0:00

Okay, practice makes perfect.

0:03

Wanna try the banjo? [music]

0:06

It's okay, we'll just let you sing.

0:09

Welcome back, cool cats and cat allies alike, two 6 Degrees of Cats, the world's best,

0:16

and only cat themed culture, history, and science podcast.

0:21

Hello, hello, this is your captain speaking.

0:25

Wow, I cannot believe we're an episode away from the end of the season.

0:30

And... [music]

0:35

The time has come. A time I've been semi-dreading, to be honest.

0:41

It's true, we'll be talking about banjos, violins, and shamisons.

0:46

Now the connection to cats, that's what I'm a little bit worried about.

0:51

I've been wanting to take care of y'all, my listeners.

0:54

But some 20 odd years ago, someone, I can't remember who, told me that early stringed instruments

1:03

used cat gut.

1:06

Sorry guys.

1:09

And that's haunted me ever since.

1:11

[music]

1:14

How? Why?

1:16

I just refused to believe that these adorable, living, purring, hot water bottles for the

1:22

soul were ever seen as raw materials.

1:25

I mean, who does that?

1:28

Ugh, it just can't be true.

1:31

Look, I get the hypocrisy.

1:35

I know there are so many things that I consume that use animal byproducts.

1:40

It's complicated. And you know, as I say in my sign-off, everything is connected.

1:46

So... In this episode of "6 Degrees of Cats," I'm finally ready to compassionately and, humanely,

1:56

investigate that rumor that cat but was used for stringed instruments.

2:02

We'll be hearing from experts on these three stringed instruments.

2:06

So if discussion of our beloved posthumous remains is too much, I totally get it.

2:12

Do feel free to opt out.

2:15

Just know that I am bringing to this discussion, as always, much respect.

2:20

Both for the cultures that we're going to be talking about, and of course, the kiddies

2:26

involved. Okay, here we go.

2:33

So yeah, cat gut I'm sorry.

2:36

This is going to come up a lot. I think you need to leave the room.

2:41

Someone, (definitely my dad) put that image in my mind.

2:45

I tried really hard just to shelve it away.

2:50

But about 10 years later, as a college student, my curiosity got the best of me.

2:55

When I picked up a part-time sales job at my local music store, the store was known for

3:01

guitars, but it also sold basses and didgeradoos.

3:05

There was also a violin, you know, and I actually think there were several ashiekos and

3:09

djembes. But for some reason, a bunch of dulcimers, which we never sold.

3:16

And banjos.

3:21

So I think it was one slow weekend morning.

3:24

I broached the topic, cat gut with a few colleagues who were hanging out before the lessons

3:29

they taught. Starting with the classical guitarist, Ellen.

3:34

Cat gut? You mean for strings?

3:37

I don't know. Classical strings are nylon.

3:40

You have something in your teeth, Amanda.

3:45

You, that's fucked up. Where'd you hear that?

3:48

That was Roy, who moonlit as a touring guitarist for a very outre act that wrapped about decapitation

3:54

in horror costumes on stage.

3:56

You ever heard of that, Chip?

3:58

Huh, I think I've heard of that with Asian instruments, but I don't know.

4:02

Hello, Bud!

4:04

Hey, brother. Oh yeah, and banjos.

4:06

Hey, Bud. Amanda's asking about cat gut.

4:10

Huh, cat gut.

4:12

Do banjos use it?

4:14

The banjo does have skin and strings.

4:16

I've never played a banjo with cat gut, but yeah, baby.

4:21

Thanks, Bud and gang.

4:23

This slightly fabricated but spiritually truthful recollection takes us to our first instrument

4:29

of inquiry.

4:32

With all great respect to bud and all the amazing players who came in over those couple

4:37

of years, outside of a few folk in country western tunes that I appreciated from a distance,

4:43

it didn't really factor into the music I listened to at the time.

4:47

Further, having seen Bud demo songs in between lessons, man, the technical skills to make that

4:55

thing sing take a shocking level of dexterity and coordination.

5:00

You can't fake a claw hammer.

5:05

And it had a pretty strong association with rural folks in the south, specifically in the

5:11

Appalachian regions.

