The Banjo Player
There is music in me, the music of a peasant people.
I wander through the levee, picking my banjo and singing my songs of the cabin and the field. At
the Last Chance Saloon I am as welcome as the violets in March; there is always food and
drink for me there, and the dimes of those who love honest music. Behind the railroad tracks
the little children clap their hands and love me as they love Kris Kringle.
But I fear that I am a failure. Last night a woman called me a troubadour. What is a troubadour?
This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on June 30, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive. This poem is in the public domain.
Fenton Johnson
Fenton Johnson was born in Chicago in 1888. He is regarded as a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson was born to Elijah, a railroad porter and one of the wealthiest African American Chicagoans, and Jesse (née Taylor). Johnson enrolled at the University of Chicago and attended both Northwestern University and Columbia University’s School of Journalism.