Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History by Gaddy, Kristina; Rhiannon Giddens (Foreword by)ISBN: 9780393866810
Publication Date: 2022-10-04
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