Building on tradition: Instrument-maker Jim Huskins says, “I’m old enough to remember what it was like in family gatherings and community gatherings in the ‘50s and ‘60s. A fiddle and a banjo were ...

In 1963, when the folk-music trend made a young Greg Deering want to learn to play the banjo, his mother said no. But he was obsessed, desperate to create the sounds he had heard on a Kingston Trio ...

"My father was born with this instrument," Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta says. "This is part of our history." Jatta, 55, is from Gambia, a member of the Jola people. He's holding an akonting: a ...

Did you hear the one about the banjo player who got all the gigs? Well, it’s no joke, the banjo is back, and it couldn’t be more popular. A mainstay of trad jazz, bluegrass and folk, the banjo’s ...

Unless the room is ultra-hip -- meaning, its occupants know something about Don Vappie or Bela Fleck -- banjo gets a bad rap. The new PBS documentary titled "Give Me the Banjo," narrated by Steve ...

Kevin Enoch carves wood for a banjo. The Beltsville, Md., man says he likes the precision of crafting a banjo. “Guitars tend to be pretty plain, whereas banjos from the turn of the century are ...

When putting together this top 10 of the most influential banjo players of all time, we needed to make a decision. Do we consider everybody that plays a stringed instrument with a drum for a body, or ...

Pop superstar Beyoncé released "Texas Hold 'Em" a few weeks ago and it features an instrument that she had never emphasized before. This hit song, on her new (and hugely popular) Cowboy Carter album, ...