Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/06/2011:  08:48:53

This Thread: banjohangout.org/topic/219381/#2783100  is what set me off experimenting with this Ngoni based tuning.

Here's a little video of me playing clawhammer banjo in the Ngoni Harp tuning: dDGAC, playing in D. An essential note not on the open strings is the E note found at the 2nd fret of the 4th string and 4th fret of the first string.

The other fretting positions I use are 2nd fret on 3rd and 1st strings.

I also use, as passing tones, the 2nd fret of the 2nd string, and the 5th fret of the 1st string. If this tuning is meant for a pentatonic scale, those notes would not be part of the scale, so I don't linger on them.

I sometimes barre at the 5th fret, and get some higher notes with my pinky, fretting up 2 on the 1st, 3rd and 4th strings, and up 3 on the second string. I didn't happen to play that figure in this short improvisation.

To me, this resembles music from Mali. Someone from Mali would likely disagree.

This also appears on my BHO video page.

(Note: More African banjo playing has been added further down in the thread.)

Edited by - Marc Nerenberg on 11/07/2011 21:33:11

J-Walk - Posted - 11/06/2011:  09:08:41

Nice! I like that a lot, Marc.

bassman - Posted - 11/06/2011:  10:05:20

That's funky as all get-out.  Very cool, Marc.  Have you messed with that tuning on a fretless?  I think I just might (oh, there I go stealing again...).

-Chris

tomberghan - Posted - 11/06/2011:  13:45:45

Some performances conjure up clear images in my imagination and this is one such performance! 

It immediately made me imagine slaves playing gourd banjos in New Orleans Congo Square back in 1780.  I could see them dancing in the light of the fire!  (I lived a long time in New Orleans and I am very familiar with the area around the old Congo Square where the slave auctions used to take place and where slaves often held sessions of music making and dancing long into the night by the light of bon fires).

Well, it’s my imagination and that is how this performance affected me!  It was GREAT Marc!

Best Wishes, Tom

JanetB - Posted - 11/06/2011:  14:49:47

The tonal feeling of this tuning is immediately engaging. The crystalline harmonics are striking, standing out especially when compared to the common open G.

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/06/2011:  20:36:42

Thanks so much, folks, all of you. Very much appreciated.

I'm starting to feel as though this experiment is producing some positive results.

I've now tuned one of my fretless banjos in this tuning as per bassman's suggestion. It's actually the small fretless that I carried around Mali in 1981, when I was hunting for the roots of American banjo playing styles in West Africa. If I start feeling comfortable with it I may shoot a little video on that one, one of these days.

Here's some music from Mali to compare and contrast: youtu.be/WnjcHNnPLeo

Edited by - Marc Nerenberg on 11/06/2011 20:38:58

Grumpy1 - Posted - 11/06/2011:  22:08:52

  I like this a lot.   To my ears it has similar rhythms and melodic harmony.  Very well done. 

stigandr5 - Posted - 11/07/2011:  03:38:35

I've been tinkering with this kinda stuff for a while, though never in this tuning. I actually built a cigar box ngoni because I thought my banjo wouldn't do the job. Thank you for proving me wrong, Marc! Wonderful stuff!

VIDEO: 5 String Cigar Box N'goni (click to view)

JanetB - Posted - 11/07/2011:  05:48:04

Thanks for an unexpected, refreshing morning concert.  I could play along in Am and G.

JanetB - Posted - 11/07/2011:  05:49:49

quote:

---

Originally posted by JanetB

Thanks for an unexpected, refreshing morning concert.  I could play along in Am and G.  Funny, but I was working on a tune called Grub Springs with the same chording when I watched this Mali video.

---

Mark Johnson - Posted - 11/07/2011:  07:07:12

dig it, it is indeed refreshing.  

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/07/2011:  21:11:13

Thanks for the more kind words, friends!

