiti, and thought it entirely possible that a gourd banjo or a wooden-rim banjo might turn up in Van de Poll’s photos. ​
      The book is a mix of Van de Poll’s photographs and reportage on Suriname’s history and what Van de Poll saw as he traveled in the country. I later learned that he traveled with the Dutch Royal family as their photographer, including on trips to Suriname. His photographs, while useful and at times gorgeous, are also literally taken through the lens of a Dutch colonialist who was working for the monarchy. Suriname was still Dutch Guiana, and from some of the photos, I was definitely getting mid-century National Geographic exoticism vibes. ​
     But as I flipped through the book, I was keeping an eye out for photos and descriptions of music, dance, instruments, and religion.

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    Come in, the stacks are open. 

    Away from prying eyes, damaging light, and pilfering hands, the most special collections are kept in closed stacks.  You need an appointment to view the objects, letters, and books that open a door to the past. 

    Here, pieces of material culture are examined in the light. The stacks are open. ​Read the stories behind objects and ephemera found in private collections, archives, and museums. 

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