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✨ Helena’s Storytime Series: Learning to Play the Banjo

philipmuollo

Helena's Storytime Series is back! This episode, Helena discusses learning how to play the banjo, and embarking on an American adventure 🎶🪕





See the transcript below:


"So a lot of people ask me where I learned banjo, because being a banjo player in New Zealand, well, It's not very common.


So, I went to America when I was about 25 because I loved the sound of banjo - I used to watch The Beverly Hillbillies - and I'd never met my dad, but my mum told me that he played the banjo.


So my plan was that I would find him, and he would teach me the banjo So I found him - she didn't know where he was - and I went over there and he taught me to play the banjo.


So, as it turned out, he was an Oldtime banjo player and his name was Luke Faust, and he was in the Holy Modal Rounders, which were very well known at that time in the New York Greenwich Village area.


And so after I got started with my dad, then I ended up going to West Virginia because the regional sound was very interesting to me - more modal, more proper tunes, and so I went there and spent the next 10 years in West Virginia just immersed in the old ballad singing and the old banjo playing.


So there's lots of stories there, but it would be way too long for right now!"

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