Native to Africa and popularized in America, the banjo has gone through major transformation and evolution, and its history of becoming a mainstream music instrument is quite fascinating.

In 1963, when the folk-music trend made a young Greg Deering want to learn to play the banjo, his mother said no. But he was obsessed, desperate to create the sounds he had heard on a Kingston Trio ...

"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 ...

Unless the room is ultra-hip -- meaning, its occupants know something about Don Vappie or Bela Fleck -- banjo gets a bad rap. The new PBS documentary titled "Give Me the Banjo," narrated by Steve ...