Ireland – The conference room at the Old Ground Hotel was crowded with newly assembled musicians and traveling tourists - and 17-year-old musician Flynn Whitmore was a bit nervous. One of the most ...

Tomatoes tried to kill him. But banjos saved his life. Keith Alessi tells that inspiring story everywhere he travels, ...

Early American banjo music is Black music. The banjo was created by enslaved African Americans, and according to the Smithsonian Institute, up until the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively an African ...

RUSCOMBMANOR TWP., Pa. — This is a story about a boy, a banjo and a man known as "Butch." "Since he was a toddler, he was always interested in my dad's instruments and watching him play, listening to ...

A new generation of artists have brought African Americans back to the forefront of the banjo scene. Take, for example, Rhiannon Giddens, whom you can hear behind me. Black musicians have been a part ...

Beyonce’s hit “Texas Hold ’Em” opens with a beat seldom heard on hip-hop tracks: the unmistakable clip-clop of a four-stringed clawhammer banjo. It comes via folk icon Rhiannon Giddens, who was ...

Spending an hour on the phone with Béla Fleck is akin to climbing aboard a bullet train. One minute, you’re surveying the duo concerts he regularly engages in with wife Abigail Washburn, the setting ...

It’s a well-documented fact that Tucson music fans crave new sounds and are willing to keep their ears, as well as their minds, wide open when it comes to inventive musical hybrids. So Tim ...

A party by the Inner Harbor this weekend celebrates Charm City’s long tradition of tapping a foot to the fiddle and nodding in agreement with the banjo. The Baltimore Old Time Music Festival on Friday ...

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with researcher Joe Johnson and musician Jake Blount about the new Library of Congress guide to African American banjo... The Library of Congress' latest addition is a guide ...