""Incredible story, wonderful history, eye opening, thought provoking and heart rending"" Jessica Knorr High on a mountain in western North Carolina, on a fateful day in 1850, the life paths of ""Dancing One,"" ""DoubleToe Tommy"" and ""Angelina Baker"" finally cross. Their long and difficult journeys led them to meet ""Johnny Basic,"" a mountain boy, who uses something they each bring with them to create a very unexpected surprise. Who were they? Why were they there and what had happened to them along the way? How did their meeting on that mountain change their lives forever and continue to...

This book tells a fascinating story, based on recently uncovered and seldom known history, about an African legacy that appears to have had a profound impact on a musical instrument that America holds dear, the banjo. This illustrated story, in rhyming narrative form, is based on the history of the present day American banjo beginning from a distant ancestor, the Akonting, which is the traditional folk lute of the Jola people of Senegambia, West Africa. The story unfolds as the Akonting, along with similar West African instruments, came to the Americas during the Transatlantic slave trade and...