5:13

Who, I imagined, spent a lot of time outdoors and issued footwear, education, contraceptives,

5:22

dentists, bank accounts, grammar or etiquette, who were "backwards."

5:31

So this image of cat gut and the banjo, you know, it kind of played into my stereotypes

5:37

about the instrument and the people who play it.

5:40

Thanks to the mainstream American media.

5:43

I mean, take the Beverly Hillbillies.

5:47

A popular American sitcom from the post-modern 20th century that lamp-boomed a newly-welcy

5:53

Appalachian family transplanted into Beverly Hills, you know, the old fish out of water thing.

5:59

The theme song, the "Ballad of Jed Clampett", featured a banjo.

6:04

I'd say though that the most prominent stereotype came from the hit 1972 motion picture based

6:11

on a book called "Deliverance."

6:15

[BELL RINGING]

6:21

Oh, you know that riff.

6:23

Deliverance is a taught thriller starring Burt Reynolds' chest hair in which three men from

6:28

out of town are stalked and in one really awful case, violently and intimately assaulted

6:35

in a very isolated rural setting by its denizens.

6:39

You know, the old fish out of water thing.

6:41

Near the Southern Appalachian Mountain Range in Georgia.

6:46

It's a pleasant family film. Just kidding.

6:48

But it is a major work in the canon of a genre of gory horror films that, unfortunately, are

6:55

called "Hillbilly Horror."

6:58

So yeah, I'm kind of pleased to dispel one of the stereotypes right off the bat.

7:06

As far as the record shows, banjos were not and are not traditionally constructed of cat

7:14

gut, skin or fur.

7:17

I have not really thought about the connection between cats and banjos.

7:22

Goat skin has typically been used and there's calf skin as well.

7:28

That was a musician leading the education and reclamation of the banjo by its original

7:34

players. I'm Hannah Mayree.

7:39

My pronouns are they them.

7:41

I am a musician, a creative facilitator with Hannah Mayree Productions and all the work I do with

7:47

my music. I also am a founder of Black Banjo Reclamation Project.

7:54

Han as expertise on the banjo is specific to both its history and its construction.

8:00

I'm curious to know how smaller animals for a banjo skin affects the quality of sound.

8:08

Essentially, the skin is what creates the tension for the instrument to kind of stay

8:16

at place altogether because the bridge is attached to the skin.

8:21

It's actually being held on by the tension and strings against the skin.

8:25

And as for the strings, you actually cut the small intestines of the goat and you clean them

8:31

out, they would be made into strips and then they would be stretched and spun at the same

8:36

time. I think a lot of people have seen banjo but in case you haven't, they do come in all shapes

8:43

and sizes. You're typically going to have a neck that's about as long as your arm but probably shorter

8:49

than your entire arm span.

8:52

A neck would be something that could fit inside of your hand and then it's coming together

8:58

with a circular shape which is usually a rim of something.

9:03

You might be wondering why and how was cat gut ever associated with banjos in the first

9:09

place? Let's keep looking into the banjo's history.

9:13

Looking at how it got that round shape.

9:16

I feel like the banjo harkens back to the earliest of stringed instruments.

9:24

Tradition like that was like a gourd and you know these gourds were not a perfect circle.

9:30

In today's world, especially with like manufacturing, it's just a little easier to create something

9:35

that like more of a perfect circle.

9:39

A lot of those have metal rims, wooden rims but our modern anjo has really retained several

9:47

aspects of the traditional instruments and one of those is specifically like having skin

9:53

of an animal on the instrument.

9:57

Up until the late 20th century, ethnomusicologists and historians had attributed the banjo's

10:02

parentage to instruments played by griot musicians who were key community historians, storytellers

10:10

and musicians that held court during the great Mande Empire of the 13th century in Mali.

10:16

However, thanks to Daniel Jatta and his colleagues' scholarship and advocacy, it seems that the

10:22

banjo may have actually descended from a different instrument and tradition.

10:28

The akonting of Gambia, we pay homage to the lineage of Daniel Jatta who is in the Sene-Gambia

10:35

area of West Africa.

10:38

The legacy of the banjo distinct from other stringed instruments hailing from West Africa

10:43

and neighboring regions is coming into clearer focus.

10:48

But how did the banjo make its way from West Africa to North America?

