Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History

by Kristina R. Gaddy

Named one of 2022’s Most Memorable Music Books by No The Journal of Roots Music An illuminating history of the banjo, revealing its origins at the crossroads of slavery, religion, and music. In an extraordinary story unfolding across two hundred years, Kristina Gaddy uncovers the banjo’s key role in Black spirituality, ritual, and rebellion. Through meticulous research in diaries, letters, archives, and art, she traces the banjo’s beginnings from the seventeenth century, when enslaved people of African descent created it from gourds or calabashes and wood. Gaddy shows how the enslaved carried this unique instrument as they were transported and sold by slaveowners throughout the Americas, to Suriname, the Caribbean, and the colonies that became U.S. states, including Louisiana, South Carolina, Maryland, and New York. African Americans came together at rituals where the banjo played an essential part. White governments, rightfully afraid that the gatherings could instigate revolt, outlawed them without success. In the mid-nineteenth century, Blackface minstrels appropriated the instrument for their bands, spawning a craze. Eventually the banjo became part of jazz, bluegrass, and country, its deepest history forgotten. 20 illustrations

Genres: Music, History, Nonfiction, Historical, Audiobook, Race, Spirituality

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 4, 2022

Reviews

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to admit that I would normally have never had an interest in the banjo, and yet I THOROUGHLY enjoyed this audiobook. Who knew that this instrument had origins in Africa and was played by African-Americans? I had no idea. I am thoroughly convinced that the average Bluegrass or country music fan today has no idea of its origins either.
The author has so thoroughly researched this instrument-- and spotted this instrument all over the world in writings from explorers, plantation owners and even where it appears-- played by African and African-Americans-- in several visual art forms.
I feel like I got information about the instrument's history, yes, but the book has American history as its backdrop. I am left wondering if more African-Americans will have a homecoming of sorts-- and return to reclaim this early American music, they are responsible for contributing to the American songbook. (The author hints at current movements in this direction and renewed interest.)
I can see this book being one that folk, bluegrass and old time music enthusiasts keep in their personal library. I think it has the potential to have a prominent place on the coffee table and can spark conversation in music circles.

[le chat gris · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s nothing quite like the inimitable sound of the banjo—currently heard by a much wider- spread audience than the past as country music songs have become more a blend of country music with rock & roll.

As a lover of the banjo since early childhood, I read “Well of Souls” to learn the history of this uniquely American instrument. Was there anything worthy to learn other than short biographies of a few of the most famous banjo players, or tales of poor 18th century Appalachians “pickin’ and grinnin’”, entertaining themselves in the mountains?
Apparently, significantly more.

Researcher and writer Kristina Gaddy respectfully described the nascent formation of the instrument made from hollowed out gourds, animal membranes, and guts by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean islands in the late 1600’s. These rudimentary instruments were used during precious and limited time away from slaves’ wretched back-breaking existence to celebrate their culture and spirituality along with special dances which encompassed the whole of the Caribbean islands and the northern coast of South America. Rhythms and intonations of songs, dance forms, and instrumentation appeared almost uniform among the islands. Gaddy included pictures and descriptions of numerous pieces of artwork in which the banjo is featured along with its human participants.

Although necessary for understanding the use of the banjo in African culture, I often felt that the topic of enslavement of Africans in the Americas formed the majority of the history told in this book and the banjo itself played “second fiddle”, if you will. The early construction of the banjo and its purposes within the cultures of the African population didn’t seem to vary by the numerous locations in the Caribbean; therefore, much of the information was repetitive for the first 2/3 of the book and I found myself skimming. The book picked up new energy when discussing the instrument’s exposure to audiences in various types of musical programs presented in the North as well as the South in the US during the 1800’s, and from there moving to more mainstream acceptance.

I am grateful to learn of the true provenance and history of the banjo and have developed a deeper layer of respect for it. It’s music from a people with a rich culture, not just strings plucked for a unique sound.

[Jordon Stanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m giving Well Of Souls 5 stars because:

A book of this weight deserves 5 stars.

