Editing Banjo (section)

===Ragtime era (1895–1919) and Jazz Age era (1910s–1930s)===
In the early 1900s, new banjos began to spread, four-string models, played with a plectrum rather than with the minstrel-banjo clawhammer stroke or the classic-banjo fingerpicking style. The new banjos were a result of changing musical tastes. New music spurred the creation of "evolutionary variations" of the banjo, from the five-string model current since the 1830s to newer four-string [[#Plectrum banjo|plectrum]] and [[#Tenor banjo|tenor banjos]].<ref name=mushistpage>{{cite web |url= http://www.banjomuseum.org:80/banjohistory.htm |title= Banjo History |author= <!--Not stated--> |publisher= The National Four-String Banjo Hall of Fame Museum |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080520074724/http://www.banjomuseum.org/banjohistory.htm |archive-date= 20 May 2008 |url-status= live }}</ref>

The instruments became ornately decorated in the [[Roaring Twenties|1920s]] to be visually dynamic to a theater audience.<ref name=mushistpage/> The instruments were increasingly modified or made in a new style – necks that were shortened to handle the four steel (not fiber as before) strings, strings that were sounded with a pick instead of fingers, four strings instead of five and tuned differently.<ref name=mushistpage/> The changes reflected the nature of post-World-War-I music.<ref name=mushistpage/> The country was turning away from European classics, preferring the "upbeat and carefree feel" of jazz, and American soldiers returning from the war helped to drive this change.<ref name=mushistpage/>

The change in tastes toward dance music and the need for louder instruments began a few years before the war, however, with ragtime.<ref name=mushistpage/> That music encouraged musicians to alter their 5-string banjos to four, add the louder steel strings and use a pick or plectrum, all in an effort to be heard over the brass and reed instruments that were current in dance-halls.<ref name=mushistpage/> The four string plectrum and tenor banjos did not eliminate the five-string variety. They were products of their times and musical purposes—ragtime and jazz dance music and theater music.

The Great Depression is a visible line to mark the end of the [[Jazz Age]].<ref name=mushistpage/> The economic downturn cut into the sales of both four- and five-stringed banjos, and by World War 2, banjos were in sharp decline, the market for them dead.<ref name=2009Banjo2>{{cite web |url=  http://www.banjomuseum.org/banjohistory.htm |title= Banjo History |author=<!--Not stated--> |website= banjomuseum.org |publisher= American Banjo Museum |access-date= 10 February 2020|quote= The resulting catastrophic collapse of the stock market and Great Depression which followed marked the end of the jazz age – the final years in which the banjo held a place of prominence in American popular music.  By 1940, for all practical purposes, the banjo was dead.|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090515200646/http://www.banjomuseum.org/banjohistory.htm |archive-date= 15 May 2009 }}</ref>