"Profound and invigorating, exhaustively researched and brilliantly conceived, Kristina R. Gaddy’s Well of Souls carries the reader across the globe and through centuries to restore our understanding of the banjo’s central place in the spiritual and ritual life of the African diaspora. The meaning and significance of the insights to be found here, and the worlds summoned, will change you. It is a stunning, and major, achievement."
"For many years, the banjo’s early Afro-Caribbean history has been shrouded in mystery. Part of this is because the information has been locked away in deep archives accessible only to curious specialists interested in the deeper roots of the banjo. I have spent a great portion of my career advocating for much of this history to be placed in the forefront. For the very first time, a reader’s version of a few of the earliest written observations of the instrument are on full display. With thoughtful and masterful writing [Gaddy] opens a new window into seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century world history by those who lived it and saw the strange new cultural connections brought by a brutal plantation system. Her observations lead the reader back into the twenty-first century to contend with and reanalyze the crooked road of America’s musical past."
"Tracing the development of the banjo…this meticulous history also illuminates the difficulties of unearthing a story rooted in the experiences of the enslaved."
"So vividly does [Kristina R. Gaddy] write, and so enthusiastically does she convey her meaning, that many of the songs play unbidden in your mind, through the rhythm of her sentences, the lyric of her vocabulary. As much as Well Of Souls is a gripping, fascinating, story, it is also a beautifully written one…a novel in documentary’s clothing."
"[Kristina R. Gaddy] has written exactly the book the banjo world needs right now.… [C]onnect[s] today’s musical strains to their deep roots that are just beginning to be rediscovered and acknowledged."
Bluegrass Unlimited - Chris Wathen
"Beguiling.… Ms. Gaddy successfully blends archival skills with imagination."
"Kristina R. Gaddy has crafted a sensitive, insightful narrative of the ‘hidden histories’ of the banjo as an emblem of African endurance in exile. Centering the courage and the human costs of the African diaspora, Well of Souls provides historiographic insight and human connection that, while unblinkingly cataloging the horrors of the slave trade, also celebrates the creativity and cultural resiliency of those who resisted erasure. Through the lens of the banjo’s history and recovered meanings, Gaddy honors the traditions and the humans who carried them."
"Gaddy brings the rich and complicated history of this seemingly humble instrument to light in this well-researched and equally well-written volume…This is a glorious and invaluable chronicle for music lovers and everyone interested in American culture."
Booklist (starred review)
"Beguiling.… Ms. Gaddy successfully blends archival skills with imagination."
"Kristina R. Gaddy has done a great service to lovers of the banjo, with its deep roots in Africa, and these and Caribbean shores, dating back to the 1600s. Her fecundity of research intertwines the story of the bangeau, banger, bangil with the horrors meted out to enslaved peoples. Though rich in detail, with fascinating period quotes, this is not a dry scholarly tome, but a heartfelt, absorbing telling. You see the story unfold through the eyes of contemporaries, thus bringing a welcome human dimension to the tale of an instrument often stereotyped, but as Kristina points out, one with a history that imbues it with ‘sacred’ qualities."
"Beguiling…Ms. Gaddy successfully blends archival skills with imagination."
"Kristina R. Gaddy recenters the banjo as a Black instrument and as an icon of the African diaspora, before and beyond its perversion in the hands of Blackface Minstrels. Like a skillful archeologist, with empathy and respect, Gaddy excavates the sites, sightings, and citations of Black banjo as a central part of dances and rituals of celebration, remembrance, and resistance throughout the Americas. The erasure of this soulful history is an injustice that Gaddy corrects."
"Kristina Gaddy’s deep and rich history of the banjo reveals that the instrument is much more than a means to powerful music-making—it was for centuries the portal to a social and spiritual life through which African Americans tasted freedom, however fleeting. I’ll never hear, see, or enjoy the banjo again without reflecting on how the horrors of Black slavery gave reason and form to ‘America’s Instrument.'"
"A potent combination of research and storytelling…What emerges is an extraordinary narrative of African Americans' resistance to brutalisation and the myriad attempts to destroy, pervert, exoticise or appropriate their cultural practices."
BBC Music Magazine - Steph Power
"In her compelling, thoroughly researched history, Kristina R. Gaddy reveals a different instrument entirely, one intimately rooted in the African diaspora and capable of expressing flights of sorrow and joy…The time is ripe for lovers of the banjo to learn about its hidden past."
Wall Street Journal - David Yezzi
"Tracing the development of the banjo…this meticulous history also illuminates the difficulties of unearthing a story rooted in the experiences of the enslaved."
"Superb…Gaddy’s lively storytelling re-creates scenes from 17th-century Jamaica to 19th-century Washington, D.C., and beyond, illustrating not only the birth and development of the banjo but also its co-optation by white people."
Bookpage - Henry L. Carrigan Jr.
2022-08-12
Gaddy traces the instrument’s origin to the rituals of enslaved Blacks in the American South, the Caribbean, and South America. Regardless of its exact form, the instrument played a crucial role in religious and ceremonial dances, and Gaddy tracks its early history through Suriname and Haiti. Some slave owners sought to suppress it, while others tolerated it. In fact, one of the first depictions of a banjo is in a painting of a spiritual dance performed by enslaved people on an 18th-century North Carolina plantation. The author shows how the arrival of Christianity among enslaved people was a setback for the banjo. “For hundreds of years, drums, fiddles, banjos, and wind instruments were part of religious dances,” she writes. “Now, as a result of conversion to Christianity, there were none. The banjo and Christianity didn’t seem to mix.” The next step in the evolution of the banjo came from an odd place: a White musician named Joel Sweeney (1810-1860), who was taught to play by an enslaved man. Sweeney did much to popularize the sound, as did the minstrel shows popular at the time. In the 1840s, William Boucher, an instrument maker, began constructing and selling banjos, defining the pattern of construction along the way. Eventually, the banjo would return to Black communities, but it would take several decades. Though Gaddy weaves an undeniably interesting tale, the focus often remains on the history of slavery rather than the banjo. While she demonstrates how the two are intertwined, there are long sections of the book that do not connect to the instrument’s story. This is not a fatal flaw, but rigorous editorial streamlining would have resulted in a more focused, coherent book. Grammy-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens provides the foreword.
A deep dive into the social history of the banjo.
