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Detritomusicology - The musicology of detritus. The study of music produced from recycled, repurposed, or reused material.

Detritomusicology

As I began writing about the history of the cigar box guitar, there was not a word to describe such a narrow topic as the just the study of the cigar box guitar. During my research I began to see connections to many other fields of study, some of which on the surface seemed completely unrelated. I seemed to uncover a topic that was woven out of threads of human experience, human desires, as well as long threads on the ancestry of stringed instruments from European and from African traditions. The longer the threads, the more likely they are to tangle.

As the various threads were woven together I eventually coined my own term to describe my efforts, detritomusicology, from the root words detritus and musicology. While detritus may just be a fancy word for trash, it actually carries a connotation of organic waste that becomes the food stuffs for other matter. Detritus is meant to be and can be reused. Musicology is the study of music which carries its own host of theories and a time frame in which those theories are popular. Thus, together, detritomusicology becomes the study of music made from discarded and reused material.

I suppose that giving a field of study a name is superfluous. However, under the umbrella of this term I have been able to cover the topic of cigar box guitars as a much broader set of subjects.

For instance, I was free to investigate similar instruments that predate the advent of the cigar box in the 1800s. I was free to investigate the mindset of the player and builder of such instruments. I was free to investigate the history of the cigar box, its use as packaging and as a means of advertisement. I was free to include social aspects of popular entertainment, economic influences, improvements in technology and its impact on society, or any other tangent that might provide clues to the overall history of the instrument.

Ultimately, detritomusicology set up a meaningful boundary in which the cigar box guitar, cigar box violin, cigar box banjo, and similar variants of the instrument could be contained, not just as instruments, but as part of a larger feild of events that are all connected.

Now with the frame of mind of, as far as I know, the first detritomusicologist, I have been frantically reading and preparing my own version of the history of the cigar box guitar.

A Very Brief History of the Cigar Box Guitar
by Shane Speal & Bill Jehle

In the Beginning
According to Dr. Tony Hyman, curator of the National Cigar Museum cigar boxes as we know them didn’t exist prior to mid-1800. Early on, cigars were shipped in larger crates containing 100 more per case, in barrels, or even bundled and tied in tobacco leaves for quick bulk transport. Eventually, cigar manufacturers started using smaller, more portable boxes with 20, 50, or 100 cigars per box. This is largely due to an imposition by the US government in 1865 to restrict the number of cigars sold into conveniently taxable quantities of 25, 50, and 100. The government only printed tax stamps in these quantities, so the boxes, to comply with the tax law, evolved from the large crates sent to retailers into the more consumer sized boxes that we are familiar with today.

Cigars were extremely popular in the 19th century, and therefore, many empty cigar boxes would be lying around the house. In fact, the empty containers were often seen as a nuisance by both stores and consumers alike. The boxes took up as much space when they were full as when they were empty. Using an available cigar box to create a guitar, fiddle or a banjo was an obvious choice for a few crafty souls.

The earliest proof of a cigar box instrument found thus far is an etching of two Civil War Soldiers at a campsite with one playing a cigar box fiddle. This was created by artist, Edwin Forbes, who worked as an official artist for the Union Army. The cigar box fiddle appears to sport an advanced viola-length neck attached to a “Figaro” cigar box. The etching is copyrighted 1876. There is some evidence to suggest that an earlier sketch of the same subject was made by Forbes around 1864 to 1865.

In addition to the etching, plans for a cigar box banjo were published in 1884 by Boy Scout’s founder, Daniel Carter Beard in The Book Buyer in “Christmas Eve with Uncle Enos”. The plans, eventually entitled “How to Build an Uncle Enos Banjo”, were published again in 1890 in Beard’s immensely popular "The American Boy’s Handy Book". The plans showed a step-by-step description for a playable 5-string fretless banjo made from a cigar box.

Suggested Reading

The number of books, magazines, and newspapers that contain interesting and useful information about cigar box guitars is very long. To get you started, here's a list of what I would consider the cream of the crop. Reprints of all but one should be readily available through Amazon or similar online booksellers.

• Cardboard Folk Instruments To Make And Play, Dennis Waring, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 2002. The most comprehensive book with plans to make many simple instruments with carboard and other simple materials.
• Creative Music For Children, Satis N. Coleman, GP Putnam’s Sons, New York and London, The Knickerbocker Press, 1922. May be difficult to find. Similar to Waring's work, but with much more detail on how simple instruments are used in musical education.
• The American Boy’s Handy Book, D. C. Beard, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1890. Facsimile copy of the Uncle Enos Banjo and many other projects to keep you in trouble.
• Thirty Years After: An Artist's Memoir of the Civil War, Edwin Forbes, Fords Howard & Hulbert, New York, 1890. Forbes memoirs on hearing the cigar box violin, and his description of the materials used to make it.

I have pages and pages of notes on this stuff. Writing it up in a form that's entertaining is quite another matter. Up and coming sections will cover:

• The first cigar box violin
• The first cigar box banjo
• The first cigar box ukulele
• The first cigar box guitar

Stay tuned...