Not only because I know Kristina but because I don’t know and can only imagine the hours even years of research that it took to complete such a literary gem.
What I love the most is that this book met me where I am with my current thoughts about black culture, black music, and how it fits under the umbrella of “American” while still acknowledging the history. If you love black history and music history you will love this book.
I also loved the knowledge about Maryland in the 1700’s that made me proud to be born, raised, and a musician here. I don’t think I’ve ever said a book was what I needed but I can say that honestly about this read.

[Carol Tilley · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Danielle Stoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 ⭐️

"...I had to open my eyes to the reality that Black history and culture have been so suppressed and misunderstood by white culture that I wouldn't see connections unless I looked hard. But why had they been suppressed? How had we lost all this information? Why was it that an instrument constantly described as "Black" and "African" came to be thought of as a white instrument? The story can't stop here."

Gaddy does a masterful job of providing early archival history of the banjo's journey over to America. She interweaves written accounts from white slaveowners in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries about the instrument along with famous artist depictions. She then connects this back to the 21st century to contend with and reanalyze our understanding of the instrument. I was especially interested in her accounts of the sacred use of the instrument.

[Farar Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book would cover the banjo during Jim Crow and minstrelsy, but it went on a much deeper journey. Most of the material, presented as a detective story about searching for the banjo’s origins, explores history in the 17th century Caribbean, where Dutch and British colonists encountered and sometimes collected music that was already a new creation that melded many different African traditions. Most importantly, the banjo was a religious instrument, able to bring forward the divine and serve as a well of souls. The author weaves that into the modern day recovery of Black banjo music and practitioners.

[Levi Renninger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dry if you don’t love the banjo so hence the four stars, can be very boring and historical at time. However this book does shed incredible insight learned about he origin of the banjo via painting and journal first hand information from the early 1800s and even further back

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not at all what I expected. This is an extremely well assembled history told in a style that compels me to want to return and reread some of the narratives and learn more about the people. And (Joe: spoiler) there is a nice shout out to Midwest Banjo Camp!

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw the Carolina Chocolate Drops around 2013 at the Denver Botanic Gardens with Elephant Revival, and their style and energy stole the show. I had been aware of bluegrass as a genre, but not specifically banjo history, so learning more about them and the decolonization of the banjo, from a white, rural, Southern instrument to an oversimplified “African” instrument to the rich story of its creation and soundtrack to the shameful history of slavery was a small window in.

Check out Country Girl by the Carolina Chocolate Drops for an example:https://youtu.be/FVIaiADsyYo?si=xdyKG...

This book opens a bigger, more inclusive window and it is one of the “alive” history books I love, beautifully written and stories told with imagery and humility. The author traces the banjo through paintings and accounts from Europeans and underscores the fact that it is hard to find Black American accounts and the brutality that means.

I turn 50 this year and have been archiving photos and actually writing up some of the family history for my nephew and nieces, and it has also been a time of reflection of these 50 years, and how even 10 years ago, I had such hope for less racist times, with the election of the first Black President, etc. But I also had a deep, bone chilling realization from my time in the panhandle of Florida, that poor, white families were having tons of kids, and while some poor people of color were also, the system is rigged against them so the white kids could be more of a force in the future and they were being taught that people of color were what was keeping them down instead of the rich capitalist system and those who benefit, arguably the modern “slave owners.”

This book had passages about slavery that made me cry and just despair at the human condition that seems to repeat itself over and over. The numbers are staggering.

Portuguese ships had begun forcibly transporting people from Africa to the Americas in 1526. Ships originating in Europe and the Americas would make over 36,100 voyages through 1866. The people aboard the Benjamin were among an estimated 12.5 million people taken from at least 180 ports across the African continent, from Gambia to Ouidah to Madagascar. Millions died before they arrived in the Americas, and millions more would be born enslaved, descendants of those who had been taken.

At the same time, slavery is an issue and practice that has been universally outlawed, even if hidden in circles like factories and prisons, which is progress towards that moral arc bending towards justice the Dr. King believed in. Two things that seem opposite can exist at the same time. So expect a lot from this book, it is gigantically themed even as it seems to be just about an instrument.

