Akonting
The akonting is the folk lute of the Jola people, found in Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. It is a string instrument with a skin-headed gourd body, two long melody strings, and one short drone string, akin to the short fifth "thumb string" on the five-string banjo.
Jola oral tradition places the birthplace of the akonting in the village of Kanjanka in Lower Casamance, near the banks of the Casamance River. The name of the instrument's home village is recalled in the most common tuning pattern for the akonting's three open strings : kan, jan, ka.
Like in the traditional old-time/folk styles of playing the 5-string banjo, the akonting is tuned in different tunings. Using the kanjanka tuning pattern of 5/1/-7, a common tuning in Casamance is dGF. In Gambia, for another variant the 1st long melody is raised a semitone higher to make a natural 7th note, as in cFE.
Gambian Jola scholar/musician Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta, who pioneered the research and documentation of the akonting in the mid-1980s, describes the music of his people's folk lute as follows:
The akonting is practically identical to the buchundu of the related Manjago people of Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, as well as the busunde of the Papel people and the kisinta of the Balanta people, both of Guinea-Bissau.
Recent findings presented by researchers Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta,, and at The 8th Annual Banjo Collectors Gathering – an annual international conference of the foremost collectors and scholars of 19th and early 20th century banjos, which also serves as the principal forum for presentations of new research on the banjo's history and organology – indicate that the banjo is probably descended from the many different types of found throughout West Africa, like the akonting and its aforementioned Senegambian siblings. Other varieties include the Frafra koliko, The Kotokoli lawa, the Gwari kaburu, and the Hausa gurmi, komo, komsa and wase, to name but a few. The earliest forms of the banjo were, in fact, very similar gourd-bodied lutes, which enslaved West Africans in the Caribbean began making and playing sometime in the early 17th century.
Relationship to banjo
Of all the myriad variety of West African plucked lutes, the Jola akonting stands out as the one instrument today that bears the strongest resemblance to early North American gourd banjos. This is seen not just in its physiology but also in the traditional technique used to play the akonting, called o'teck, which is basically the same as the stroke, or frailing style, considered to be the oldest extant technique for playing the banjo.Both the akonting o'teck and the banjo stroke style are forms of down-picking, a technique in which the fingernail of a single finger – either the index or middle finger – is used to strike the individual melody strings in a downward motion, like a plectrum. This action is immediately followed by the player's thumb catching on the top short "thumb string" to create a rhythmic back-beat accompaniment.
It was the stroke style of banjo that European American performers, who came to be known as blackface minstrels, initially learned from African American musicians in the early 19th century. This was the prevalent form of playing the 5-string banjo until the advent of the guitar style of up-picking in the late 1860s, also referred to as finger-picking. The stroke style of down-picking has survived to this very day in the folk traditions of both the black and white communities of the rural South, where it is commonly referred to as frailing, clawhammer, thumping, among other terms.
Remarkably, the Jola o'teck technique of playing the akonting is the only extant
down-picking style of lute playing found in all of West Africa thus far. Even more pertinent to the ongoing search for the banjo's ancestors, it is the only West African lute with a banjo-like short "thumb string" which is played in this manner.
In addition to the Jola akonting, the Manjago buchundu, the Papel busunde, the Balanta kisinta, and all the various kinds of wooden-bodied lutes that are exclusive to the have a short "thumb string" drone. The "thumb string" seems to be a feature unique to lutes of Senegambian origin which have three or more strings and are played with the fingers, regardless of playing style. Conversely, 1-string lutes and 2-string lutes are played with flat-pick type plectrums, so a drone string is useless on these instruments.
The standard griot playing technique is a 2-finger up-picking pattern: the player's index finger plucks up on a melody string, followed by the thumb plucking the short drone string, and culminating with the index finger brushing down all the strings. While the griot technique is strikingly similar to some styles of old-time 2-finger up-picking found in various regions of rural southern United States, it is distinctly different from down-picking and not related to the early "stroke style" of playing the 5-string banjo or its descendants, the various old-time Southern down-picking styles.
The Akonting today
In the mid-1980s, when Gambian Jola scholar/musician Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta first began to research and document his people's folk lute, the, the tradition of making and playing the instrument was relatively unknown outside of the rural Jola villages found throughout Senegambia. Even within these Jola communities, there were very few young people interested in carrying on the akonting tradition. Recognizing this fact, Daniel's father, a traditional akonting player originally from the instrument's birthplace, the Casamance region of Senegal, implored him to take up the akonting and help perpetuate this vital element of their people's cultural heritage.Today, there is a burgeoning revival of interest in the akonting within its home region of Senegambia. Young akonting players like Bouba Diedhiou, a teenage radio performer from a rural Casamance village is carrying on the traditional style; also,
Sana Ndiaye, best known for his work with the Dakar-based hip hop group Gokh-Bi System, is introducing the instrument to broader audiences.
Thanks to the work of Daniel Jatta, as well as the vital efforts of Swedish banjoist/researcher, British banjo historian
, American old-time country musician/scholar
, banjoist/ gourd musical instrument expert/builder
,
and others, there is growing global awareness of the akonting and its siblings in the large diverse family of West African, which have been hitherto overlooked. These instruments are just now beginning to get the international recognition and attention they deserve as living ancestors of the
. Many museums around the world have updated their collections to include the akonting and other members of the West African family, while banjo historians and
ethnomusicologists have begun to broaden the range of their focus to include these instruments.