Amidst the harmonizing of banjo strings and singing voices, audience members of "Banjo Breakdown" nodded their heads, tapped their feet and swayed slightly to the plucking rhythm of American banjo players Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn. In between ditties, the husband and wife duo discussed the history and development of various styles of banjo playing Wednesday evening at the Hopkins Center.
Fleck and Washburn began the discussion by describing the distinction between the bluegrass and old-time genres of performance. The disparate styles are constructed by the attitude of the musician and differences in the covering and the number of strings of the instrument itself.
Washburn introduced his preferred style, the "old-time tradition" style, which originated in West Africa. The genre boasts a "claw hammer fashion" of "striking down from the fingertips," she said.
"The way I play is more closely connected to the ancestor of the old-time banjo, which appears to be the akonting from Gambia," Washburn said.
Fleck, who has won multiple Grammy Awards for his banjo performance albums, said the bluegrass genre stemmed from musician Earl Scruggs' development of the three-finger banjo picking technique. Performers employ this technique to create an optical illusion of a single finger moving rapidly.
"It was like an explosion," Fleck said. "It was the big bang of bluegrass that started bluegrass."
Fleck added that bluegrass performance tends to be "more egotistical" and "very extroverted" compared with old-time traditional playing.
The couple also discussed the influence of the banjo in various other styles of music.
Banjo music spread in America before the Civil War, during which fiddle and banjo players would jointly perform. This led to the development of square dancing and other Americanized forms of music, which Fleck described as the "melting pot of different cultures."
"You have what led to the great traditions of American music including jazz and a lot of places for rock and roll is found in that combination too, so it's truly one of America's most amazing cultural items," Washburn said.
Near the end of the talk, Fleck emphasized the challenge of playing the banjo, whose simplicity creates many limitations for the musician.
"That's the beauty of it," Fleck said. "I enjoy digging out what I can find. It can't be everything, but it's a nice place to be as a musician."
Fleck and Washburn will perform in Spaulding Auditorium on Thursday night.
Local resident Louis Winkler, who attended the program and plans to go to the concert, said she enjoyed the informality of the talk and the chance to hear the musicians play.
"I thought we'd be able to get more out of the concert by coming to this," Winkler said. She added that she wished the venue had better visibility and was more intimate to accommodate the small crowd.
Fleck, a renowned banjo player with 15 Grammys and 30 nominations, has recorded music in several different styles. Among the most famous is an album titled "Perpetual Motion," a classical music album released in 2001.
Washburn, an Illinois native, released her debut solo album titled "Song of the Traveling Daughter" in 2005. Since then, she has released both old-time traditional folk songs and various songs in Chinese. Washburn also plays in a group called the Sparrow Quartet, which performed at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
