Stupid banjo players shoot themselves in the foot

NEWS RELEASE

CAROLE WADE

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Carole Wade's new book The Death Throes and Demise of the Banjo pursues the failure of today's traditional American banjo player

The Death Throes and Demise of the Banjo, due to be published by a subsidiary of a Random House Ventures Partner, is authored by Carole Wade without apologies

Los Angeles, California - Today's banjo musicians have become boring.

They talk excessively throughout their performances, grabbing one banjo to pick for a few minutes and then sharply turn around on stage to "hype" another banjo while at the same time same time "foot-stomping" frenetically.

They repeat the same tired outdated story about themselves as they "skip-through" their alleged education from long-deceased traditional banjo musicians.

Today's best-known banjo players have never even taken the time to learn to read music!

Enlightening and provocative, The Death Throes and Demise of the Banjo, due to be published by a subsidiary of a Random House Ventures Partner, is authored by Carole Wade without apologies.

Wade has assembled thousands of pages revealing how the banjo died in a sort of low-key limbo.

The death of the banjo did not happen suddenly, but its failing began in the early 1970s in Chicago.

She reveals that on the North side of the city in a small club, performers from wealthy elitist multi-millionaire families living on Lake Shore Drive pretended that they hailed from poor areas of the Deep South.

Astonishingly, their audiences believed all their lies.

While a few banjo teachers from the early 1930s era were playing true Southern Appalachian music, not one of their affluent students from Chicago fully grasped their instrument's precise chords.

The five-string banjo is the easiest instrument to learn since its strings can be mastered quickly without any formal training.

The Folk Archive of the Library of Congress continues to produce a few banjo recordings a year, but the banjo's adrenaline rush has been over now for decades.

As the old saying goes, "Call me anything, but don't call me a bore."

Well, the banjo is boring.

Nothing saved the banjo.

About the author

Carole Wade is a writer who lives in Southern California.

Wade, formerly WLS-TV Channel 7 (Chicago) United Cerebral Palsy telethon coordinator and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's Board of Directors' co-founder, has overseen the production of two Chinese documentary films in China.

She is an advocate for children's rights.

Wade's company Century City Asian Film Marketing was nominated for the Los Angeles Business Journal's "Women Making a Difference 2006."

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