Instruments - Part 18

 Banjo

The banjo is an American instrument.  It developed from instruments made by African slaves in the Caribbean and southern U.S.  Those instruments used a gourd for the body.  In the 1830s a minstrel performer in Virginia replaced the gourd with a circular wooden sound box covered with animal skin, and the modern banjo was born.

Today, the banjo uses a plastic membrane instead of animal skin.  It has frets like a guitar.  There are usually five strings, though some banjos have four.

The banjo is not an orchestral instrument.  It's used primarily in folk and country music.

This guy is wearing a Swedish sailor's hat.  Perhaps the appeal of the banjo has spread.

Another banjo player who looks like a foreign sailor.  There's something written on his hat, but I can't tell what language it is.

And another guy who looks sailor-ish, with his striped shirt, but probably isn't one.

This looks like it was taken during a World Naked Bike Ride, and this banjo player was apparently riding along on his skateboard, pickin' and grinnin'.

And this guy was playing his banjo on Halloween, 2010 in New Orleans.

We end with the "Dueling Banjos" scene from the 1972 movie Deliverance, in which four men canoeing down a river in Georgia run into the local hillbillies.  There's no nudity here, but those who have seen the movie know that afterwards, the hillbillies attack the canoeists in the woods, and one of the canoeists gets raped by a hillbilly and told to "Squeal like a pig."