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Banjo guru/fiddler Dan Levenson fine-tunes hillbilly music.
In 2002, old-time banjo great Ken Perlman dutifully proclaimed Dan Levenson the "Johnny Appleseed of the banjo." The title is well deserved. Certainly no one since folk icon Pete Seeger has done so much to spread the gospel of the instrument.
Every year, Levenson crisscrosses the country to perform and stage his three-hour prebeginner "Meet the Banjo" workshops. For a nominal fee, participants get hands-on instruction, music, even the loan of a banjo from one of the world's most celebrated instrumental masters.
For Levenson, it's an opportunity to put the gift of music into the hands of people who might never have considered themselves musical.
"The fact that so many people think that playing banjo must be so hard always bothered me," Levenson said by phone this week during a break from a teaching session. "All I'm trying to do is take away some of the mystery and point them toward their own talents."
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