Hans Sloane records gourd lutes in Jamaica
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.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Banjo · artefact · The Caribbean and North America · not located
- The Middle Passage · phenomenon · Atlantic Ocean — West and West-Central Africa to the Americas · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica
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.
Hans Sloane, London · 1707 · Partly verified
Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands… vol. I (London, 1707), describing instruments observed in Jamaica in 1687–88
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.
- Jefferson names the banjar and its origin · 1781
- The South Carolina Negro Act prohibits drums · 1740-05-10
- The transatlantic trade in enslaved people operates · c. 1501 – 1866