The roll call of the dead at Ground Zero was read again today. It's fitting and proper that these people be remembered, but on every anniversary of the attacks, I remember the folks who died just outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
It's been largely forgotten nine years later, but Flight 93 was the only attack on September 11th that failed. I have a strange personal connection to Flight 93... I play the 5-string banjo.
In September of 2001, I was busy working on a singular volunteer project that led to a singular connection to the brave people who died aboard Flight 93.
I've played the 5-string banjo for 48 years now. The 5-string is a deceptive instrument and a strange one; in it's most common tuning (unlike the guitar, there is no standard tuning for the 5-string), anyone can pick one up and make a pleasing sound strumming across the strings. The basic chord shapes are very easy to form, and can be learned almost immediately. Everybody knows what a banjo is, and it's most often called the only true American instrument, but almost no one knows anything about it, or how it is played.
The 5-string is only one of a family of instruments, and the oldest. The 4-string banjos, the tenor and plectrum, were the most popular for many years, and 6-string guitar banjos and 8-string mando-banjos, instruments with banjo bodies and guitar and mandolin necks on them, were also popular at various times.
Of them all, the 5-string is the only one that is peculiar. The others are commonly played with a flatpick, like a guitar, but the 5-string is only played with the fingers.
The 5th string is struck by the right hand thumb, and doesn't change pitch. It is played open, chiming away in one note only, like the triangle in an orchestra. That's just the start of it- while learning the left hand is relatively easy, all the right hand work is either very odd and counter-intuitive, or demands tremendous amounts of repetitive practice to learn. One common way of playing it uses the fingernails striking the strings in a downward motion only, a technique that is used on no other instrument.
While everyone knows what a 5-string banjos sounds like, very few outside the playing community can name 6 famous banjo players off the top of their head. Other than one or two tunes, fewer still can name a hit song that is played on the 5-string. Learning the instrument involves a study in musicology as much as learning strange and difficult playing techniques. It's like stepping into a shallow pool and discovering there's a 40 foot deep hole there on the second step.
For most who pick it up, the challenges are just too great. Most new banjos are played for a month or less, then go in the closet for the next 30 years, until the grandkids sell them. And good banjos are usually more expensive than good guitars.
But with every generation who picks up the 5-string, there are always those who become addicted to it. The 5-string drones steadily, sour against some other notes, sweet as sugar with others. The repetitive drone causes the endorphin levels in the brain to rise steeply, literally producing a high that is as strong as some drugs, creating a natural euphoria that's perfectly legal and leaves no bad side effects.
It just takes a lot of work to produce beforehand to produce the high. Other musical instruments have the same effect sometimes, but with the 5-string, it's right there, from the first few notes. Like Dervishes who can't stop dancing, banjo players can't stop playing when they get the high.
Once a player gets it, that's it. Right many are called, but damn few are chosen.
The chosen seek out others of their kind, because no one else understands it all (. Banjo players always look for other players, and they're always hard to find.
This need to share the mysteries of the 5-string connected me to Shanksville.
In January of 2001, I was active on a newsgroup, alt.banjo. The newsgroup side of the internet has been largely forgotten now, and alt.banjo is a ghost town these days, as few browsers support the newsgroups any more, but 9 years ago, it was a thriving spot for banjoists to talk about the instrument we love, share information, and contact other players.
Alt.banjo was a close internet community back then, sort of like a small, specialized Facebook. All the regular members grew to know each other, and before U-Tube, sharing tunes and getting to actually hear each other play was a hard thing to do.
After reading another newsgroup for guitar players, who got together over the internet and put a CD together that was comprised of only members playing, I tossed the idea out on alt.banjo.
We talked about it a lot for months. Everyone wanted to make a CD, but no one had the foggiest idea of how to do it. Eventually, since I was the guy who brought it up, some members decided that, since I brought it up, I should be the boss of the project. Since I had some spare time, I decided to give it a try.
The entire project was completely voluntary, and was undertaken with no thought of any profit involved. I realized right away that I would need a bunch of help. I got 6 volunteers- one guy who was recovering from eye surgery, another awaiting another kidney transplant, a gal who was a stay at home Mom, a fellow with his own business who could keep odd hours, and a guy who owned a small internet banjo sales biz as a sideline.
It took about 6 months to come up with a plan and a schedule, and one of the crew dropped out, but we got it done. In the end, 38 enthusiastic individuals and a few groups from all over the world contributed songs to the project. Some of the songs were done by rank beginners, some by professionals, some by a 21-member German banjo band. In the end, we stuffed about 72 songs into a 2-CD set.
The music and sound quality of the recordings was, of course, very mixed. The master compilation recordings were put together by a couple of members of my little bunch, but the package was professionally reproduced, with full cover art and expert graphics done by one of the crew.
The costs for the reproduction were all collected from the musical contributors through alt.banjo, on faith that we would somehow get it done. The bedridden transplant patient sent the CD's out in mailer boxes to all corners of the planet. All the orders were filled, the money collected and spent, and there were only a dozen sets left over at the end. (I split the extras up and sent them to crew members.)
The music itself was all over the place, from terrible to grand. But the music wasn't really the point of it all- it was a joyful celebration of our small community and the single thing that connected us. That year was a time of great good will among our little bunch from all corners of the globe, and it required much more work from every individual connected to it than would be needed today.
... and to this day, none of us have ever met each other face to face. It was all done over the internet. And the collection, rough as it is, is the largest collection of banjo-only music that was ever offered as one set at one time. Only about 300 sets were produced.
One of the contributors was a Pennsylvania State Trooper. He was a member of their equine unit, and sometimes rode horseback on his patrols and assignments. Like all the others, he was enthusiastic and excited about sending in a couple of banjo tunes on cassette, but on 9/12/2001, I got an email from him.
He is an experienced State cop, and a tough one. His message was a study in controlled emotion, but it wasn't hard to tell that he was very shaken up. He apologized for his need to drop out of the project, but he had been assigned to patrol the crash site of Flight 93, which was on the edge of some thick woods.
None of us at alt.banjo ever heard anything more from him, but I listed him as a contributor anyway on the finished product.
Nine years later, Banjo Addiction, the name of the CD set, is pretty much forgotten history. The hot spot now for all things banjo is The Banjo Hangout, a site that has 50,000 members and lots of bells and whistles. Computers and the internet have come a long way since then, and it's easy now for players to swap songs and videos. Some of my old friends and I, from back then, have fallen out of touch, and I'm still close to others from that time.
I only have one copy of Banjo Addiction left now... I gave all my spares to my kids long ago. Every September 11th morning over these 9 years, I pull it out and play it while I get caffienated to start my day, and remember that State Trooper, the closeness I shared with so many players from all over America, Italy, Germany, Australia, Canada, England, and all the other places the players came from. I got to know them all in a time of great happiness and great sharing among us. Listening to it is always tinged with complicated emotions for me.
But the first one who comes to mind, always, is the man who was called to patrol the Shanksville woods and the event that required him to saddle his horse. His contribution was the silence of a call to duty, and I hear the music he couldn't make in those silences.