Banjolele
Among plucked string instruments, the banjo has always been one of my favourites. Its distinctive shape and sound make it almost impossible to confuse with anything else. It works beautifully as a solo instrument, but bluegrass, country and Dixieland bands are almost unimaginable without a banjo. It is also one of the characteristic instruments of Irish folk music.
There is such a wealth of banjo footage online and on YouTube that it is very difficult to choose a video with which to introduce the instrument, so in the end I selected two. The first is a film clip in which a guitar and a banjo “duel”. One interesting feature of the piece is its roughly two-and-a-half-minute opening. It is not really an introduction at all, but rather the first part of the tune, during which the two players prepare for the second, fast section. It is incredibly simple yet inventive and full of atmosphere:
In the other video, the banjo appears as a solo instrument in an arrangement of a Scott Joplin ragtime piece (Joplin originally composed his rags for piano):
So much for the banjo — but why is this post called “Banjolele”? In the 1910s, a certain Alvin D. Keech had the idea of crossing the banjo with the ukulele. The result, created in 1917, was the banjolele. It has a similar round body to its larger relative, but the ukulele's four strings and a shorter neck:
It is a wonderfully quirky instrument. You can play it in essentially the same way as a ukulele, while its tone is almost indistinguishable from a banjo. Of course, anyone who plays a banjolele would do well to learn the faster double- and triple-strumming patterns that suit a banjo sound, as you can see and hear in this banjolele video:
One particular difficulty when playing a banjolele is holding the instrument. Its round body means the player cannot really hug it against the body in the usual way, yet just as relatively few ukuleles are made with strap buttons, relatively few banjoleles are either.
I have not yet had the chance to try one of these instruments in person, but I hope I will get my hands on one someday .
