Jefferson names the banjar and its origin
Writing what became Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson describes the instrument proper to enslaved Africans as "the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa". The sentence is doing two things at once and both are worth noticing: it is contemporary documentary evidence, from a slaveholder, that the instrument was understood in eighteenth-century Virginia to be African in origin — and it appears inside a passage of racial theorising whose purpose was not to honour the people who made it.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Banjo · artefact · The Caribbean and North America · not located
- West Africa · region · West Africa · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Notes on the State of Virginia
Jefferson identified the banjo as the instrument proper to enslaved Africans and stated that they brought it from Africa. V55 verification basis: the sentence is reproduced as it appears in retrieved secondary summaries; the text was not consulted, the Query in which it appears is not identified, and the retrieved sources differ on whether to date it to composition in 1781 or publication in 1785.
Thomas Jefferson · written 1781; published 1785 · Partly verified
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, the passage describing "the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa"
Recorded on Banjo
- The transatlantic trade in enslaved people operates
- Hans Sloane records gourd lutes in Jamaica
- The South Carolina Negro Act prohibits drums
- Jefferson names the banjar and its origin
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- The South Carolina Negro Act prohibits drums · 1740-05-10
- Hans Sloane records gourd lutes in Jamaica · 1687–1688
- The transatlantic trade in enslaved people operates · c. 1501 – 1866