By the mid-1700s, the banjo was known and even somewhat common in Maryland. A striking, yet disturbing example of this is in the advertisements placed when a person liberated themselves. These ads often begin “Run away, from the subscriber” or the slaveowner’s name, and give descriptions of the person, including name, visual appearance, demeanor, languages spoken, and any distinguishing talents, including whether they were a musician. These ads provide more information on certain individuals than exists about most other people living in the mid-eighteenth century, and show how slaveowners like Hollyday paid close attention to the people they owned.

The banza, played at funerals where the dead and spirits were honored, wasn’t just a musical instrument. It was a well of souls: a ritual object constructed as a cosmogram. The neck bisecting the gourd from top to bottom is like the poteau-mitan, the line that draws the spirits; the body of the instrument is a circle, the realm to which the spirits are invited. The cosmogram also appears on the body.

Skilled craftsmen took the time and care to carve the peghead and decorate the neck with intricate patterns, and they would have had the skill to construct lutes in the same method as African instruments if that was their desire. What, then, was more important than playability? The answer lies in the way the neck intersects with the gourd. It can be thought of as a circle bisected by a line—and this symbolism was more important than the ease of playing the banza. This geometric figure, often called a cosmogram, depicts the earthly plane, represented by the circle, intersected by the vertical spiritual plane. It appears over and over in Vodou and other religions practiced by people of African descent in the Americas, including Christianity.

In contrast to the views of the Moravian Brethren, Hendrik Charles Focke thought that the Surinamese dances “banja and soesa are as much poetry as song, as much song as dance,” and he wanted to tell people about their beauty.

Focke wrote that banya is folk music—that is, secular music. And although Focke doesn’t include the definitions in his dictionary, there are many banya dances that are religious. The yorka-banya was done for the ancestors, yorka meaning ghost or ancestral spirits. The bakafutu-banya was connected to Winti and possession by spirits. Baka futu translates as “back foot,” but baka is also the word for malevolent spirits in the Vodou religion in Haiti.

As a white woman growing up in the US, more cultures exist outside my world of experience than within it. However, in this country, and in other countries colonized by western European nations, I have been told that my narrow slice of European-derived culture is the one worth learning about. We don’t often acknowledge that our folklore and ghost stories may have origins in African and African American culture. We don’t see Vodou as a legitimate religion, derived from religious practices in what is today Benin, combined with other religions and spiritual practices from Africa and further syncretized with Christianity in Haiti. Instead, we see zombies and witchcraft.

I had to open my eyes to the reality that Black history and culture have been so suppressed and misunderstood by white culture that I wouldn’t see connections unless I looked hard. But why had they been suppressed? How had we lost all this information? Why was it that an instrument constantly described as “Black” and “African” came to be thought of as a white instrument? The story can’t stop here.

They had a new group, and on February 6, 1843, they would present the “First Night of the novel . . . Ethiopian band, entitled the Virginia Minstrels.”11 They, again, billed themselves as authentic. But they were all white, none of them were from Virginia, and the entertainment they were performing wasn’t new. More than that, even as the Virginia Minstrels took the stage as a foursome with banjo, fiddle, tambourine, and bones, they were recreating what could have been heard in Black communities from New York to Suriname. The bones produce a sharp clack, not unlike the sound made by the qua-qua. The fiddle offers a melody line, like song. The tambourine is a simpler version of a drum, with all its tones. And the banjo is the banjo, a Black instrument.

[Andrew Heitzman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me make sure I say up top: there's a lot of interesting information in this book. But if you're looking for what I was when I started it -- a history of how the banjo was originally made and spread in the pre-white-Americana context a lot of people know it from -- you'll probably be disappointed.

This book has a lot of history about the cultural context that the banjo /likely/ sprang up in. The author obviously loves painting and art history, and spends a lot of time talking about works of art that depict (or possibly depict) banjos. But there are more dances and styles of drum described in this book than concrete steps in the history of the banjo. Heck, there's way more time spent describing the lives/experiences of European slave owners or colonizers who were fans of art or might have taken a banjo back to Europe than time spent talking about folks who might have actually contributed to the evolution of the banjo or its music. The last ~20-30% of the book does talk a lot more about the "modern" (1800's-on) history of the banjo, but still sticks to a few notable anecdotes before jumping to a few people today who are hoping to keep that history alive.

