TEAM USA BANJO

SPOTLIGHT ON: FERN BANJO

Oh, ha ha ha. Yes. Let's all laugh at the Banjo team, shall we? Philistines.

You stupid tough hoods with your stickball games and expeditions to junkyards and skirt-chasing. You think us a pack of dandies, don't you? You think us a crew of milquetoasts incapable of fending for ourselves or of any physical exertion greater than pressing a piece of wire down into a fret.

And you orchestra snobs laugh at us too, don't you? You sneer at us down the necks of your violins or woodwinds and think of us as playing nothing but lowbrow common-folk music. You think just because an instrument makes a joyful sound it's somehow less artistic than your sobbing dramas.

Fools.

Try the banjo, you self-important Beethoven banner-carriers! I think you'll find yourself in for a greater challenge than you ever expected. Does the banjo follow your foolishly simple low to high tuning? No! The banjo is full of surprises and mystery. Try it for a week, you so-called traditional stringed instrument players and you'll be rushing back to the arms of Brahms in tears. In tears, I say!

I was born crippled, though I didn't know it. I could walk, I could see, I could think, I could hear, and talk, and smell. I never knew anything had even been missing until I first held the banjo.

Only then was I whole.

And you street toughs, you're wrong about us too. We'll show you.

We'll show the world.