I thought I would add a few other forays of mine into playing African music on the banjo:

Guabi Guabi is a song from what is now Zimbabwe - it was recorded by George Sibanda in the 1940's or 50's in what was then Rhodesia. I recorded my version in 1985, and the 8 tracks (2 banjo, 3 handclaps, 3 vocal) are all myself.

The Kona is an instrument I collected from the Dogon people in a remote region of Eastern Mali in 1981. I was astounded to discover it being played clawhammer style.

Malaika is a popular song in Tanzania, where I lived for several years this past decade. It was an international hit a few decades ago for Miriam Makeba. My version is rather more uptempo than is usual, and I had the opportunity to play this version quite often with several local bands in Arusha Tanzania where I lived (one of which wanted to record this with me but we never had the chance). The English version of the Swahili lyrics is my translation which is more faithful to the original and much less sentimental than other translations I have heard.

Guabi Guabi

VIDEO: CLAWHAMMER KONA TUNE - Marc Nerenberg (click to view)

VIDEO: MALAIKA - Marc Nerenberg (click to view)

Frailblazer - Posted - 11/08/2011:  06:01:30

Marc,

I'm really digging this tuning!  Thanks for sharing it with us and for the video too. This is one of my favorite tunes of yours.  I will definitely have to check out this tuning and see what kind of music I can coax out of it. ;-)

- Ric

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/08/2011:  11:53:34

Thanks Ric - I'd love to hear you do some 2 hand tapping style in this tuning!

(I cross posted this suggestion into your current thread: I figured you would be most likely to see it there.)

Don Borchelt - Posted - 11/09/2011:  05:00:37

Marc, your musical imagination wanders far and wide; you are always taking us to new places we didn't even know existed.  Totally fresh, yet firmly rooted in tradition.  Well done.

Frailblazer - Posted - 11/09/2011:  09:32:41

Marc,

Am I correct in assuming that you've tuned your 5th string down to a "d"?

Thanks,

- Ric

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/09/2011:  10:18:12

quote:

---

Originally posted by Frailblazer

Marc,

Am I correct in assuming that you've tuned your 5th string down to a "d"?

Thanks,

- Ric

---

Yes, exactly. (Well, actually I happened to have this banjo low tuned at the time, and it was already tuned down to a "d" - but, in principle, yes.) So from G tuning at standard pitch, the 5th comes down to "d", the 4th and 3rd stay where they are, the second comes down to A, and the first comes down to C.

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/09/2011:  17:16:22

quote:

---

Originally posted by Don Borchelt

Marc, your musical imagination wanders far and wide; you are always taking us to new places we didn't even know existed.  Totally fresh, yet firmly rooted in tradition.  Well done.

---

Thank you, Don, for these kind words.

Frailblazer - Posted - 11/09/2011:  19:44:00

Marc,

I haven't had a chance to try out the tuning yet but I wanted to let you know how I will approach it. With regard to the 5th string, I prefer to avoid retuning my such a large interval, i.e. 5 half steps. So, I'm going to tune up to gDGAC and then place the capo at the 5th fret, leaving the 5h string uncapoed. The interval relationship will be the same as dDGAC. Although the pitch will be different so I'm hoping the overall effect will be the same.

Ric

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/09/2011:  20:30:15

Sounds like a perfectly viable approach. I look forward to hearing it.

If you have a low tuned banjo (with Minstrel Nylgut strings, for example) you could try that approach and still keep a lower pitch - but the higher pitch will be really appealing as well, I'm sure.

This just happens to be the pitch in the video of the guy tuning an Ngoni harp that I learned the tuning from (check out the link in my initial post to the other thread where someone posted that video), but in looking around on YouTube, I see them tuned much higher and much lower - it depends basically on the size of instrument, where it will be pitched - just like violin - viola - cello - bass.

