In the 1970s esteemed ethnobotanist Charles Heiser, Jr. turned his powers of concentration on the homely and useful gourd, hoping to stir up interest on the part of his fellow botonists to begin solving some of the mysteries surrounding these little-studied, multi-purpose fruits, Out of print for years, The Gourd Book, with its many illustrations, has now been released in paperback.

Whether the origin of the banjo should be credited to the United States I shall let others determine, but certainly its antecedents are African. Slaves made the instruments in the United States and based them upon some of the African instruments, such as the cora, which utilized a membrane-covered gourd. The gourds that the blacks found readily available in their new country were also sometimes used to make guitars. Violins or fiddles were also made of gourds, particularly in the Appalachians.