Ultimately, I found myself often wondering what long passages had to do with the actual history of the banjo. The author says really plainly up front that this is a history that's difficult to uncover (but also cites a musical historian toward the end of the book who actually did the work, and read "thousands" of books about the banjo to assemble early songs from black musicians). I just don't think the book did enough to move my understanding of the banjo's history forward to justify the read.

[Emmett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is well written and well researched. I enjoyed it for the most part. The reason it’s 3 stars is because I was, over all, disappointed. I was excited to read something about the history of banjos and maybe learn more about how it because a cultural symbol. What this really examines is rituals involving music made by and for enslaved peoples. The earliest banjos are for ritual dances and have been documented well (this was a very engaging part). Then we move to how it started to be made into the form it is now for mass-market production (interesting but a short section compared to the rest). Then we move into a more modern look at people who are reviving blue grass in black communities (again, this is all very interesting. I’d say 85-90% of the book is about the music and dances the instrument was used during. There was nothing about the transition from black face performances to the transition of the banjo being associated with hillbillies/rednecks/etc. Because it was so not what I pictured, I kept losing interest and having to go back a bit to get myself back in. A more appropriate subtitle would be “Rituals and Musical Practices for the Enslaved.”

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the writing, but 98% of the book wasn't really about banjos...it was more about their most likely context, and what could be surmised from some isolated instances of when they crop up in art. Which was interesting, but I felt like the title was a little misleading. It also seemed to end pretty abruptly. The content just didn't come together for me, it felt like the first full pass of a book that wasn't quite there.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curious history through dramatizing a series of primary sources in paintings, dioramas, and travelogues depicting the banjo at a uniquely African-Caribbean intersection of slavery, music, worship and celebration, and adaptation. As some of the threads are light echoes, I wish there was a bit more sense of engaging with other supporting or supplanted accounts of the instrument's background.

[Jachin Heckman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand that really the only thing we know about the early history of the banjo is what white people cared to document, but I could have done with less learning about white slave owners in the past. Still some interesting things in there. Glad I read. I would not recommend.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having known multiple banjo players over the years, this caught my eye when scrolling through new history books on Netgalley - thanks to them for making this available to me. When I opened it and found that the author is a fiddle player based in Baltimore, it was obvious I was meant to read it.

A weakness of the Netgalley format is that you can't easily read footnotes while you're reading the text - you have to scroll all the way to the back of the however-many-hundred pages are in the document and then find your way back. I mention this because this book is filled with information about African and African American culture and I'd have liked to see where it all came from as I went along.

There is little information in existence about the origins of the banjo - as far as most white people know, it burst upon the scene with the origin of blackface minstrel shows in the 1800s, and maybe they vaguely think it's African in origin.

Gaddy seeks out all possible references to the instrument in historical documents and, importantly, in art. They are few and far between, so to amplify each small bit she creates stories around them, discussing the lives of those who wrote about or painted these long necked plucked instruments made of gourds, and the societies in which they found them in the Caribbean or the US. In this way her book also becomes almost a series of interlinked stories of enslaved people in these areas as well.

Her conclusion is that the banjo was created in the Americas by people of African descent, rather than being actually an African instrument. This is based on physical and design differences between the few known instruments from Africa and the ones collected or represented on this side of the Atlantic. The banjo as we know it today, made from a ring of wood with a head tensioned with mechanisms similar to those on snare drums, appears to have originated in the shop of a Baltimore maker in the first heyday of minstrel shows - every gourd is different, but rings of wood can be made to a standard, allowing the same parts and process to be repeated over and over to meet the sudden demand for these instruments.

Look at a banjo with a clear head, and you'll see the bar that extends from the neck down to the base of the ring - this makes the banjo different from mandolins and other stringed instruments, and is a characteristic inherited from the original instruments home-made with gourds. This arrangement of a bar bisecting a ring has a spiritual significance in early African American religious practice as well, and survives in today's instruments.

