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A banjo really should not be a commercial product at all. There should be some other name for that. The original banjos were homemade by people who had been dragged over to America as slaves and they were improvising some kind of musical instrument, based on memories of things they used to do back home, made entirely out of local materials obtained for free. The banjo has a peculiar sound that is a direct metaphor for this kind of endeavor - the flight of the captive soul via improvisation and struggle, thru music, into happier regions, however rickety the wings.
Apparently the white folks in America learned from the blacks, and started making the same kind of instruments. Pete Seeger said that people all over America were making and playing banjos; there was one in practically every cabin.
The Appalachian mountains are the backwoods of the country. Here the people were supposed to be pretty backward, and the banjos they made were fretless. Frets were too hard to make. So they developed this fretless type into a high art, finding great love and wonder in the process.
It appeals to me to try to make some kind of banjo on this same paradigm. Also, as I explained, my song recording needs a banjo part, and the homlier the better.
What all this boils down to is an excuse not to put any frets on this thing. Yay!
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