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When he was asked about the banjo, he stared at the ground for at least 15 seconds before answering, "Well, there are two kinds of banjo.   One is the physical banjo, as it exists in our reality, this one here [points to his own].  And then there is the essential banjo, the Platonic Banjo, as it exists in heaven", before poetically lifting his gaze to the grey cloud above him.  "Never have I heard angels play." and he wipes a single tear from his eye.

    "Where did the banjo come from?" I asked him.  He looked away from me, to  mountains far yonder.

    "Some say Africa." was his reply. "The problem with stringed instruments is that they were often built with materials that would deteriorate in time.  We only have iconographic evidence from previous cultures.  We don't have the luxury of knowing how how they sounded, how to play them or exactly how the music sounded." Chuckles scratches his chin. "No one knows for sure, because in the old days most indigenous Africans weren't writing things down in a way white people could understand; Richard Jobson, a white man recording his personal journeys through Africa in  1620 AD, described something..." and thus Chuckles affects a stodgy British accent: "'...made of a great gourd and a neck, thereunto was fastened strings.'" He touches his temple, "imagine, if you would, the process of instrument construction.  A bow, used for hunting," He motions as if he was an archer, "goes pling! Now, attach that bow to a drum, and it goes plong!", his eyes light up in child-like wonder.

"The banjo certainly came to America from African slaves brought there by Europeans, and then it was adopted by white folks for Minstrel shows, where the white people would paint their faces wth burnt cork and imitate the music of the black culture.  Sad, eh?"  and another tear of compassion dribbles down his cheek. "Likely these minstrel shows travelled to England where the banjo became part of Irish music, because of its small size, can be played like a mandolin.  This is only in the past 100 years, with the invention of recording technology, has there been a concept of 'old-time music'." He glances to a cloud where behindwich perhaps the sun lies. "this is all my opinion," he follows with a glare. "History can be irrelevant."

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