10:55

How did that get from Africa to here?

11:00

How did this transform?

11:02

There's a lot of research to support that the banjo is here and really in the hands of

11:07

a lot of white people because of slavery and oppression colonization.

11:17

According to expert and historian Tony Thomas, banjos first emerged from the work of enslaved

11:23

folks who were brought to the Caribbean.

11:26

There's evidence that this instrument was brought to North America in the 17th century,

11:31

which would follow the path of the enslaved Africans brought up from those islands who

11:35

then were trafficked from there to North America.

11:41

And from there, the banjo evolved.

11:43

It's a diasporic instrument.

11:46

It'd be derived from an African instrument that, then, as people were displaced, people

11:53

were relocating to different places.

11:57

There's a traveling legacy of the banjo.

11:59

There's early accounts of the banjo, all over Turtle Island, from New York, down into

12:04

the Carolinas.

12:07

Some early banjo builders were located in Harlem, Macannis and Shaw.

12:13

I'm also shouting out to them as well in their legacy.

12:17

And I'm really also just shouting out all of the unnamed and unknown banjo players.

12:29

The banjo is so obviously by and for the Black diaspora.

12:34

But, well, right now, almost all the major banjo players and fans seem to be white.

12:42

And then there's that stereotype we talked about earlier.

12:47

There's a lot of propaganda in America that has used the banjo to sort of promote that

12:52

this is something that is created by white people, erasing the history of where this

12:57

comes from. How did that happen?

13:00

Well, first, Jim Crow.

13:06

Now synonymous with the laws that allowed for segregation.

13:09

This name was originally for the grotesque and indescribably racist persona, assumed by

13:15

a white man in the 19th century who entertained white audiences by darkening his skin into

13:21

blackface. Don't do that.

13:23

And dancing, performing comedy, singing, and playing the banjo.

13:30

I could not find sources to attest to when and how poor white, Appalachian residents first

13:36

came to be connected to the banjo.

13:39

My educated guess is that the banjo's association with black culture at the time was used to

13:45

mock poor white people, many of whom were located in rural and southern regions near and

13:52

by black people.

13:54

But this is all an educated guess, as I said.

14:01

And as for why and how cat skin became associated with this demeaning stereotype, I have a guess,

14:07

and it might be connected to the fact that scraps and nontraditional materials, though not

14:14

cats, were used to make the first banjos.

14:22

The black banjo reformation project were pretty big about experimenting because we know that

14:27

that's what our ancestors had to do.

14:29

If they were in the situation, they weren't looking up in a book, they weren't researching,

14:34

oh, has anybody done this before? They either knew about it or they didn't.

14:39

But they knew they used that to get more information and there's so much to be grateful for in terms

14:48

of knowing what people had to go through and even after being forcibly mean to worth the

14:54

fact that they had endured so much trauma of being separated in the first place, this

14:59

was still something that was super paramount and super important.

15:03

This banjo was getting life in a way.

15:08

I don't know about you, but I'm definitely seeing the banjo in a whole new light.

15:13

What an instrument. It's transcendent race and class to have a very prominent place in American culture.

15:20

Now hopefully with more education and reclamation by the black community that Hannah and her colleagues

15:26

are doing, the banjo will gain broader recognition and appreciation alongside its other stringed

15:32

brethren.

15:35

All of which do not use literal cat gut.

15:39

Actually, do some of them?

15:42

I guess we still haven't quite closed the book on cat gut.

15:46

So, let's continue this inquiry after the break.

15:51

[MUSIC]

16:06

Before the break, we looked into the rumor that cat gut was used for banjos.

16:11

And thanks to black banjo reclamation projects, Hannah Mayree, I feel pretty confident that

16:17

we can cut the banjo cat connection loose, at least for now.

16:22

So here we are.

16:25

Back to square one, the truth behind cat gut.

16:30

What an ineloquent word.

16:32

I mean, this really just, and as it turns out, unnecessarily so.

16:39

We used to joke around in undergrads.

16:42

We would tell younger players that their gut strings or cat gut strings because they used

16:47

cat intestines, but they really don't.

16:50

From what I know, a kit is a Welsh term for fiddle.

16:56

So I think that's where they came from, but it has nothing to do with cats.