While I'm most familiar with the four string banjo, her focus is the five string banjo and she never even refers to the existence of four string banjos - I wish I had some idea how they come into this picture. And occasionally I got lost in the details of instrument comparisons. I'm grateful there were pictures, but it would have been nice to have more to elucidate some of these details.

I tend to become impatient with the style of history writing that does a lot of "September 1755 - Joe Doe stood on the deck of a sloop sailing into the harbor of ..." because I don't need fake personal stories to be interested in history. But I suppose many people do and if this is what it takes to get their attention and/or to build up a tiny bit of actual evidence into a full book, then so be it. The unfortunate side effect of this is that because it's white people who were actually able to leave written records, the story of a black instrument can only be told through the words of white people. This is not Gaddy's fault, it's the way it is. And despite the fact that these people did not always have interest in the well-being of the black people around them, the few instruments available to be seen today exist because they were 'collected,' described, and represented by white people.

The last chapter of the book leaps suddenly from the appearance in the 19th century of something like the modern banjo, to a gathering of African American banjo players in the 21st century, and considers the halting and gradual reclaiming of the banjo by contemporary African Americans like Rhiannon Giddens. Despite the instrument having become mostly associated with white musicians playing pseudo-black music in blackface, its deeper origins lie among enslaved people, as Gaddy clearly shows. It seems that for the banjo, the best is yet to come.

[Annika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I happened to see it on the new books shelf at my library and checked it out on a whim. I'm glad I did. It was a fascinating read, as much for the unique style of it as for the content. Gaddy explains the history of the banjo and tells stories about her own research using a series of vignettes that each focus on an individual source that depicts or mentions a banjo. She does a deep dive into everything we know about the creator of the source, often spending most of the chapter on the person's life rather than their encounter with a banjo. However, it always comes back to how they wrote about (or drew) a banjo and how their perspective might have influenced the way they perceived the banjo and the music and dance associated with it.

I know nothing about musicology, but it seems that Gaddy's central argument--that the banjo was created by people of African descent in the Americas rather than in Africa and that "banza/banja/banjo" originally referred to a style of dance as well as the instrument--is an innovative one. I found her research quite persuasive, and I was amazed by how Gaddy was able to piece together so much about the history of the banjo with so few extant early banjos and so few sources to work with. I also thought the book was a great example of how to read sources from the elite--in this case, usually white men whose accounts of the banjo were filled with racism--against the grain, so to speak, to get at the history of people who usually didn't leave behind records--in this case, enslaved people.

[James Irwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Those of us who are not musicians usually have a cursory knowledge of where instruments come from. We recognize the European roots of the pieces in an orchestra. We know the source of some more exotic instruments, such as the sitar or the steel drum.

But most of us have no idea of the history of the banjo. When we are young, we become aware of its use in minstrel shows in the South, and we see it used by bluegrass musicians on television. It is just taken for granted. Which is why Well of Souls is such a revelatory, compelling read.

With impressive research and lean, insightful prose, Gaddy dives deep into the origins of the banjo among the slave population in the Caribbean and the southern colonies, spending time describing both the disturbing harshness and defiant richness of their lives. She identifies the moments and locations where the rudimentary instrument, built of gourd and wood and stretched animal skin and fiber threads, emerges in the African communities in the Americas and takes hold.

It is fascinating to read some of the earliest mentions by slaveholders and European observers, describing an object for which they often had no name, and to see their anxiety over the power this instrument seemed to hold through use in ritual and dance, connected to the spirituality of the enslaved people. Gaddy tells a fascinating story stretching hundreds of years.

[Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went into this book with absolutely 0 knowledge of banjos. Mumford & Sons is the closest I've come to listening to banjo music.

Yet, I've come out of Well of Souls with an appreciation for the history of the instrument, and a curiosity and drive to seek out more banjo music. It's a fascinating history that begins after the start of chattel slavery in the US, and seems to be ever-evolving. Gaddy is expansive but never wandering, and the whole book flows wonderfully. How intrinsically the banjo is linked to African-American culture is something I just was completely ignorant of before, partly because I'm not American, but mostly because that history, by Gaddy's account, has been in many ways lost.

