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Early, African-influenced banjos were built around a gourd body and a wooden stick neck. These instruments had varying numbers of string. The five-string banjo was popularized by Joel Walker Sweeney, an American minstrel performer from Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white performer to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth string.
In the Antebellum South, many black slaves played the banjo and taught their masters how to play
Various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature with a skin head and gourd (or similar shell) body. The African instruments differ from early African American banjos in that the necks do not possess a Western-style fingerboard and tuning pegs, instead having stick necks, with strings attached to the neck with loops for tuning. Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century. 18th- and early 19th-century writers transcribed the name of these instruments variously as bangie, banza,banjer, bonjaw and banjar