Hey Joy Joy Xavier perfect timing I was just about to rehearse my moves for my next soon-to-be viral music video it's called blue grass okay I guess that explained why you painted all of the grass in your backyard blue yep also I may have accidentally ordered 100 cans of blue spray paint when I meant to order one can of blue spray paint but I say when life gives you a hundred cans of blue spray paint why not paint your grass and then get inspired to write a whole song about it and film a music video of said song in front of said bluegrass okay this song is going to be such a bop it's going to launch a whole new genre of music I call it bluegrass uh Joy you know bluegrass is already a type of music right you know there's usually a banjo fiddle and bass guitar player singing about country life huh but does it sound like this I'm gonna paint the ground blue then I'm gonna paint the tree blue then I'm gonna paint the leaves blue blue blue blue blue well what do you think it is different right I still think you might want to come up with a new name you know just so people don't confuse your bluegrass with the one
that everybody else knows sure sure good point um let me think oh got it I'll keep it nice and simple this new never heard before music shall henceforth be called the blues welcome to forever ago from APM studios I'm Joy Dolo and I'm joined today by Xavier from Kigali Rwanda Xavier is not only our co-host but he's also a real life DJ hi Xavier hey Joy the professor in the studio wow what an intro so your DJ name is the professor how did you come up with it well ever
since I was like teeny tiny little little little I I liked alphabet and I'm really into Marvel there's this series called the X-Men in the X-Men it's started by this guy who has telepathy is in a floating wheelchair for some reason called Professor Charles Xavier very cool I figured I'd help you out by handling some of the music okay then professor I need a beat I can introduce today's topic with something upbeat but also down tempo land soft but hits hard kind of light but totally heavy you know what I mean um absolutely not but here try this that's exactly what I was imagining perfect now today's episode is all about music specifically we're going to be looking and listening to a special instrument that's been linked to the United States
since before it even became a country the banjo super do you do birthday parties specifically ones for adults who host history podcasts and have blue lawns asking for a friend I think we can probably work something out yes okay back to business just a heads up we're doing two episodes about the banjo and this is part one so
if you're starting with this one you got it exactly right go you for our listeners who may have never seen a banjo can you describe what one looks like Xavier well it's a stringed instrument and it sort of looks like a guitar cross with a small flat drum exactly the body is a kind of drum and off one side of the drum is a long guitar like neck with strings and tuning knobs you can strum a banjo just like a guitar but it has a different tone sort of metallic yes yes very twangy now compare
that to a guitar does that sound different to you yes and no oh first of all the guitar it sounds like serenity hmm that's the only way I can I can explain it serenity and then the banjo sounds like take serenity and then mix it with so what banging a metal pipe on the wall serenity plus metal pipe equals banjo so banjos for like party rock and guitars for like sleeping yes let's get into this episode banjos aren't the first instrument most people think of when they think about pop music but once you know what to listen for you'll start hearing banjos everywhere huge stars like taylor swift noa khan and Beyonce use banjos in some of their songs like this banger from Beyonce called texas hold them Beyonce's album cowboy carter features banjos all over the place she's helping to change the image of the instrument right
because most people associate the banjo with bluegrass or country music and
if you look at the musicians who are played on country radio stations and have their videos played on country music tv they're pretty much all white and it's been like that for a while almost a hundred years yeah there's data and numbers behind this you can find it in our show notes but there have always been black people playing the banjo in country music in fact country music today wouldn't exist without black people and my girl Beyonce clearly loves history as much
as i do
because cowboy carter tells some of this story she plays historical music clips that show how black people helped shape country music she includes current and older black country musicians and it's been a huge hit not only did Beyonce's cowboy carter album make a big splash in the world of pop music it went to number one on the country music charts two just before her album was released she wrote my hope is that years from now the mention of an artist race
as it relates to releasing genres of music will be irrelevant she's so fierce what an inspiration Xavier can we get a little victory lap music for my personal icon Beyonce you got it yes love it now the banjo didn't start as an instrument played by white people in fact it's hundreds of years old and actually has its roots in africa so what happened we need answers luckily we have an expert musician and banjo historian to help us pluck our way to the past ryan and giddens hey ryan and is a Grammy and Pulitzer prize winning singer and instrumentalist and she played banjo on Beyonce's album remember that clip from texas hold'em we played earlier that was her ryan and grew up in north carolina with a black mother and white father and the banjo was a big part of the music scene there as a kid she thought she knew where the banjo came from but those ideas ended up being wrong so when i first started thinking about the banjo it kind of surrounds my whole childhood you know like would have heard it on tv or would have heard it on the radio at festivals or my uncle's in a bluegrass band and as far
as i knew it's a mountain instrument and it comes from white people and it goes along with farms and living in the countryside and that's kind of how i thought about it my whole life until i became an adult it took years for ryan and to hear the banjo with fresh ears she heard country music everywhere but she never really saw black people playing it then she discovered this one special musician for me my connection was joe thompson who was an 86-year-old african-american fiddler who was connected to this long line of fiddle and banjo playing
that had gone back to the time of enslavement and seeing him play was really important for me
because when you see somebody who looks
like you and you see somebody who comes from your culture
like it just gave me this whole different idea of what it was after that ryan and needed to find out more good thing
because there is so much more to find out but first let's hit pause and take a break can i get some break music Xavier like this i meant break like rest and not break like break dancing just kidding here how about something a little more like this ah now
that i can break too time to play okay Xavier in today's first things first i'm going to give you three string-related inventions and your job is to tell me which came first which came second and which came last ready yes i am ready all righty your string-related inventions are silly string the string phone aka those tin can phones and string cheese what do you think what's silly string oh that's the stuff that comes in a spray can it shoots out those long strings of foam oh the thing that's in the the pranks online and things okay um i think the string phone first i think it's super easy to make
because it's literally just string and cans maybe sometime in the 17th or 18th century
because that's when like the the physics and science and stuff was really starting to become like popular or maybe 1500 i don't know oh yeah i wonder