Most classical music was written for instruments that evovled in Europe. The banjo, on the other hand, comes from Africa and is central to the sound of American bluegrass. Now, a Virginia man brings those two traditions together as Sandy Hausman reports.
John Bullard traces his love of the banjo to a drive with his dad in 1972. He was 12 or 13.
“This thing came on the radio," he recalls. "My dad pulled over on the side of the road and turned up the volume and said, ‘Man you’ve got to listen to this!’ He knew I was just going to be blown away by it, and I was.”
Bullard took lessons for three years -- working from the Earl Scruggs instruction book. Rock and Roll was the rage, so Bullard kept his passion for bluegrass a secret.
“I didn’t tell anybody I was doing it. I didn’t tell my friends, because I was sort of embarrassed because it wasn’t cool, and I didn’t know anybody who played the banjo.”
After high school he enrolled at a small college with only one music class – a course in music theory.
“The teacher asked me what instrument I played, and I said,’Well I play the banjo,’ and he literally looked at me, eyes got really big, turned on his heel and threw up his hands and said, ‘Oh no, no, no. That simply won’t do,’ and he wouldn’t let me take the class. I was just like aghast. It’s what I refer to now as the banjo shame.”
Undaunted, he taught himself theory, learned to play piano and read music. He did graduate work at VCU where one of his professors heard him and asked if he had tried playing baroque music -- from the Renaissance -- on his banjo.
“I said, ‘No,’ and he said, ‘Well you know to me the banjo really sounded a lot like a lute or a harpsichord, so that was the lightbulb moment for me.”
Then, he made his first trip to Galax for the annual celebration of bluegrass and old time music.
“I was, in the middle of the night, in the campground wandering around with my tape recorder, listening to all this different acoustic music, and I was about to head back and go to sleep and I heard Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring being played on a banjo, and I was stopped in my tracks!”
He followed the sound and found Fred Boyce – a native of North Carolina who would move to Charlottesville in 1990 to manage the Prism Coffee House – a popular venue for blue grass and folk musicians.
“I just stuck to him like glue for the rest of the weekend, and another thing he did was this: (demonstrates).
He would take lessons from Boyce and begin turning classical compositions into music for the banjo – changing keys to accommodate the instrument’s limited range.
Today, his banjo shame has turned to pride. He’s recorded four CDs, is working on three commissioned compositions and performs from coast to coast.
“People who hear it, when I play somewhere, they’re just like – ‘Wow, that sounds great. I’ve never thought of that!’”
This month he’ll play at the California Banjo Extravaganza and in Richmond, Monterey and Purcellville, Virginia.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
