Faculty of Design

Illustration

Shanae Winslow

Old-Time Roots

This piece celebrates the banjo’s displaced and forgotten history as a beautiful product of the African diaspora. It features the first iteration of the banjo (the gourd banjo), the transitional “Minstrel banjo,” and my central protagonist playing a more contemporary (circa 1858) 5-string (but still fretless) banjo “clawhammer” style. “Old-Time” refers to the predecessor of Bluegrass.