Afropop Worldwide

Author of “Escaping the Blues: Robert Johnson the Invention of the Blues”, talks with producer Ned Sublette, and plays lesser-known recordings by Peetie Wheatstraw, Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr and others, who provided source material for some of Johnson’s classic tunes.

This episode traces the history of this most American of instruments from its ancestors in West Africa through the Caribbean and American South and into the present, as a new generation of Black women artists reclaim the banjo as their own.

This episode traces the history of this most American of instruments from its ancestors in West Africa through the Caribbean and American South and into the present, as a new generation of Black women artists reclaim the banjo as their own.