That Half-Barbaric TwangLong a symbol of American culture, the banjo actually originated in Africa before European Americans adopted it. Karen Linn shows how the banjo despite design innovations and several modernizing agendas has failed to escape its image as a "half barbaric" instrument symbolic of antimodernism and sentimentalism. Caught in the morass of American racial attitudes and often used to express ambivalence toward modern industrial society, the banjo stood in