“The banjo was created by enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean and colonial North America. Here, they maintained and perpetuated the tradition within a complex system of slave-labor camps, plantations, and in a variety of rural and urban settings,” says SI.Edu, the Smithsonian’s educational website on the topic. “From the earliest references in the 17th century, and through the 1830s, the banjo was exclusively known as an African American tradition with a West African heritage…The drum-like gourd body and strings of different lengths are uniquely African, while the flat fingerboard and tuning pegs are more commonly associated with European traditions.”