How To Play The Five-String Banjo
HOMESPUN
Taught By Pete Seeger
Level 3
60-minute video with tab booklet

Take a lesson with America's most beloved banjo picker! You'll learn the techniques Pete uses to make songs come alive-- up-picking, frailing, whamming, double-thumbing, hammering-on and pulling-off, two- and three-finger picking and more.

Pete teaches more than a dozen songs including "Darlin' Cory," "Lady Gay," "Risselty Rosselty," "Sloop John B.," "Dink's Song," "Leather Britches," "Coal Creek March," "In The Evening When The Sun Goes Down," "Quite Early Morning" and "East Virginia," among others.

This video will make an enlightening and valuable part of your music video collection, even if you don't play the banjo!

Produced by Smithsonian/Folkways and Homespun Video

Reviews:

"Equal parts performance, commentary, recollection, and solid instruction. A+" -- Entertainment Weekly

"Seeger opens a treasure chest full of informational gems for the musician. An exquisitely valuable videotape about how he makes music on the banjo. It is a program that has a place in the collection of every 5-string player or anyone else who loves the instrument."
-- Bluegrass Unlimited

About Pete Seeger

In addition to being America's best-loved folksinger and an untiring environmentalist, Pete Seeger is a national treasure. He has been at the forefront of the labor movement, the struggle for Civil Rights, the peace and anti-war movements, and the fight for a clean world. He has been a beacon for hope for millions of people all over the world. Once blacklisted from national television for being unafraid to voice his opinions, he was given the nation's highest artistic honors at the Kennedy Center in December 1994. In January 1996 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Although he left Harvard during his second year, in the spring of 1996 he was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal, presented annually to a Harvard graduate who has made an important contribution to the arts. He won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996 in February 1997 for his Living Music recording "Pete."
Pete almost single-handedly revived interest in the 5-string banjo, and his book, “How to Play the 5-String Banjo” has been a classic for more than fifty years. He has recorded more than 60 albums and has written or co-written such enduring songs as “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “Bells of Rhymney,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” and dozens of others.