My grandmother lives and owns a thriving little business in Brevard, NC — the very bastion of banjo music where Steve Martin, the assuring narrator of Give Me the Banjo, established his own bluegrass band, the Steep Canyon Rangers. My grandmother and the banjo have a lot in common, too. They are complex souls with simple needs — not simple-minded, however. They each have legacies that precede them even if not everyone is immediately aware of how circuitous and exciting their pasts are upon first impression. Both command the attention of those around them with just their presence alone, and both lady and instrument make everything they touch at once familiar and unique.
Give Me the Banjo, an endearing and warm documentary about a quaint and misunderstood instrument, explores that pot-holed past with inspired though tiresome passion. It takes a basic route through the history of the banjo from its beginnings with African-American musicians through to its introduction to the limelight with famous folk singers and country-fried songsters, peppering in clips of performances and interviews with famous bluegrass musicians throughout.
Purveyors of the five-stringed banjo are acutely aware of and somewhat annoyed by the instrument's public image as a dingy and provincial doo-hickey upon which only tobacco-chewing cowboys play. But Give Me the Banjo reveals that the instrument is more expressive and playful than its more famous brother, the guitar (self-serious and overrated in the eyes of a good deal of "banjoists").
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2012.