Edited by - Marc Nerenberg on 11/09/2011 20:30:45

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/11/2011:  13:09:10

quote:

---

Originally posted by stigandr5

I've been tinkering with this kinda stuff for a while, though never in this tuning. I actually built a cigar box ngoni because I thought my banjo wouldn't do the job. Thank you for proving me wrong, Marc! Wonderful stuff!

---

Thanks for posting this video here - your cigar box Ngoni looks and sounds wonderful!

JanetB - Posted - 11/11/2011:  13:27:06

Thanks, Marc, for pointing out Nathan's video.  I would have missed this, and this is essential banjo history.  Have you written some historical essays on your studies in west Africa?  Can we view them?

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/12/2011:  15:58:58

Sorry Janet, no essays. Ken Perlman wrote a column in the Banjo Newsletter about it in 1984ish. I did a number of radio interviews/concerts at the time for CBC radio, at least 2 of which were broadcast all over the world via the CBC International Service, and a few times I did live concerts telling the story - which is a long and interesting one, but I've never written it down. I promised to do so on my blog on my homepage - but I just haven't gotten around to it. I always have more pressing, but much less interesting, legal writing to do. [If someone would interview me, that would be the ideal way to get the story down, from my perspective.]

Also, it's somewhat of a glorification of what I did to call it "studies" in West Africa. It was backpacking with a banjo, playing it everywhere, and asking people if they knew anyone who played a similar instrument.

The genesis of my inquiry began in the 1970s. I had seen a coffeehouse performance by the brilliant Eric Frandsen from New York who, when he got out his banjo to play a few fiddle tunes clawhammer style, called it "the only original American instrument". Afterwards, I went over to him and said, "Come on, Eric, surely you know the banjo comes from Africa." and he (thinking fast on his feet) said, "Well, what I really meant was, that style of playing, clawhammer, was purely an American invention, and is the oldest American banjo style."  I accepted that as true, but then wondered, if clawhammer was the oldest American banjo style, then how was it played in Africa before that.

In 1981, I received a few thousand dollars in unexpected retroactive pay from my job as a researcher in current affairs radio when a settlement of a prolonged contract negotiation eliminated my category and bumped me into a higher paid category. I phoned my wife and told her, and one of us - I don't remember which - said "Let's get plane tickets and go to Africa before we just fritter the money away on daily expenses", and so we did. After that we had hardly any money for anything else on the trip, so it was the lowest rent travel you could imagine.

Since I had this idea of trying to find out how the banjo ancestors were played, we planned the trip around countries that seemed to be likely locations - Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Upper Volta (now Burkina-Fasso) and Ivory Coast. We thought Gambia would be the best place to look, but unfortunately a coup/civil war broke out days before we were to go there, so we scrapped that part of the trip.

Interestingly, carrying a banjo (the little fretless in my lower avatar picture), slung across my back with no case, that I was very happy to oblige any request for playing anywhere at any time, rapidly made me a sort of celebrity. Crowds would literally gather around me on the street and get me to play - often the children would dance. This gave me lots of opportunities to ask people if they knew anyone who played similar instruments. The answer always was the same - you have to go way off into the countryside to find that. (The people in the cities were far more likely to play electric guitar!) Though I asked far and wide, no one seemed able to direct me to anyone who played any similar instruments.

Cutting a long story short, we eventually made our way to the Dogon people in the extremely remote Falaise of Bandiagara in Eastern Mali. The Dogon lived a remote and isolated life by choice - they moved to this remote cliff side centuries ago to avoid slave traders. Their houses are built right into the side of the cliff. The cliff has a huge overhand, so anyone approaching from above would look down and see nothing. The houses are so high up on the cliff that anyone approaching from below would be seen by the Dogon long before they could climb the cliff, and the Dogon could disappear into the many caves that dot the cliff side. The Dogon are the only people in that region who were never conquered by any of the many empires that have held that territory. Adding to their security was their (untrue) reputation as cannibals, and the fact that they file their teeth into points, giving them a rather fearsome appearance, which kept their neighbours rather intimidated by them.

