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Back When the Banjo Was Big Students today see banjos mostly in movies, but back in the '20s and early '30s, the Northeastern banjo club was in step with society. Then, the banjo was inseparable from American popular music. The club plucked out bright, happy tunes for the post­World War I era, a time of peaceful prosperity, vaudeville, and tango crazes. Banjo club members practiced where they could: in the Boston YMCA's Huntington Avenue building (Northeastern College's home at the time) or on the second floor of the Gainsborough Building across the street. They performed songs like "The Sheik of Araby" and "When You're Smiling." Veto Cassese (middle row, second from right), a 1931 civil engineering graduate and the only surviving member of the 1930 banjo club, recalls many good times with his fellow musicians. After graduation, he played at clubs around the South Shore in his spare time. But Cassese's banjo has been up in the attic for years now; the Depression soured the nation's love affair with the instrument's sunny sound, and banjo club membership dwindled after the 1930s.