Native to Africa and popularized in America, the banjo has gone through major transformation and evolution, and its history of becoming a mainstream music instrument is quite fascinating.

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 ...

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 ...

"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 ...

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 ...