Akonting

The akonting (or ekonting in French transliteration) is the folk lute of the Jola people, found in Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. It is a banjo-like instrument with a skin-headed gourd body, two long melody strings, and one short drone string, akin to the short fifth "thumb string" on the five-string banjo.

Jola oral tradition places the birthplace of the akonting in the village of Kanjanka in Lower Casamance (Senegal), near the banks of the Casamance River. The name of the instrument's home village is recalled in the most common tuning pattern for the akonting's three open strings (from the 3rd short "thumb" string to the 1st long melody string): kan (the 5th note of the scale, tuned an octave higher), jan (root note), ka (flatted 7th note). Like in the traditional old-time/folk styles of playing the 5-string banjo, the akonting is tuned in different tunings. Using the kanjanka tuning pattern of 5/1/-7, a common tuning in Casamance is dGF. In Gambia, for another variant the 1st long melody is raised a semitone (half-step) higher to make a natural 7th note, as in cFE.

Gambian Jola scholar/musician Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta, who pioneered the research and documentation of the akonting in the mid-1980s, describes the music of his people's folk lute as follows:

The akonting is practically identical to the buchundu of the related Manjago people (also Man'yago, Manjaku, Manjaco and Manjaca) of Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, as well as the busunde of the Papel people and the kisinta of the Balanta people, both of Guinea-Bissau.

Recent findings presented by researchers Daniel Laemouahuma Jatta, Ulf Jägfors, and Shlomo Pestcoe at The 8th Annual Banjo Collectors Gathering (December, 2005) – an annual international conference of the foremost collectors and scholars of 19th and early 20th century banjos, which also serves as the principal forum for presentations of new research on the banjo's history and organology – indicate that the banjo is probably descended from the many different types of gourd-bodied folk/artisan plucked lutes found throughout West Africa, like the akonting and its aforementioned Senegambian siblings. Other varieties include the Frafra koliko (Ghana), The Kotokoli (also Tem or Temba) lawa (Togo, Benin and Ghana), the Gwari kaburu (Nigeria), and the Hausa gurmi, komo, komsa and wase (Nigeria, Niger, Ghana), to name but a few. The earliest forms of the banjo were, in fact, very similar gourd-bodied lutes, which enslaved West Africans in the Caribbean began making and playing sometime in the early 17th century.

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