I have to be careful to not just post Nora Brown videos on every #BanjoFriday. But her music is just pure MAGIC as her new video for WesternAF proves again.
Watch it, listen and be moved!
Then if you like read on here for some not really relevant #Banjo nerd stuff.
#Banjo Nerd stuff starting here.
Nora is playing a gourd banjo here. It was build by Pete Ross, from Baltimore, Maryland, who specializes in building reproductions of historical banjos in wood and gourd.
This one is a fretless "Minstrel Era" style banjo modelled after an instrument in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Amazing sound, very organic, woody, deep!
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https://www.banjopete.com/minstrel-era.html
And then there's Noras technique! What I adore about her playing: She doesn't use her amazing virtuosity to play lightning fast licks and rolls as so many banjo musicians seem to favor. Instead it's the small details, the dynamics, the microtiming, that makes her one of the greatest banjo players of our time.
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Nora starts the song very slow. Note that she plays the first two minutes in a two finger style using her index finger and thumb to pluck the strings while singing. The index finger plucks the strings from below which is also called "up-picking".
Then at 2:14 a dramatic change happens. Read on.
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At 2:14 the tempo "picks up" and she switches to a different playing style: #Clawhammer. In clawhammer most strings are hit from above using the fingernail of the index or middle finger. (Nora uses her M-finger).
It's very nice to see this change to "downpicking" in the video.
This is not just a gimmick or to show off her mastery of different #banjo playing styles - it's musically motivated!
Nora Brown is simply the best.
And now comes the bonus: Nora Brown recorded "Chilly Winds" before, when she was a tiny bit younger than now. 😊
It's #BanjoFriday again and today it's a direct follow-up to last week's edition.
Nora Brown learned her version of "Chilly Winds" from #banjo player and teacher Brad Leftwich, who did record the song himself in 2020.
https://bradleftwich.bandcamp.com/track/bertie-maes-chilly-winds
from the album Rise and Bloom Again
Both Brad and Nora play "Chilly Winds" in a style and arrangement that goes back to Bertie Mae Dickens (1902/3-1994), one of the grand old female banjo players.
I could not find a recording of Chilly Winds by Bertie Mae, but here's a video of a her playing "Cleveland Marching to WH" in "lyrical two-finger picking style" (B. Leftwich).
It's from a series of recording sessions Bertie did with Alice Gerrard in the 80s
The recording sessions of Alice Gerrard are available as part of the Southern Folklife Collection and the University of North Carolina. Here's a deep search link to the Bertie Mae Dickens recordings:
Frank