Jake wanted a six-string gourd banjo with a longer scale length to play deeper notes. The banjo has an extra string an octave below the 3rd string. It is strung with nylon strings and meant to be pitched at mid 19th century ranges. I set it up using the cFCEG, the tuning from an 1850 banjo primer.

This fingerboard inlay is based on a cimpaba, a swords of Kongo regalia. 

To accomplish the inlay, I drew up a full-scale pattern based on the image Jake had sent and glued it to the walnut fingerboard. I then routed out the pattern of the geometric shapes. I took the pattern of the geometric shapes and cut them out of a single piece of cherry (using a marquetry technique) and inlaid that into the walnut for the final design.

This was the original inspiration Jake sent me. The cimbapa was a ritual knife used by rulers of the Kingdom of the Kongo, and Jake was drawn to it to reflect his African ancestry.

The second inlay pattern. Here you can see the red-dyed maple neck, as well as the walnut fingerboard and cherry inlay. 

A very rough sketch of Jake's banjo done on the back on an envelope after having an initial discussion with him. The drawing was refined and done at scale before I started the inlay. 

Jake Blount wanted the gourd banjo specifically for the album "symbiont," a collaboration with Native musician Mali Obomsawin. The instrument I built is featured in this song, which both explores climate change and narratives of African Americans from Virginia. 

Because Jake wanted a peghead overlay but also wanted the peghead curved, I found an enjoyable challenge in steam bending ebony, something I had not done before.

Adding a sixth string was also an enjoyable challenge--banjos today typically have five strings. This required drawing a new pattern for the neck. I also made the scale length longer, per Jake's request. 

Because Jake wanted lower, richer tones on this instrument, I chose a large, round gourd. This would provide a deeper bottom end of notes without sacrificing the bright sound that comes when striking the strings. 

Although inspired by historic instruments, we agreed to make some alterations to it that would make it easier to play for a modern musician, including making the fingerboard closer to the level of the skin head (called the action). 

The cross-shaped sound holes are a reference to a watercolor where enslaved people are depicted dancing, making music, and playing a gourd banjo. This cross is a reference to the crossroads of the living and the dead, a symbol appears often in danced religions of the African diaspora. 

This banjo was collected in Haiti, but dates to before the Haitian Revolution. Like the watercolor from 1790s South Carolina, it has cross-shaped sound holes. I used it as an inspiration for this instrument. As I feel that my work is about representing the history of this instrument accurately and appropriately, I have traveled abroad to see all five extant gourd banjos. These banjos date from the 1780s to the 1850s, were collected in the Americas, and are now housed in European museums. 

The instrument would also be an opportunity to show, as the prop master put it, "the spirit of Africanism within the slave quarters.” To that end I suggested the use of Gullah spiritual imagery, such as Ezekiel's Wheel at the bottom, on the fingerboard.

Like the cross sound holes, the cosmogram/ Ezekiel's Wheel on the fingerboard is representative of the phases of life in African diasporic religions. 

This banjo needed to look well-worn and oft-played. To that end, I used leather for the tailpiece that I source from the cobbler at Colonial Williamsburg; left some skin on the gourd; painted sweat marks in watercolor on the skin head; and used lye to stain the fingerboard. 

Unfortunately, the banjo was never actually played on screen but I was trilled to see it as a prop in Episode 8. Image courtesy Amazon/ Big Indie Underground Productions.