Week 5
Craft & Folklore
Gourd Banjo Construction
Pete Ross

Pete Ross began building gourd banjos on his own in 1991 before apprenticing with the late Scott Didlake of Jackson Mississippi.

Since leaving Mississippi for Baltimore MD, Pete's banjos have been in many museum exhibits, both in the US and abroad, used to illustrate books, and appeared in the PBS movie, Slavery and the Making of America. His banjos are also played by a number of well known musicians.

The early banjo reconstructions Pete makes are as much the result of time spent in libraries and ethnological instrument collections as they are of long hours in his workshop. Pete sometimes lectures on the history of the banjo and has been profiled in The Banjo Newsletter and Frettboard Journal.

When not working on his own instruments, Pete works on open back banjos with Kevin Enoch at Enoch instruments in Beltsville, MD.