Acquire tapes of banjo music. Have students listen to the music and comment upon what they think about it. Is it loud, soft? Fast, slow?

Show pictures of the banjo while the music plays.

Ask students to move their bodies in rhythms suggested to them by the music.

Ask students to listen to the music being played for the exhibit as they look at the old and new instruments.

Have students listen to the music of other instruments commonly associated with Virginia folk music (such as the mandolin, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, and dulcimer). Ask students to pick out the banjo music when a series of instruments is played.

Ask students to respond to questions about what they prefer about each type of instrumental music.

Science: K.1

English: K.2

Music: K.4, K.8, K.10, K.11

Practice basic counting activities.

Ask students to count the number of banjos.

Depending upon abilities, some students may count the total number of instruments. Others may count:

Compare counts from students collecting identical material and graph the results.

Math: K.5

Civics: K.7

A long time ago people made musical instruments from materials they had at hand. Show pictures of banjos from the exhibit and talk about the materials that were used. Select a story that would interest learners, such as an age-appropriate modification of the "cat " story (see below).* Ask learners to hypothesize what other kinds of instruments people could have made and the kinds of materials they would have used. Make a class list of these materials.

Ask the students to look at the banjos on display and identify as many kinds of materials used as possible. Note the instruments that were made from parts of other things and those made from "recycled" parts.

Compare list of materials you made prior to the visit to what you saw. Can you add new materials? Are there ones that should be removed from your list?

Refer to the Eyewitness Book Music, by Neil Ardley (Dorling Kindusley Limited, London, 1989. ISBN 0-394-82259-5) for instructions in simple instrument construction.

Have students make their own simple banjo-type instruments. (Science activity books often contain instructions for such instruments made from boxes.)

English: K.2

History/Social Studies: K.1, K.6

Science: K.1, K.10

How were early banjos constructed and by whom? The best evidence points to African-American players fabricating their own instruments. Descriptions vary as to the number of strings, but all evoke a gourd body, with a membranous skin head. A February 17, 1985, writer to The Richmond Dispatch explained:

The first ({banjo} I every saw was made in this way: A large gourd covered with a raw sheep-skin served for the drum, and the strings were made of horse-hair, pulled from a white horse's tail. It had only four strings. My father's carriage-driver was a banjo-player. He played two or three changeless tunes on one cord [sic].

Minstrel performer Joe Sweeney's first instruments echoed those of the slaves around him. In a 1942 article by Arthur Jennings in The Southern Literary Messenger, Sweeney's great-niece repeated the following fanciful family story of Joe making banjos from gourds and the skins of his mother's housecats at the age of seven:

As child Sweeney wanted to express his soul in music in some sort of fashion, and as he had no instrument, he made one. The two Sweeney house cats--one black and the other white--were victims to this urge for expression. They mysteriously departed from this earth, and only when the hide of the black cat appeared stretched over an old gourd frame, ornamented with hairs from the tail and mane of the old family gray mare, did the gruesome truth come out. Mrs. Sweeney promptly consigned this instrument to the flames and doubtless chastised Joe. But the urge remained and little time passed before the white cat was offered on the altar of melody. This time the crude banjo was not destroyed by Mrs. Sweeney, who was a woman of good sense and saw that Joe's craving meant something. From that time on, he had help and some encouragement.