Rip Van Banjo Returns

Rip Van Winkle returned to his village after 20 years. In my case it took a bit longer. My return came after the advent of the Global Banjo Village.

I had been whiling away my time performing concerts at elementary schools, when one day, a few years ago, it became apparent that a shift had taken place in the Galaxy and it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be doing the kind of touring that I had been for the past many years.

What was so Rip Van Winkle about it was that half a century ago I began a banjo journey which opened a portal to a melange of plucked string instruments, familiar to exotic. The furthest reaches of my plucked string journey took me all the way to India where I had the great priviledge of studying with Ustad Rais Khan, one of the greatest sitar players the world has ever known. That adventure took place in 1970 – it was preceded by several years of studing with sitarist Shyam Yodh; performing on guitar and banjo; working as a a music therapist; 8 years of classical piano education and 5 years of trumpet. After my trip to India I started playing mandolin as well as sitar, banjo and guitar. I developed a collection of mandolin-family instruments and some friends brought me back a saz from Turkey. The oud and sarod came along, and, at that point, I was pretty much satiated with my palette of plucked string sounds (for at least a while). This multi-instrumental hankering led to a gratifying performing career, based on culturally diverse and original music; fine arts concerts and elementary school assemblies.

During those decades, Rip pretty much unplugged from folk and pop culture. When Rip made his reappearance – after the birth of YouTube – he began noticing some interesting things. He noticed that there was a gal named Cathy Moore who was doing some very interesting arrangements of international folk music on 5-string banjo. A young guy named Adam Hurt was pulling an ethereal sound out of the banjo that noone ever knew was even in there. Marcy Marxer was wielding a big ax, called a cello banjo, which she discovered on some archeological find.

The banjo portal had opened a wonderful adventure; the banjo, itself, having retained a place in the instrumental entourage, without being an overly-dominant participant.

But when Rip awoke, things began to change. Cello banjos began appearing; a celtic banjo materialized; a scoop-necked clawhammer banjo emerged. Many new avenues of banjo expression were, all of a sudden, opened up.

This blog will be Rip Van Banjo’s journal of continuing adventures in the Global Banjo Village, only the character hitherto referred to as Rip will be known as Paul. Welcome to my blog.

Paul’s Gold Tone site
http://www.banjocrazy.com/

Paul’s Banjo Hangout home page
http://www.banjohangout.org/my/Paul+Roberts