A Quote by Rhiannon Giddens
I'll talk about the banjo all day long and the history of minstrel shows.
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When I first heard the minstrel banjo - I played a gourd first - I almost lost my mind. I was like, Oh, my god. And then I went to Africa, to the Gambia, and studied the akonting, which is an ancestor of the banjo, and just that connection to me was just immense.
Most people get their politics, obviously, from TV shows about senators or movies about them or... all the day-to-day press and the talk shows.
Look at all those unattractive people talking about depraved things all day long on TV talk shows. People can talk about themselves, yet the art of conversation, which has to do with sharing, is disappearing. I feel as though I am chasing a runaway locomotive.
I extract what I consider the best material from different sources. But often the material I perform comes from a very strange location in history, which are minstrel shows.
The thing about the banjo is, when you first hear it, it strikes many people as 'What's that?' There's something very compelling about it to certain people; that's the way I was; that's the way a lot of banjo players and people who love the banjo are.
It's interesting when you talk to someone who has really been through something very, very terrible. They are less likely to talk about it. People who have had a bad day because their soup was cold can talk about their 'suffering' all day long.
The thing about death is that it's embarrassing. No one wants to focus on it for very long. We're happy to talk about sex all day long but no one wants to talk about the moment where it all ends.
I play banjo, and in Britain, it's easy to get away with playing banjo because you don't often see it on U.K. stages. In America, people know when you're a good banjo player, so I was really nervous about playing out there. But we actually went down really well.
Not that long ago - in my parents' lives, in fact - actors in minstrel shows wore blackface to mimic and mock African Americans. These performances were based in contempt and gave people an opportunity to act out their prejudices.
I was the dude you didn't wanna go to school with, because I would come to school and get on your shoes. If you had a hole in your pants, I'd talk about it all day long. If your hair was messed up, if you had buck teeth, I'd talk about it all day long. And I made people laugh doing it, but it wasn't like I thought I was a comedian.
I wrote a post about wanting to buy a banjo - a $300 banjo, which is a lot of money, and I don't play instruments; I don't know anything about music. I like music, and I like banjos, and I think I probably heard Steve Martin playing, and I said, 'I could do that.' And I said to my husband, I said, 'Ben, can I buy a banjo?' And he's like, 'No.'
The way was long, the wind was cold, The Minstrel was infirm and old; His withered cheek, and tresses gray, Seemed to have know a better day.
When my dad, Tommy Tucker Kelly, was about six, he started out with his dad on 'The Black and White Minstrel' Shows.
I get really frustrated during a crisis when I go through all the cable channels and find - very often with the exception of CNN - that I'm not watching news at all. You think, 'Well, God... there are talk shows, talk shows, talk shows and everyone is an expert!'
I get really frustrated during a crisis when I go through all the cable channels and find - very often with the exception of CNN - that I'm not watching news at all. You think, 'Well, God... there are talk shows, talk shows, talk shows and everyone is an expert!
And then Earl Scruggs comes along and transforms the banjo into a virtuosic modern instrument. For the first time, the Southern banjo style becomes the identity of the banjo, and everything from before is wiped off of people's consciousness by the power of that explosion.
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