Personal Growth

I didn’t start writing a blog 5 years ago because I thought I knew everything: I did it because I knew I knew nothing. I was desperate to re-start my learning, at an age when many folks shut down, getting “set in their ways,” and assuming they know everything they ever will. I had discovered—through the self-publication of my first book—that writing and sharing my thoughts was a powerful tool for self-education and personal growth. I highly recommend it!

As we start to see a little light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, I am slowly becoming aware of the changes this difficult time has wrought on my thoughts and beliefs. I’ve always tried to be the type of person who knows how little he knows, and who can change his mind when presented with appropriate evidence. My political beliefs and assumptions certainly took a beating last year, and I have come out on the other side a changed person. But so have my musical beliefs—and that is a much more important subject to me.

I had the great fortune of performing at the Banjo Fest at the American Banjo Museum earlier this month. I was able to do a full and well-received presentation of the Classic banjo music that I’ve been playing for ten years now. In retrospect, I now realize that was “out with the old,” because I certainly got a taste of my future interests. I’ll keep playing the Classic of course, but now I’m ready to move in other directions as well. After two years of banjo isolation, it was wonderful catching up with old friends (including a couple who I had “unfriended” in last winter’s political fracas), and making several new friends. Those new friends play a different kind of banjo than I do!

The thing about the museum and the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies is that it brings all kinds of banjo players together in one unified, equal-footing event. In short, top-level jazz and bluegrass players on the same stage jamming together was a real mind-opener for me! I suppose I’m a little late to that party, but I’ve just never been around bluegrass. My little world has always revolved around the four-string. As we all know, that world has been steadily shrinking (for most of my adult life).

I fully realize that some of my early blogs justified my calling myself the “banjo snob.” I certainly have been biased toward the four-string banjo, played as we did in the “good old days.” Part of that snobbishness came from the fact that the four-string has declined while the five-string has surged. I believe that we get the short end of the recognition stick, and I had hoped to have a hand in changing that. I tried hard not to disparage the more popular form, but I’m sure I managed to do so anyway. I apologize to anyone who may have been offended by this.

I found it instructive that many of those five-string players and fans that I met never knew the four-string existed! I’m happy to report that they seemed to be just as taken with it as I was with the five-string. A banjo truly is a banjo! Life is too short—and the banjo as a whole too fragile—to waste time in negative comparison (“four is better than five”). As far as the general public is concerned, there is no difference between the types; it’s only us banjo snobs who think it matters.

When my father—Myron Hinkle—was inducted into the HOF 12 years ago, the museum was only for the four-string. In the decade since, they have opened it up to every type of banjo that has ever existed—and we are all better off for it! Congratulations to the museum board of directors for this decision! Now that more and more five-string fans are visiting the museum, more are becoming aware of the 1920s banjo (thanks to its spectacular Jazz Age collection). And conversely, more four-stringers are getting an education in the five-string.

Now, if the four-string’s type of music could get on equal footing, that would be progress. The general public is just not interested in pizza parlor sing-along anymore. Bluegrass and Country are huge in comparison. It’s no surprise that when folks hear the word “banjo,” they assume bluegrass (whether they’re bluegrass fans or not). Truth be told, the majority of them cannot hear the difference anyway and don’t really care. They enjoy your “banjo” playing no matter what type of music comes out. We all play the “American instrument.”

So anyway, I consider this revelation to be a significant example of the “personal growth” that I sought by becoming a blog writer.