"My father was born with this instrument," Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta says. "This is part of our history." Jatta, 55, is from Gambia, a member of the Jola people. He's holding an akonting: a ...

Five days ago, Rhiannon Giddens returned from a week in the mountains of West Virginia. She was giving lessons on how to sing old-time ballads and blues to traditional music enthusiasts at The Augusta ...

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, ...

With a cookie tin, a broom handle, weedwhacker string and a little hardware, we ambitiously set to work. Master instrument crafts-men? Maybe not. But the akontings and banjos we built Saturday at the ...

Islands Elementary school fifth-graders are experts on the akonting, a West African musical instrument that was developed into the African-American banjo. The students participated in a two-day ...

One of the most indelible moments in banjo history took place in the 1972 movie "Deliverance," when an odd-looking teen played the instrument from an old wooden porch. The song he played ("Dueling ...