The banjo and American music cross paths in a remarkably
entangled web of complexity. The banjo was brought to the New
World – conceptually, at least – by African slaves who used it
to create music subsequently appropriated by 19th-century white
entertainers, who created blackface minstrelsy, which became the
basis of Vaudeville and a great source of opportunity for waves
of new, more-willing immigrants. Among these were many
Europeans, including an Italian family by the name of Iosco,
which figures both in the rise of ragtime and in the existence
of the Yosco No. 2 Tenor Banjo. The Iosco family – Americanized
to Yosco upon their arrival – hailed from Castemezzano, Potenza,
Basilicatena, in south-central Italy, an area historically
associated with harpists and harp making, thus explaining, in
part, the musical routes to success taken by some members.
Family records indicate that the parents, Domenico and Maria
Antonia, emigrated to the U.S. in 1877. Their youngest known
son, Rocco Giuseppe (1874-1942), change