The story of the banjo's journey from Africa to the western hemisphere blends music, history, and a union of cultures. In Banjo Roots and Branches, Robert B. Winans presents cutting-edge scholarship that covers the instrument's West African origins and its adaptations and circulation in the Caribbean and United States. The contributors provide detailed ethnographic and technical research on gourd lutes and ekonting in Africa and the banza in Haiti while also investigating tuning p...

In 1932 a young Fonville Winans (1911--1992) left his home in Fort Worth and set out on the waterways of south Louisiana searching for adventure and fortune. This journal recounts, in his own words, how the now-renowned photographer and his two friends -- first mate Bob Owen and second mate Don Horridge -- ventured onto untamed Louisiana waters aboard a leaking, rudderless sailboat, the Pintail.Fonville was shooting footage for a movie that he felt certain would make them rich and f...