by Rob MacKillop

 

Briggs's Banjo Instructor was originally published in Boston in 1855. This early (gut-strung, fretless) banjo tutor gives a wonderful insight into fashionable North American music during the mid 19th century. It includes European dances such as the polka, jig, and reel, but its author also claims to have been "at the South", on plantations, where he "learned...from the negroes" a collection of songs and instrumentals. Most of the items are instrumental dances ro arrangements of songs.

 

I studied this tutor (with fretless banjo in hand) enough to realize two things: one, I was not suited to the technique to play the instrument well, and two, that the music was wonderful. To my great relief I soon found that these pieces transferred so well to the ukulele it was as if they had been written upon it. I've transcribed adn rearranged a lot of music in my life, but nothing fell so well upon the fretboard as this early bajo repertoire. Not a note has been changed from the original publication. I suppose a banjo-uke (banjolele) might be the most suitable instrument, but any common or garden ukulele will suffice, as longs as it is tuned in the standard re-entrant way.

 

I hope you enjoy enjoy playing these exciting pieces. You see and hear my performances at www.FingerstyleUke.com.

 

Book/CD

Mel Bay Publications