Inasmuch as the Dogon would have been unlikely to have been slaves in America in any great numbers, if at all, it was the last place I expected to find what I was looking for. When we arrived at the village of Kane-Kombole, where our 12 year old guide lived, I was asked to play banjo for the village chief, who seemed singularly unimpressed, and then for the village children, who gathered around me and danced, each one doing a solo in turn. It was a remarkable moment for me, playing for these children, who stood facing me in a line, holding their bodies completely erect, and dancing in perfect unison, seemingly moving only their feet and legs - it was as though their bodies just floated stationary above their legs. One after another advanced one step, danced a more complicated solo, and then stepped back into line. The sound of the bare feet in the sand was the most beautiful and subtle percussion one could wish for.

Then, after dark, while I was still playing for the children, from between two huts, emerged a fellow carrying a skin covered gourd with an impaled round neck strung with two string knotted on the the neck. He wiggled the knots on the string to get in tune with me, and began to play along. I was floored. He was using the same hand movements as I was - clawhammer. I was playing "Reuben" which I had read was originally a West African tune that was still current in the region. He had no trouble at all playing it with me. (My video above called "Clawhammer Kona" is my best attempt at imitating how he played.)

After the children finished dancing, we played together for several hours, sometimes him following me, sometimes me following him. Our guide had long since disappeared to hang out with his friends, and we had no common language. The entire conversation was conducted in music.

It was an experience that has profoundly affected my life, my world view, and my relationship with the banjo.

The next morning, with our young guide, I sought him out, hoping to buy his instrument from him, but alas, he had left the village to go to some distant market. I never saw him again. The instrument that I was able to obtain was actually that of a young friend of our guide, and is a child sized instrument - about half size. It only had one string, and when I asked why, it was explained to me that that was all he had, if he had had more string, he would have put one or two more strings on it. The string was fishing line. When I got home I added two more strings from string that was as close to the original as I could find - postal chord.

I never encountered another banjo like instrument on the rest of our travels, despite asking everywhere we went. I did, though, have an opportunity to show the instrument I brought back to Eric Frandsen a few years later, at Montreal's Yellow Door Coffeehouse, and demonstrate how it was played clawhammer style. I don't know whether or not he actually remembered our earlier conversation that had sent me off on this quest, but it was still cool to be able to bring the conversation full circle.

Well, there you have it, Janet, the nutshell version. I think I'll copy and paste this as my long awaited blog on the subject!

Edited by - Marc Nerenberg on 11/12/2011 16:09:27

JanetB - Posted - 11/12/2011:  17:40:08

WOW!!  That was more interesting than the Ralph Stanley autobiography lying at my feet next to the wood stove.  You followed your heart, went adventuring for the sake of the banjo, and found a treasure that can't be lost and can be shared.  Thanks for sharing, Marc!!

Marc Nerenberg - Posted - 11/13/2011:  14:34:02

Wow! Thanks Janet!

I have now posted that story as my blog, and I want to thank you for asking the question that got me to write that all down. I wonder if I shouldn't just copy and paste that story into a new thread of it's own. I suspect that this thread has been up for so long that few people, if any, are bothering to see what's new in it.

courgettelawn - Posted - 11/14/2011:  15:04:55

quote:

---

Originally posted by stigandr5

I've been tinkering with this kinda stuff for a while, though never in this tuning. I actually built a cigar box ngoni because I thought my banjo wouldn't do the job. Thank you for proving me wrong, Marc! Wonderful stuff!

---

What a fascinating thread! I heard Marc's Mali inspired improvisation on his video page and then read these posts with a great deal of interest, particularly as someone who aspires to improvise more with my banjo. I really love your ngoni canjo too, will look up your blog with interest.

SCclawman - Posted - 11/14/2011:  16:26:07

Marc,
really cool song,

even cooler story.

thanks for sharing both.