Accounts of early banjo repertory have tended to privilege textual and melodic sources over the embodied techniques through which tunes and songs took shape in performance. As a result, instrumental practice has remained peripheral to accounts of Atlantic musical exchange. Though widely regarded as a definitive study, Hans Nathan’s analysis of the early blackface minstrel repertoire as rooted in Anglo-Celtic and Afro-Caribbean music and dance cultures stops short of explaining how that fusion was realized in instrumental technique. Comparative analysis of notated sources associated with early minstrel banjoists instead points to downstroke playing (a percussive downward striking style) as a principal site at which European and African American musical practices were brought into relation. Building on Cecelia Conway’s account of banjo song as a tradition forged within African American communities and transmitted through interracial exchange, this paper explores how the Irish/Scottish fiddle tune “The Devil’s Dream” was reconfigured as the “Grapevine Twist” through patterned striking motions of the right hand. Rather than treating syncopation as a stylistic trait added to otherwise stable European tunes, the paper argues that their internal organization shifted to accommodate Black banjo technique. What emerged was not simply a change in rhythmic inflection but a restructuring of the tune itself, shaped by the demands of downstroke banjo playing.