Bonnie,

It sort of depends on why you took up the banjo in the first place. Possible candidate reasons include:

1. You fell in love with the sound of the banjo the first time you heard one and became totally obsessive about learning to play it.
2. You fell in love with a certain musical genre and decided to select an appropriate instrument that fit in.
3. Your friends were always playing music every time you were together and you decided you wanted to participate.
4. You'd like to be able to entertain yourself, friends and family from time to time.
5. You had a vision of becoming the first banjo goddess on MTV.
6. You just wanted to be cool.

Chances are it was a complicated combination of those reasons. If no. 1 is your main reason, don't worry about singing just keep pushing your technique and your repitoir. If it's no. 5, don't worry they can always dub some vocals in later *BG*. If your chosen genre is not an ensemble form, you'll probably want to sing. Ditto, for entertaining friends. If you are playing ensemble music, and your chosen form includes vocals, you'll not only want to sing but you'll want to be familiar with as many harmony parts as you can manage.

Presumably, no. 6 was not one of your reasons. I'm guessing you were already cool.

      - Mark