New York Banjo Festival – Coming Up On Wed. 4/16/08
Banjo Jim’s First Annual 2008 Banjo Festival – Wednesday, April 16, 2008 7:00-2:00am
Banjo Jim’s First Annual 2008 Banjo Festival with Tony Trishka, Noam Pikelny, Shlomo Pestcoe, Andy Cartoun, Dayna Kurtz, Matt Munisteri, Eamon O’Leary, Jesse Harris, Skip Ward, Eli Smith, John Pinamonti, Jake Schepps, Alexa Story, special guest Sana Ndiaye and much more! $10 cover, two drink minimum, no advance tickets, doors open 6:30pm
Banjo Jim’s First Annual 2008 Banjo Festival is being held in benefit for The Akonting Center.
(For complete schedule see below)
The Akonting Center is a grassroots, non-governmental, cultural initiative in the village of Mandinary, Gambia (West Africa), started by Gambian Jola folk music scholar Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta and Swedish banjo historian Ulf Jägfors. Its objectives are to research, document, and perpetuate the many different endangered string instrument traditions of the various peoples of Senegambia, such as plucked lutes (e.g. the Jola akonting [ekonting], the Manjak bunchundo, the Wolof xalam, etc.), bowed lutes (fiddles, e.g. the Fula nyaanyooru, the Wolof riti, etc.), and harp-lutes (bridge-harps, e.g. the Jola furakaf, the Mandinka simbingo, etc.). The Akonting Center is organized under the auspices of The Chossan Center for Senegambian Culture, a community-based NGO which strives to perpetuate the traditional agrarian way of life and folkways of Senegambia as the foundation for progressive communal self-development on a democratic cooperative basis.