Banjos not just for Hillbillies
Alex Borwick and Catherine Bowness are two of just a handful of professional banjo players in the country.
Alex Borwick and Catherine “BB” Bowness play banjos, mainly associated with country folk and American Hillbillies. The banjo comes from Africa, was brought to America with the slave trade and was then popularised by the minstrel shows of the late 1800s. From there it spread to England and Ireland and then with the diaspora blossomed all over the world.
“I like it because it’s a guitar and a drum in one,” says BB, originally from Wanganui, who met Alex through folk festivals and clubs about four years ago.
She became interested in the banjo at around 12 and in her unusual youth (living a travelling gypsy lifestyle with her family in a roving house truck), she was brought up attending music camps and festivals all over the country. She finished school through correspondence, and then began jazz school in Wellington until she transferred to Auckland, where she’s based “for now”.
Her musical partner Alex, who went to school in Palmerston North and Liverpool, England, grew up playing jazz trombone and studied one year of the instrument at jazz school in Wellington before discovering folk music and picking up the banjo.
“Banjos have that old school early 1900s sound, but we play it as a contemporary instrument using modern music,” he explains.
The duo just learnt Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody with great difficulty. The main problem was deciding which of the two would play which part of a very complicated musical plot.
“It took about 26 pages of sheet music to get that right,” laughs Alex.
They’ve also been toying with Split Enz and Michael Jackson music as well as the more traditional pieces. The duo’s aim is to make difficult music appear simple, so Kiwi audiences can “access banjo music”.
Although Alex and BB released an EP called Play Banjo in 2010, this is their first national tour after a year spent intensively shaping their sound. They combine BB’s old time American country influences with Alex’s Celtic preferences.
“Neither of us plays in a strictly idiomatical way. I couldn’t pick up BB’s banjo and play it and she couldn’t play mine. They’re tuned differently; hers is a five-string and mine is an Irish tenor,” says Alex.
For now the pair want to let New Zealanders know the joy of the banjo. Afterwards BB is keen to go and live in the States for a while, while Alex reckons Ireland, as the home of Celtic music, is top of his list.
Alex and BB, Wellington Bluegrass Society, Petone, November 18.
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