Historically, the banjo had many different names. One of these was "banza". This banjo, or banza was collected in Haiti in 1840 and represents a transitional period in the history of the instrument. While retaining the original idea of a gourd-bodied instrument, this piece has a western style flat neck. Notice it only has four strings. A fifth, or bass string was a very new idea in 1840 and many banjos in that period still were not made with it. What we today call the "fifth" string is the short drone string, all pre-20th century banjos had this string which was commonly called the "thumb" string.
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