Genre with Banjo. The banjo is a four-, five-, or six-stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity as a resonator, called the head, which is typically circular.
   The membrane is typically made of plastic, although animal skin is still occasionally used. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by Afro-Americans in the United States, adapted from African instruments of similar design.
   The banjo is frequently associated with folk and country music. Banjo can also be used in some rock songs.
   Many rock bands, such as The Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and The Allman Brothers, have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in African-American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century.
   Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American old-time music. It is also very frequently used in traditional jazz. Note: This article uses Helmholtz pitch notation to define banjo tunings. Problems playing this file? See media help. The modern banjo derives from instruments that had been used in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, and the instrument became increasingly available commercially from around the second quarter o
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