The only parts that tripped me up were a couple of sections where she describes the shape of the proto- and early-banjos in depth. I'm sure the physical and/or ebook had pictures, but as I listened on audio, it was hard to keep up with. But that only happens twice throughout, to my memory. Otherwise, I was never lost despite having no musical background.

The audiobook was always fantastically narrated. The narrator's dulcet tones made this a joy to listen to.

[Cristina Elena | LaaA · Rating 5 out of 5]

When good research meets creative writing in a way that sooths the reading senses, we get works such as “Well of Souls. Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden Story” by Kristina R. Gaddy. With a talent for storytelling, Kristina takes the reader on a cultural journey of uncovering the heritage of the banjo from its first depictions as an “African” singing instrument in journals, all across to the current day. The audiobook is full of stories that can be listened to in a break, during commute, or even on a long journey. No matter if you’re a banjo fan or never heard of this instrument until now, this narrative will leave the reader with a desire to uncover more of this instrument’s cultural significance long after the last page has been turned.

Thanks to NetGalley, HighBridge Audio, and the editorial team for giving me the opportunity to review the ARC in audiobook format and to you, my reader, for taking the time to read this honest personal book review.

If you are interested in other of my book reviews, make sure to follow me on GoodReads!

#WellofSouls #NetGalley #LifeLongLearning

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I received this book in return for a review.

Well of Souls is a book of history. As the title says, it follows the banjo's evolution from 1687 to the 1850s in the Americas, it mostly follows the history of the African Americans who brought the ancestor to the banjo with them when they were enslaved and brought to North and South America as slaves. Observing paintings and drawings from the time period, as well as writings from slave owners, and other free people, in which they provide descriptions of what they saw. Along the way she tells us how the instrument evolved from 3 strings to the common 5 today. She makes no mention of the 4 string banjo that was common in the early 20th century, but she stops the history in the 1850s, so that is reasonable. Overall, I found this fascinating reading, though it was more about social evolution than musical. I enjoy reading about history, so this was in my wheelhouse. The book is well written, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes to learn about history.

[Madeleine Wiggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to “Well of Souls” when author Kristina Gaddy delivered a lecture on this book and her banjo research at Sigal Music Museum back in October. The lecture focused on the parts of the book set in South Carolina (for an emphasis on local history) and included demonstrations on different historical banjos.

This book provides ample information and context while still remaining wonderfully accessible. Gaddy uses textual evidence and artworks to put together a vibrant and powerful narrative surrounding the banjo. Stories from across time and around the world weave together to reveal the hidden histories of the banjo’s development. I enjoyed the added flourishes that Gaddy includes to bring each story to life, and her writing clearly reveals her passion for and connection to the subject. The accompanying images and additional information on her website were also extremely helpful in following the book.

Congratulations, Kristina Gaddy, on a great book and wonderfully interesting research. I look forward to seeing where your work leads next.

[Ralphz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, to start off with, this author really seems to hate herself for being white. There's a lot of the usual post-2020 language in the intro, so I knew where we were going.

Yes the banjo's progenitor was from Africa, and yes it got adapted in America. She seems surprised that racist white Americans would keep this fact from her - but it's not a secret.

I'm reminded of the PBS show "History Detectives," whose hosts, when presented with an old banjo, were shocked, SHOCKED, to find out it had African origins and wasn't just an instrument used by white trash Southerners.

Anyway, there's some good information here, but also a lot of speculation. Yeah we don't know everything about the banjo, so some guesses have to be made. But the author spends a lot of time trying to tie together people and events with a lot of uses of "may have," "perhaps" and "could have."

All in all, there's more info here about slavery than about music. For example, in one 12-page chapter, only four paragraphs dealt with a banjo. The rest was about a slave, her white lover, and their son.

Unfortunately, this was a DNF.

[Katra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grew up with an impression of the banjo formed by "I'm a pickin, and I'm a grinnin'," a kind of hokey instrument for rednecks chewing on a straw. The impression received a jolt when Bela Fleck used it for jazz. More recently, Rhiannon Giddons revealed the soul of the instrument and made me take it for a serious instrument full pathos.

