Entertainment

Trad: Three good reasons to be evangelical about banjo music. Or is it four?

We Banjo 3 are Enda and Fergal Scahill and another David and Martin Howley, with Garry O'Meara joining in on an occasional basis Picture: Sean McCormack
We Banjo 3 are Enda and Fergal Scahill and another David and Martin Howley, with Garry O'Meara joining in on an occasional basis Picture: Sean McCormack We Banjo 3 are Enda and Fergal Scahill and another David and Martin Howley, with Garry O'Meara joining in on an occasional basis Picture: Sean McCormack

WHEN I grow up I want to be a banjo player" says little Johnny. "I'm sorry dear," says his mother, "you'll have to make up your mind. You can't have both – you can either grow up or be a banjo player..."

That's just one from a website with 271 banjo gags on it. The humble stringed instrument has along been the butt of jokes throughout its history but there are proponents who have changed attitudes – the likes of Earl Scruggs, Bela Fleck, Pete Seeger and Alison Brown – and there is a new generation of pickers who are turning the humble banjo into something, if not cool, then interesting.

In the vanguard of this is Irish band, We Banjo 3, who are earning a huge following with their infectious brand of Irish trad, Bluegreass and Old Timey.

Leader of We Banjo 3 is Enda Scahill who is joined by his brother Fergal and another set of brothers, David and Martin Howley with Garry O'Meara often joining the band.

Does Enda feel he has to be an evangelist for the instrument?

“Well, I’ve heard ourselves described as banjo evangelists,” he laughs. “One of the things we wanted to do was to reinvent the banjo, to reframe the instrument but I think that was beginning to happen anyway. With the likes Mumford & Sons, it had become a lot more commercially accepted. There was a break from the 'Oh look, it's a hillbilly instrument'. I think that definitely happened.”

Of course the banjo as we know it started off as an African instrument that then went to the States with the slaves where white people then took it up. It only recently came to Ireland.

Was it Barney McKenna who was the first, or one of the first, to play the banjo over here, I asked Enda.

“He was definitely one of the first to popularise it in Ireland,” he says. "There was a lot happening at that time with the 1960s/70s folk revival. Certainly on a wide level, given the popularity that The Dubliners had, it was the first time somebody played it at that level.”

Growing up in Galway, Enda says he always loved the sound of the banjo. He first got the opportunity to start playing when he was eight years old and was totally drawn to the sound.

“There's something intrinsic in the sound of the banjo that goes right back to the roots,” he says. “For me there was always that association with American music. That sad, organic, old-time Appalachian sound – there was a lot of mystery to that, something magical.

“I would have grown up playing completely Irish music at first and was highly influenced by Gerry O'Connor's playing when I was 11 years old. I'd recorded an entire concert of his and went home and learnt every note of it.

“The concert had this blend of the Irish and Bluegrass, it had huge entertainment value – that real entertainment factor blew me away, and that that could be done with a banjo was really inspiring,” he says.

We all think we know about the connection between Irish music and American folk music but how would Enda describe the link between the two?

“They're cousins, if I could use that description. Consider that Appalachian music and old-time music was rooted in a melting pot of Scottish, Ulster Scots and Irish emigrants travelling through America. They were coming through the African/Irish music that had developed along the way – there were a lot of Irish who came through the West Indies. They were working on the farm with the Africans, so all that became Appalachian music, a real mix of those cultures.

"A lot of tunes are in bluegrass music and in Irish music, but with different names. The melodies are exactly the same, though."

We Banjo 3 come together "as a project to explore the different sounds of the banjo" Enda says.

"I was playing in a band and I really developed an interest in old-time and bluegrass music – the realisation that the banjo was central to minstrel music going back to the 1800s; it was essential to Appalachian and Old-Time.

"Even in the early days of recorded Irish music in the early 1900s in New York and Boston – the banjo was central to all of that; central to ragtime, central to jazz. I wanted to put a band together that would explore that and the other kinds of music to which the banjo was central. That was the genisis."

The band started with three guys playing the banjo but it became very popular very quickly, according to Enda, and that's how We Banjo 3 morphed into a four-piece band.

"We hit the limit of the sound we could produce with three guys, yet we were getting calls from much bigger venues and festivals. We decided we wanted to go for it, four of us together. Fergal, my brother joined on fiddle for a big festival in America in 2012 and we exploded that weekend!"

:: We Banjo 3 are playing at the Duncairn Arts Centre in north Belfast tomorrow night. www.theduncairn.com/new-events/