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Hans Sloane records gourd lutes in Jamaica

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During his stay in Jamaica the physician Hans Sloane observes and has illustrated gourd-bodied, skin-headed stringed instruments made and played by enslaved Africans, which he calls "strum strumps"; the account and plates are published in 1707 in his Voyage to the Islands. The instruments as depicted combine African body and neck construction with European fingerboards and friction pegs — the combination that distinguishes a banjo from either of its parents, and the earliest such documentation this pack could establish.

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Evidence · 1
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No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.

Connections · 2
Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 28 blocks · 1 evidence · 35 related

  1. Story
  2. During his stay in Jamaica the physician Hans Sloane observes and has illustrated gourd-bodied, skin-headed stringed instruments made and played by enslaved Africans, which he calls "strum strumps"; the account and plates are published in 1707 in his Voyage to the Islands. The instruments as depicted combine African body and neck construction with European fingerboards and friction pegs — the combination that distinguishes a banjo from either of its parents, and the earliest such documentation this pack could establish.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Banjo
  5. The Middle Passage
  6. Hans Sloane records gourd lutes in Jamaica
  7. Connections
  8. Banjo
  9. The Middle Passage
  10. European lute
  11. The Middle Passage
  12. Akonting
  13. Ngoni
  14. Blackface minstrelsy and the taking of the banjo
  15. Hans Sloane records gourd lutes in Jamaica
  16. The South Carolina Negro Act prohibits drums
  17. Jefferson names the banjar and its origin
  18. Blackface performers take up the banjo
  19. Banjo
  20. West Africa
  21. The transatlantic slave trade
  22. Havana
  23. New Orleans
  24. Rio de Janeiro
  25. The transatlantic trade in enslaved people operates
  26. Hans Sloane records gourd lutes in Jamaica
  27. Evidence
  28. Sloane observed and had illustrated gourd-bodied, skin-headed stringed instruments played by enslaved Africans in Jamaica, which he called "strum strumps". V55 verification basis: reported from retrieved summaries of the banjo-origins literature; the 1707 volume was not opened, no page or plate number is given, and the wording "strum strumps" is quoted at second hand.
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/atlas?object=EVT_SLOANE_JAMAICA_1688&experience=EVT_SLOANE_JAMAICA_1688