17:01

Ah, Welsh as in, Wales.

17:06

Where vowels are scarce, but they, like we, 6 Degrees of Cats people, love the super

17:11

furry animals. The band, there's a band called Super Furry Animals as well.

17:16

Anyway, this is what brings us to Europe, the continent of origin, but not nationality,

17:22

of our next expert.

17:26

My name is Joenne Dumitrascu. I'm Canadian.

17:29

I live in New York now. I was born in Romania.

17:33

I'm a professional musician.

17:35

My training focus was violin performance as well as piano as a secondary instrument.

17:40

I studied field as well.

17:43

Joenne plays an instrument that is from a very cat lovin' place.

17:48

I mean, remember the Romans?

17:50

Yep, we're talking about Italy.

17:53

Historically, they're saying that what we now call the modern day violins started in

17:58

16th century northern Italy, and that's in the Lombardi region, that to this day, it's

18:04

really maintained that violin making tradition.

18:07

The most notable city is Cremona, and that's where the Amadi family, they make violins and

18:13

the violas, and between the 16th and 18th centuries, there were several generations of the

18:19

Amadi family who were violom makers, further on they taught the Borneri and Strativary.

18:25

So that's basically where all of these amazing instruments come from.

18:32

Let's talk about those strings.

18:34

So basically, catch got or got core strings, which is what we call them today, make the way

18:40

they were made in the Baroque period.

18:44

They're prepared by using the natural fiber found in like the walls of animal intestines.

18:53

It's usually sheep or goat, but also other cattle, hogs, horses, donkeys, and that's basically

19:02

what was used in gut core strings.

19:06

They are very fragile, they don't last very long, they do break very easily, and they also

19:12

don't stay too very long, so they require a lot of tune.

19:15

They do have a beautiful sound, it's much warmer, they sit better, can still core, but they're

19:21

extremely difficult to play on.

19:24

And what are those strings made of now?

19:26

We hear of Baroque specialists in particular, they played Baroque instruments, and they

19:32

do use gut core strings.

19:35

For professional modern players, and that includes jazz players or acquisitions, they're usually

19:41

still core, and then they have various metals wrapped around it.

19:46

The synthetic core started being used around the 1970s or so, and they have a very quick

19:52

response. They're also not very high maintenance, so they're mostly used by beginner players.

19:58

Thanks for clearing that up, Joenne. It sounds like cats just randomly got tied up to this gut string situation, thanks to a

20:08

simple mistranslation from Welsh or German or whatever to English.

20:15

Is it now safe to say that there are no instruments that use cat materials?

20:20

Are we done here? No.

20:23

Sorry, y'all.

20:26

We have one more stop on this morbid quest.

20:30

So let's head on over to a place we've been before.

20:34

Japan.

20:37

Yours truly lived in Japan a lifetime ago.

20:41

And for a while, I worked in a school that hosted an after-school shamisen class a few

20:46

rooms down the hall from where I was set up.

20:49

And sometimes I could even hear them practice.

20:52

Harp-like scales resonating from this unique, very Japanese instrument, which, for a foreigner

20:57

like me, really felt special, you know?

21:03

Until the day, Ando Sensei rocked up to chat about the next day's lessons.

21:09

After exchanging the usual pleasantries, the conversation naturally seared toward cats.

21:17

I love cats. And I think I mentioned something about finding them very magical.

21:22

Cats. A soul.

21:24

Ando Sensei processed this and then paused to also admire the shamisen music wafting

21:31

in through the paper thin walls.

21:34

Oh, they are preparing for school festival, you know?

21:40

I hear the instrument is made of cat, maybe for magical properties.

21:45

But I don't know. Maybe you should ask Tanaka Sensei, Shamisen club instructor.

21:50

Also, Amanda Sensei, you have something in your teeth.

21:54

Unfortunately, by the time I got my teeth cleaned up, Tanaka Sensei and her students had left

22:01

school and I never worked up the nerve to ask again.

22:04

Thankfully, here we are, friends, twenty years later.

22:09

And we're going to find out if cats were instrumental in the making of the shami-sen.

22:17

So I'd like to thank our next expert, a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Japanese Studies

22:22

at the University of Michigan. (Go Blue!)