The Well of Souls, while not exactly a book on banjos, truly puts the instrument in context describing ancestors, Caribbean beginnings, colonial influence, and the dances and religious elements connected to it. There are numerous primary source references from journals, articles, and books, and reproductions of paintings showing the banjo in use in history. I do wish that the photos had been in color. The black and white illustrations, while fascinating and fortunately well discussed, were sometimes difficult to discern due to the lack of contrast in the grayscale.

[Bill Grabin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tremendously well researched and well written account of various "episodes" in the history of the banjo. Gaddy uses an interesting and effective approach as each episode that she recounts (ex: Jamaica, 1687; New York, 1736; New Orleans, 1819, etc.) tells part of the story. It's not a page turner, but much of it is fascinating.
I'm a long time fan of the banjo, and long time attendee of Merlefest in NC. I saw the Carolina Chocolate Drops there in April 2007, their MF debut, when they were the sensation of the 4 day event. They returned in 2008 and 2009, and then in 2014. MF, of course, has featured countless outstanding players, but the CCD's brought something new and revelatory.
I'm also done a tremendous amount of work in researching my local (Maine!) history of enslavers and enslavement, as well as the general U.S. history thereof, and this book provides insights into those stories as well.
Definitely recommended for anyone interested in these topics and history.

[Dan Downing · Rating 5 out of 5]

The research here goes wide and deep. Quite impressive, really. While using the banjo and its history as the unifying thread, Ms. Gaddy in effect offers us another history of the Black experience in the Americas. Perhaps this tome will be banned in Florida. Her method, in large part, is to profile individuals who lived in selected cities at intervals across the historical timescape. The folks selected were people who had witnessed events where the banjo made an impression, and who subsequently wrote about it in diaries, letters, journals, published works and so forth. Or made drawings or paintings which recorded the banjo.
Interspersed among these historical stories are two 'Interludes' with a 'Coda' wrapping everything up. A fine Notes section and an index are included.

Recommended.

[Matthew Ferro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad I exited my comfort zone to read this exploration, glad I saw it on a bookshelf in Davidson, NC in the spring and put it on my TBR, glad Kristina Gaddy is fascinated by etymology and the divergence and convergence of an origin story.

I have to say, this book was pretty boring. It's really cool that the banjo, now a staple of americana music, has its origins throughout African, African-Caribbean, Creole, and African American culture. That white popular culture has stolen it made me pick up this book in the first place. But once we got into the nitty-gritty it was tough for me to stay super interested.

I appreciate Gaddy's research and commitment to discovering the truth - of which there are several.

[Lee Toliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a gem of history.

This book gives you a rich history that makes you want more and more; To never come to an end. It’s well written and embraces a time that many don’t speak on but should. It’s the division and the lost information that’s keeping us separated, but it’s books like this that reveals the missing culture that brings us closer to one another. The author did an excellent job of gathering information and providing us with a wealth of information to continue our own research. Thank you Kristina Gaddy.

[Colby Mcmurry · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars; although well researched, much of the structure of the book is the same: introduce new historical source, discuss African Americans of the time period, discuss banjo during time period, repeat. This made for slightly more tedious reading than I would have liked and ultimately a broader scope that, while I can certainly appreciate, does detract from the (perceived) focus of the book. Overall, "Well of Souls" is a worthy read, but you may be biting off a little more than you wanted to chew with it as well.

[Andrew (Drew) Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meticulously researched exploration of the early history of the banjo in the western hemisphere. Interesting narratives about spiritual dances performed by enslaved people of African descent where the banjo is normally present. Where the banjo is missing in these stories there are words that suggest the banjo was removed. A great companion piece to DuBois’ book on the banjo, filling in many gaps on topics he did not pursue.

[Mark Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent story telling and good researching done to reveal the various sources of the musical instrument to intrigues everyone. Since I am a gourd crafter, it fascinates me how this new instrument was created here in Black America starting with a bottle gourd as the resonating chamber or body of the instrument. I have seen gourd banjos especially at the Gourd Museum collection in North Carolina at the town of Angier.