“He talks about the common misconceptions of the banjo, first that it was invented in Appalachia, and second that it was invented in Africa.”
“It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that they were fretted, that steel wire was used instead of gut strings, and that the awkward high-G resonator string completed the package.” He knows banjos.
I had an opportunity at a book fair of all things to ask a question of the expert demonstrating a sitar. He was not an Indian.
I took the chance of looking stupid. “To me, the sounds from some Appalachian and Southern folk music has a counterpoint and drone string and harmonic relation on a banjo, a zither or a mandolin that reminds me of the sitar. How can that be? I know the folk music came from British settlers who moved into the South but what in British music has that sound?”
He said when the Arabs and Indians trekked back and forth they influenced the local string instrument musicians along the way. Those British musicians carried some of the Arab and Indian influences to the US.