African Banjo Echoes In Appalachia by Cecelia Conway

Some of the confusion on this has to do with the way two different folklore streams, one from Europe (featuring the biblical devil, Satan) and one from Africa (featuring a pair of related crossroads trickster deities, Esu and Legba), seem to have fused on American soil, coalescing into a folktale that was well known in African American communities below the Mason-Dixon line. In Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition, Adam Gussow describes how the Devil-at-the-crossroads legend was born out of a collision between cultures, religious systems, and musical traditions not accorded equal status: This resonance may have something to do with how the origin story above aligns with the origin story of America-and how flexibly the crossroads narrative can be interpreted by different individuals and social groups.

Although the story was never related by Johnson himself it will forever be seen as a crucial part of his legend, where the crossroads’ perceived power as a liminal, transformative space, a space of both possibility and danger, resonates with audiences to this day. At the crossroads, Satan grants Johnson an otherworldly talent, and access to worldly pleasures, in exchange for selling his soul. This fable’s best-known manifestation is set almost a hundred years ago when bluesman Robert Johnson is said to have visited a road-crossing in rural Mississippi to have his guitar tuned by a mysterious figure, usually thought to be the Devil. The legend of the crossroads is often framed in terms of a Faustian bargain-a site where deals are struck with powerful yet potentially malevolent forces. The banjo is an instrument that sits at the crossroads of American culture. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Clark and Sarah Case Family.

African Banjo Echoes In Appalachia by Cecelia Conway