a few years back Derek Brimstone said to me, that Billy Connolly - he can really play the banjo nowadays, he's definitely had lessons from someone quite good....

|The banjo is like the guitar -its one of those confused instruments. i've got a Victorian banjo tutorial book. the Victorian book treats it like a classical instrument. whereas , all the time in America the fretless banjo must have been being developed and all the folk styles - frailing, kentucky up=picking etc. the guitar also - the dreadnought style steel strung guitar - so named because it was big - like the big first world war dreadnought battle ships.

i don't really see how you can play these instruments without you work music being deeply informed by folk music. they are in a way, the voices of folk music, as much as the source singers.