Akonting

Overview

The akonting (also written ekonting, or in Jola akonteng) is a Jola community-music plucked lute associated with Casamance in southern Senegal, with The Gambia, and with Guinea-Bissau. It has a long bamboo neck, a gourd resonator covered with a goat-skin head, and three strings of unequal length — two long melody strings running the full length of the neck plus a single short upper-tuned drone fixed at an additional peg set partway along the neck. The Hornbostel-Sachs system files the instrument at 321.311 — a spike bowl lute with a plain handle passing diametrically through the resonator — placing it in the same broad construction family as the West African ngoni and the Senegalese xalam, although the akonting is distinct from both in shape, materials and playing technique.

Wikidata describes the akonting as a Senegalese string instrument and DBpedia adds the West African placement.

Origin & History

The akonting is part of the wider West African plucked-lute tradition that has played folk and praise music across Senegambia for centuries. Within the Jola cultural area — the Casamance river basin straddling southern Senegal, The Gambia and northern Guinea-Bissau — the instrument has been played by Jola farmers and fishermen as a folk and personal expression instrument rather than as a praise instrument associated with hereditary musicians. This community character distinguishes the akonting from the ngoni and xalam, which are typically played by hereditary jeli (griots) for praise singing.

The akonting attracted international scholarly attention from the late 1990s onward through Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta of The Gambia, a Jola scholar who has documented Jola akonting playing as part of his research into the African origins of the American banjo. Jatta’s field recordings of his father’s playing and his comparative analysis of akonting and 19th-century banjo technique have led to a substantial revision of the previously dominant view that the gourd-bodied African Senegambian lutes ancestral to the banjo were the ngoni and xalam alone. Most contemporary banjo historians now identify the akonting — or a closely related Senegambian folk lute of similar construction — as the most plausible specific ancestor of the American banjo.

Construction & Materials

A standard akonting has a half-gourd resonator about 25 to 35 centimetres in diameter, with a goat-skin head tacked or laced over the open face. A long bamboo neck — typically 80 to 100 centimetres — passes through the resonator and projects below as a small handle/foot, recreating the spike-lute construction logic of much wider West African origin.

Three strings are stretched along the neck. Two long melody strings (traditionally fishing line or, increasingly, monofilament or steel) reach from the top of the bamboo to the bridge area and are tied to friction-fit wooden tuning pegs in the head. A third short drone string is tied to its own little peg mounted midway down the neck and reaches only about half as far as the long strings; this short string functions as a constantly sounding high drone — the same physical concept as the banjo’s fifth-string (chanterelle) in the modern five-string banjo, the closest construction analogue.

The instrument is unfretted and the gourd resonator is unsealed at the back, so the body must be held against the player’s chest or stomach to seal the resonance and project sound forward.

How It’s Played

The player sits with the akonting held against the body, the gourd resting against the abdomen and the neck angled upward and to the right. The right hand strikes the strings with a downstroke pattern using the back of the index fingernail, and the thumb plucks the short drone string upward at the end of each pattern. This combination of downstroke index plus thumb-drone is essentially identical to the banjo clawhammer or frailing technique that survives in old-time American mountain music, and is the primary technical evidence cited for the African-origin argument.

The left hand stops the long strings against the bamboo neck without frets, producing a microtonal shaded melody. Idiomatic Jola technique includes complex polyrhythmic patterns between the right-hand index and thumb, sliding pitches in the left hand, and a characteristic syncopated dance-rhythm pulse derived from Jola social dance traditions.

Cultural Significance

Within Jola society the akonting serves as a personal-expression folk instrument. Players use it to accompany singing about daily experience — love, farming, fishing, community events — and the instrument carries none of the hereditary praise-singing function of the jeli class. Anyone in the community may play, and this open social character marks the instrument out within the wider West African lute world.

