At Denver's Swallow Hill Banjo Fest on Saturday, the toe-tappin' rhythm, quick-pickin' chords and an unmistakable twang ...

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 ...

Beyonce’s hit “Texas Hold ’Em” opens with a beat seldom heard on hip-hop tracks: the unmistakable clip-clop of a four-stringed clawhammer banjo. It comes via folk icon Rhiannon Giddens, who was ...

The return of Festival International was marked with five days of music, dancing and the joy of being able to gather for both. But the influence of Francophonie in Louisiana is not done just yet. In ...

Béla Fleck, a 17-time Grammy award winner who has spent decades perfecting his skills on the banjo, is on a quest to make the banjo beloved. “If I had a mission statement,” Fleck said, “it would be to ...

This is an updated version of a story first published on May 18, 2025. The original video can be viewed here. The idea that this country has become one big, bland, conformist culture, the United ...

The music came from Louisiana. Two fiddlers sang swift, warm phrases in Cajun French, repeated like a private joke among friends. Mitch and Jen Reed, known among the best Cajun fiddlers in the country ...

Tim Weed has heard all the banjo jokes -- the constant digs about the banjo in the movie Deliverance or the Beverly Hillbillies TV show. But a funny thing happens when Weed actually plays the ...

Cody Blackbird band brings a blend of Native American music traditions and the energy of modern sounds to Rochesterfest July 22. The 14th annual Global Music Series-—run by Rochester Civic Music, and ...