Hand the banjo man a stringed instrument, and he'll pick you a tune fine enough to make Bill Monroe, the so-called father of bluegrass, perk up his ears. Hand him a cigar box, a car tag and a guitar ...

Unless the room is ultra-hip -- meaning, its occupants know something about Don Vappie or Bela Fleck -- banjo gets a bad rap. The new PBS documentary titled "Give Me the Banjo," narrated by Steve ...

Pop superstar Beyoncé released "Texas Hold 'Em" a few weeks ago and it features an instrument that she had never emphasized before. This hit song, on her new (and hugely popular) Cowboy Carter album, ...

The loss in Aug. 2007 of the famed transplanted NH resident, Irish singer/songwriter and national folk hero of the Emerald Isle at 74, Tommy Makem, alerted me recently to a news photo of Tommy with ...

NEW YORK — Bill Keith, a banjo player who modernized his instrument and expanded its musical reach, died on Friday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. He was 75. The cause was complications of cancer, said ...

STRING THEORY: “In retrospect, when I look back on my life, I understand there had always been a passion for banjo music,” says Mike Savino of Tall Tall Trees. As a solo act, he's taken that ...

The banjo gets a bum rap. A staple of American country music, its bright tone and rhythmic clangor threaten to overwhelm musical gatherings of other, milder string-band instruments, such as guitar, ...

Building on tradition: Instrument-maker Jim Huskins says, “I’m old enough to remember what it was like in family gatherings and community gatherings in the ‘50s and ‘60s. A fiddle and a banjo were ...

First among peers in the generation that followed Pete Seeger, Earl Scruggs and Don Reno, Bill Keith revolutionised banjo playing, as a performer, propagandist and technician-inventor. As a stylist, ...