I had not planned to take my daughter with me to the performance of black banjo players but there was no other option. One of her events ended only 30 minutes before the concert  and there was not enough time to drop her off anywhere else.  So the gathering became part of her cultural education.

One of my goals in raising my daughter is to help her understand our fascinating African-American heritage, much of which isn’t taught in traditional classrooms or reflected in the societal images that shape our opinions of ourselves.  Now that she’s a teenager, our cultural outings are even more important, even as she often would prefer to do other things. As a result, I’m more selective about what I invite her to do.

 I had marked the banjo concert off the list of things to do with my daughter but we’re both pleased with how everything worked out.  ”I didn’t know,” my daughter said afterward, “that banjos originated in Africa.”

The concert came at the end of a remarkable gathering of black banjo players who started meeting  five years ago on the campus of Appalachian State University here in North Carolina to not only play the old-time music but explore its presence in African music, jazz and blues.  Some of the musicians stopped in Charlotte for a second reunion concert. The featured artists included Grammy-nominated Malian musician Cheick Hamali Diabate, who plays ngoni (the banjo’s ancestor),  New York City- based string band Ebony Hillbillies and New Orleans jazz banjoist Don Vappie.

My daughter always has a book in our car and she eagerly took it with her to the concert. She read a while. She listened to the music a while. And, she heard the story of how most people in the black community gave up on banjos when white musicians started doing blackface minstrel shows. She learned a little bit more about her heritage.

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