22:25

My name is Keisuke Yamada. I'm originally from Japan.

22:29

I came to the US for my ethnomusicology study in Japanese music, particularly musical instruments.

22:38

I studied the shamisen, the instrument itself rather than Japanese traditional music.

22:45

I obviously got the right guy for the job here.

22:50

For those who haven't seen or heard one before, let's briefly describe the shamisen.

22:55

I'll include a link in the show notes to a playlist with some video examples that you

22:58

can check out after. The shamisen, which is a three-stringed lute, there many different types.

23:09

They use the shamisen to play Nagata, which is a music performed by Kabuki theater.

23:16

Nowadays they play some improvisation and popular music with Tsugaru Shamsen, from Tsugaru

23:23

region, Aomori, northeast part of Japan.

23:29

The shamisen sounds like, well...it has a long, fretless neck and three peg tuners to tighten

23:39

or loosen the strings.

23:41

The body is composed of a rounded square shape wooden frame, which is covered by an animal

23:47

skin. Players position the instrument similarly to Banjo, but instead of playing with a pick

23:54

or your fingers, players will pluck the strings with a large, kind of paint scraper-looking

24:00

thing called a bachi.

24:04

But also similarly to Banjo, the shamisen too has traveled.

24:13

The shamisen pass originally grew from China by the end of 14th century to Ryukyu Island,

24:19

(Okinawa, colonized by Japan in the early 19th century), then from Ryukyu Island to the

24:25

main island by mid 16th century.

24:29

Which is where we get the cat connection.

24:35

So our cats truly used as materials for the shamisen?

24:40

Well, take it away, Dr. Yamada.

24:46

Even though illustrations from this period shows someone is playing the shamisen, it's very

24:53

difficult to find historical information as to what skin was used exactly.

25:02

The Ryukyu instrument called sanshin, the body is covered with snake skin.

25:09

When this instrument was brought to the main island of Japan, they changed to another skin,

25:15

because they couldn't find snake skin to cover the large body.

25:21

But then at some point, today's Japanese music scholars are saying that cats got used.

25:33

And there it is folks, we found the smoking gun.

25:41

Cats have shown up in Japanese culture for a long time.

25:44

They began to appear in documents and legends around the 12th century.

25:49

It surmised that cats were first brought to Japan as gifts, or were employed to keep rodents

25:55

away from Buddhist scripts.

25:57

So this may explain a bit why cat skin was used specifically in Japan, and how an industry

26:04

of the skin trade was apparently a thing.

26:08

I looked at newspapers from late 19th century.

26:13

There were cat traders to sell them to shamisen skin makeres

26:19

There's a rumor I found about a cat ghost curse on shamisen makers.

26:23

I'm still researching its origins.

26:26

And in fact, there's actually a much more real curse on those shami-sen skin traders

26:32

that we need to talk about.

26:34

Dr. Yamada's work focuses on this

26:41

This is new information, I think, at least through the ethnomusicology literature.

26:48

In pre-modern period of Japan, around 1600, there was a caste system, those who are social

26:55

outcasts, excluded from the mainstream society, but then called the "buraku min"

27:04

People at the time being that those two touched dead bodies of considered contaminated,

27:11

spiritual contamination.

27:13

Killing animals means that people are getting contaminated, so people let those social outcasts

27:21

make these materials.

27:24

One note is that the body of the shamisen, neck and the head of the shamisen are separate.

27:30

Shamisen makers are not considered buraku min, while the shamisen skin makers are considered

27:37

buraku min.

27:39

In the mid-19th century, I think 1870, the caste system was abolished, however, this kind

27:47

of discrimination continued.

27:50

Wow. From what I understand about caste systems, there's a lot of really serious and severe discrimination

27:58

that can go on for generations.

28:01

Here we thought we were talking about cats, but this is a human welfare issue.

28:06

I had no idea before talking to Dr. Yamada that it was so entangled with the shamisen.

28:12

I'll let him continue.

28:16

This is a human rights issue and also animal rights issue today.

28:21

I wrote an article about these historical changes.

28:25

How moral and ethical perspectives on life have changed throughout time, then how these

28:33

transformations affected the making of the shamisen.

