Follow this author to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. WHY FOLLOW? Update your preferences in Account Settings performs onstage during the 2012 iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand ...

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, ...

Bela Fleck, the banjo virtuoso, continues to take the instrument most closely identified with country and bluegrass into musical realms never before explored. And the following he has built from his ...

Beyoncé's surprise new country album has kicked open the saloon doors to a new audience. While this may not be Beyoncé's first rodeo when it comes to country music, people are now exploring the genre ...

The banjo in American music was traditionally associated with bluegrass and old-time until the early 1970s when Tony Trischka spearheaded a movement to innovate the sound. In his hands, the banjo ...

Bob Carlin first played a banjo at age 15. Having already learned his way around other string instruments, it seemed like a natural fit. Nearly five decades later, he’s still picking and wants to ...

Black country artists have faced hate in the country music genre, and their stories have been suppressed. But the truth is ...

Beyonce’s hit “Texas Hold ’Em” opens with a beat seldom heard on hip-hop tracks: the unmistakable clip-clop of a four-stringed clawhammer banjo. It comes via folk icon Rhiannon Giddens, who was ...

In this less than melodious celebration of the origins and history of the banjo, Dubois delivers a straightforward social history of the relationship between race and music. Drawing deeply on archives ...

STRING THEORY: “In retrospect, when I look back on my life, I understand there had always been a passion for banjo music,” says Mike Savino of Tall Tall Trees. As a solo act, he's taken that ...

Steve Martin has played the banjo for nearly 60 years now. The instrument was a major part of his early stand-up comedy routines, and after he got more serious about it in the past two decades, his ...