Bluegrass aficionados recognize the pivotal role of banjo instrumentation in crafting its vibrant sound. While instruments like fiddles, upright basses, guitars, and mandolins contribute significantly ...

ASPEN – Between the ages of 7 and 15, Bela Fleck spent a good amount of his time as an unpromising guitar student. His biggest accomplishment was mastering the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun”; by the ...

A sought-after producer, acoustic-music ambassador and virtuoso banjo player, as well as the host of the Inside the Musician’s Brain podcast, Chris Pandolfi boasts some impressive feathers in his ...

The banjo isn’t exactly the first instrument that comes to mind when you think of the classical concert hall, but Virginia native John Bullard has blended his background in bluegrass and Bach to bring ...

Pushing boundaries is nothing new to Chris Pandolfi: as a student a Berklee, he was the first banjo principal at the renowned music school and he continues to play banjo in the Infamous Stringdusters, ...

This summer marks the 40th anniversary of the screen adaptation of James Dickey’s Deliverance, as famous for its Grammy Award-winning instrumental song “Dueling Banjos” as its unsettling “bet you can ...

Early American banjo music is Black music. The banjo was created by enslaved African Americans, and according to the Smithsonian Institute, up until the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively an African ...

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with researcher Joe Johnson and musician Jake Blount about the new Library of Congress guide to African American banjo music resources in its collection. A new generation of ...