Ken Perlman was one of those musicians who had a habit of bringing his instrument wherever he went. In his case, it was his trusty banjo.
He took it on many car rides around the city or ferry trips to New York’s Staten Island in the early 1970s.
Then 1972’s Deliverance hit the box office, and Perlman quickly went from carrying just another instrument to carrying everybody’s favorite pastime musical treasure. He laughed at the memory, saying, “Within two or three days, it went from, ‘What is that instrument?’ to ‘Can you play Dueling Banjos?”
The banjo has been integral to the instrumental, teaching and writing life of Perlman, who has been regarded as a modern pioneer of the melodic clawhammer playing style. While he has spent his life making music, he said he has watched the rest of the world rediscover time and again the staple instrument in American folk and bluegrass music.
Pop Culture has been a common source of the waves of the banjo’s popularity from Jim Henson’s “Rainbow Connection” in 1979 to Beyonce’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” just this year, but others can go without hearing that iconic twang of the banjo strings for many years. “With all of these specialized things, you truly could go a lifetime without encountering one,” Perlman said. “It’s had its ups and downs, but the banjo is still a very prominent part of music.”
One look around the grounds of Pilgrim Firs in Port Orchard on the first weekend of September was plenty of proof to that latter claim as well as the lengths Perlman and other instrumentalists are going to keep banjos prominent for generations to come.
“It’s such an easy instrument to identify by the sound,” Peter Langston said. “There’s a whole banjo culture, and there’s the general feeling about the banjo as a happy musical instrument. You see it all through a lot of history, and I hope to keep seeing it.”
Langston and Perlman are the directors of the annual American Banjo Camp, which has brought as many as 140 banjoists, fiddlers, guitarists and the like at a time from across the country and even outside it to the woods of South Kitsap for a long weekend of instruction and jam sessions.
2024’s numbers indicated a crowd size in the triple digits once again as the camp, like many other events, continues to distance itself from the COVID pandemic.
For 3 1/2 days, it was a musician’s paradise, the first hours filled with greetings between musicians and instructors, open mics and band scrambles, and the following days of classes, faculty concerts and more jams.
Langston, who said he’ll play just about anything with strings on it, said the nonstop weekend is wonderful, filling the otherwise peaceful air with the sounds of harmony and music. “It’s such a nice place to do it too, out in a place like Pilgrim Firs,” Langston said. “Really for us, it provides a few big spaces for the whole group and a lot of teaching areas.”