28:39

Shamisen skin makers are located in Kansai Regions

28:45

Human right activists in the city of Osaka (a major city in the Kansai region) they

28:51

investigated the labor of buraku min, then they wrote about a contemporary shamisen's

28:59

skin-maker.

29:05

Japan established animal protection laws in 1973, after that

29:11

I think only a few shamisen skin makers in Japan.

29:15

So today they are mostly outsourcing from China.

29:19

Nowadays from 80 to 90% of shamisen's are dog skin, and the remaining 10 to 20 the cat skin.

29:29

So it's not even just cats, but dogs too.

29:34

That said, the shamisen you might come across online or in any type of folk instrument catalog,

29:40

at least outside of China and Japan.

29:43

That's not going to be made of animal skin.

29:45

I think many shamisen's nowadays not only in Japan, but also across the world.

29:54

Mostly used synthetic skin.

29:57

So that's a win for cats and dogs and snakes it might seem.

30:03

But what about the buraku min?

30:08

While I'm grateful to the animal rights movement for making sure that animals, ah, welfare isn't

30:14

lost in the mix, I'm kind of concerned that this activism might have exploited or further

30:20

the marginalization of the buraku min.

30:23

The reason why the Japanese government established that was pressure from animal rights activists

30:29

mostly in 1960s to 1970s.

30:34

Many of them consisted of cat lovers.

30:37

They were fighting particularly against the traders - the cat traders.

30:45

The buraku min.

30:47

Now don't get me wrong, come on. It's me, Captain Kitty here.

30:51

I'm definitely not calling for the revival of this cat trade.

30:55

But it's kind of not great that the advocacy for the cats and dogs seemed to preclude consideration

31:03

for the buraku min. Those folks being vilified and stigmatized for, well, that trade.

31:11

Do I love the idea of cats being used for anything but worship?

31:15

No. Do I think that cultures who have used cats' bodies for stuff are intrinsically terrible

31:22

or backwards? I used to say "yes", but, well, now it's a bit more complicated.

31:28

I'm going to just leave you with Hannah's really good points.

31:35

I think it's a way to honor them.

31:38

Each animal is so special and they carry their life with them.

31:42

And so whatever animal is used for that is not only like giving their life, but giving

31:50

us a new opportunity to actually create something in this world that's connected to Earth.

31:58

So I'm super grateful for the banjo and being able to just bring in the concept of the animals

32:03

because they are literally responsible for the banjo and for all these instruments being

32:08

able to exist.

32:10

That, I can agree with.

32:16

Well my dear listeners, I guess we can look at it this way.

32:20

Cats and dogs now join snakes, horses, goats, cows, donkeys and pigs, among other animals,

32:27

as those deemed worthy of music.

32:31

We're done for now, at least, talking about cat gut.

32:35

In the next episode, which is our season finale, we are going to redirect our attention to

32:40

the living little gods in our homes that we have adopted into our families and speaking

32:46

of family, what that actually means.

32:49

For now, I want to thank my wonderful experts - Hannah Mayree, Joenne Dumitrascu and…

32:57

Keisuke Yamada.

32:59

While the opinions are my own, the research and work is theirs.

33:03

If you'd like to learn more about them, please check out our show notes, which also include

33:07

the references and research that went into this episode.

33:10

If you… I don't know if you could love this episode, but if you at least learn from it, please do

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spread the word to anybody who would appreciate the culture, history and sometimes the scientific

33:21

aspects of what we explore.

33:23

I appreciate you all so much for sticking around.

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Thank you for sharing, caring and hanging out.

33:30

Stay beautiful. And remember, everything is connected.

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6 Degrees of Cats is produced, written, edited and hosted by yours truly, Captain Kitty,

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aka Amanda B. Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to linktr.ee/6degreesofcats,

33:53

or look us up on all those social media platforms.

33:57

You'll be first in line for the extra audio and more treats that can connect with us

34:01

there. These episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood, the marginalized, the resilient and the

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weird, and of course all the cats we've loved and lost.

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I'm sorry, I know this was a pretty morbid topic for you too.

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You get extra treats for enduring this.

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And you know I'd never let anyone lay a hand on your hide?

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Although I think we should make use of your cat wool, maybe those Norse folks were onto

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something. [BLANK_AUDIO]