Hubby Jenkins at Appalachian State University ~ Video and Text Dr. Jim Fogelquist

On November 14, 2023, due to the efforts of the indefatigable Cece Conway, a small audience in Sanford Hall at Appalachian State University had the rare pleasure of watching and listening to Brooklyn-born Hubby Jenkins perform Old Time music on the banjo and the guitar. Having discovered the African roots of the banjo about twenty years ago in his native New York, he has since devoted his life to unearthing, playing, singing, and talking about the music of the South. While the African roots of the blues are known to most, the African contributions to the development of American music played on the fiddle and the banjo are much less known to mainstream audiences, regardless of color. The contributions of Native, African, Mexican, and Asian Americans have all too often been erased or excluded from the master narrative of U.S. history, a point that Hubby Jenkins emphasized on several occasions during his performance. Hubby Jenkin’s singing and virtuosity on the guitar and banjo are a musical delight for anyone interested in traditional American music, and his description of the pieces he performs and where he has found them are of unquantifiable value for what they do to lift the cloud of ignorance that shrouds the appreciation of the African American contribution to Old Time music and Bluegrass. I would argue that the recovery of what has all too often been excluded from our national past is vital to the future health of our nation. May Hubby Jenkins continue to do for another twenty years or more, what he has done since his fortuitous discovery of the roots of the banjo.