The akonting’s wider international significance lies in the banjo connection. Through the Atlantic slave trade, Senegambian peoples — including very large numbers of Jola — were taken to the Americas, and instruments closely related to the akonting are widely depicted in 17th- and 18th-century North American and Caribbean sources as gourd-bodied lutes played by enslaved Africans. The American banjo of the 19th century is now widely understood as a continuation of these gourd-lute traditions, with the akonting offering the most complete surviving model of the playing technique and construction logic. The cultural circle has closed in the 21st century with American old-time and contemporary banjo players such as Béla Fleck travelling to The Gambia to learn from Jola akonting masters, and Jola players such as Daniel Jatta and Buba Jammeh appearing at American banjo festivals.

Notable Examples & Recordings

• Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta, Akonting — research-grade recordings of Jola akonting traditions.
• Buba Jammeh and Sana Ndiaye, contemporary Jola masters with international recording careers.
• Béla Fleck, Throw Down Your Heart — American banjo player documents his journey to The Gambia and study with Jola akonting players.
• Pap Bouba Sané, recordings featuring akonting in modern Senegalese chamber arrangements.
• The Casa Museo del Timple in Lanzarote, Spain, displays a West African akonting in its collection.

Related Instruments

• Banjo – the American descendant of the Senegambian gourd-lute tradition, now widely accepted as derived from the akonting and its near relatives.
• Ngoni – the Mande hereditary-griot lute; a related but socially distinct West African plucked instrument.
• Xalam – the Senegalese Wolof griot lute.
• Hoddu – the Fulani lute of Senegal and Mali.
• Kora – the larger 21-string Mande harp-lute, an unrelated but parallel West African plucked tradition.

Where to Hear It

The akonting is heard in Casamance (southern Senegal) and The Gambia at village festivals, weddings and personal music-making. International appearances cluster around the work of Daniel Jatta, Sana Ndiaye and Buba Jammeh on the world-music and banjo-festival circuits — the Clearwater Festival, the Old Songs Festival in upstate New York, and various American old-time music gatherings have programmed Jola akonting players. Recordings appear on Smithsonian Folkways, World Music Network, the Béla Fleck Throw Down Your Heart releases on Rounder, and the African Music Project archive.

• Wikipedia: Akonting
• Wikidata: Akonting (Q3049642)
• DBpedia: Akonting
• Wikimedia Commons: Akonting

Learning Resources

The principal teaching figures are Jatta in The Gambia, Sana Ndiaye (now based in the United States) and Buba Jammeh. American banjo players including Adam Hurt and Cathy Fink have integrated akonting study into their work and offer occasional workshops. Method materials in English are limited but growing; the documentary Throw Down Your Heart and Daniel Jatta’s website ekonting.com provide substantial introductory material. A handmade akonting from a Senegambian maker costs 100 to 300 USD; American-made instruments by makers including Tony Pizzolato and Pete Ross run from 400 to 1,000 USD.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the akonting?
A three-string Jola plucked lute associated with Senegal, The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, built around a gourd resonator and a bamboo neck and carrying a short drone fixed at a peg set partway along the neck.

Is the akonting really the ancestor of the banjo?
Most contemporary banjo historians now accept that the akonting (or a closely related Senegambian folk lute of similar construction) is the most plausible specific ancestor of the American banjo. The construction features (especially the short drone string at a midway peg, which directly parallels the banjo’s fifth string) and the downstroke-and-drone playing technique are the principal evidence.

Who plays the akonting?
In Jola tradition, ordinary community members play the akonting both as folk music and as personal expression. This community character distinguishes the akonting from the West African griot lutes (ngoni, xalam) that are played by hereditary musician families.

What does an akonting sound like?
A buzzing, shimmering, melodic-and-droning sound very close to the sound of an American clawhammer banjo with the resonator off. The unfretted bamboo neck gives microtonal shading not available on the modern banjo.

Where can I hear the akonting?
At village events in Casamance and The Gambia, on world-music festival programmes featuring Jola players including Daniel Jatta and Sana Ndiaye, and on the Throw Down Your Heart recording project of Béla Fleck.