Banjos with fingerboards and tuning pegs are known from the Caribbean as early as the 17th century. The African instruments differ from early African American banjos in that the necks do not possess a Western-style fingerboard and tuning pegs, instead having stick necks, with strings attached to the neck with loops for tuning. Various instruments in Africa, chief among them the kora, feature a skin head and gourd (or similar shell) body. The Portuguese banza: a possible ancestor of the modern banjo The Oxford English Dictionary states that it comes from a dialectal pronunciation of Portuguese bandore or from an early anglicisation of Spanish bandurria. The instrument may also derive from the Kimbundu word mbanza. In this interpretation, Banjul became a sort of eponym for the Akonting as it crossed the Atlantic. The material for the neck, called ban julo in the Mandinka language, gives Banjul, the capital of The Gambia, its name.

The akonting is made with a long bamboo neck called a bangoe. Among these is the connection to the West African Akonting. Several claims as to the etymology of the name 'banjo' have been made.

Since many enslaved people of South America were brought there by the Portuguese, they might have brought the idea of the instrument with them. Written references to the banjo in North America appear in the 18th century, and the instrument became increasingly available commercially from around the second quarter of the 19th century. The modern banjo derives from instruments that are thought to have been in use in the Caribbean since the 17th century by enslaved people taken from West Africa. 1770–1777, from the Surinamese Creole culture. Banjo is also a common instrument for Caribbean genres like Biguine, Calypso and Mento. It is also very frequently used in traditional ('trad') jazz.

Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as Bluegrass and old-time music. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Several rock bands, such as the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and The Allman Brothers, have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. The banjo is frequently associated with folk and country music, and has also been used in some rock, pop and hip-hop. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans in the United States. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. (Composite chordophone with a neck that passes diametrically through the resonator, sounded by plectrum, finger picks, or the bare fingers)

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