dueling banjos

Meaning

Noun

• A contest of skill in which two people try to top each other's offerings, especially one involving musical ability.
• Something typical of a stereotypic hillbilly; Something characterized by lack of education, poverty, inbreeding or lack of sophistication.

Origin

• From a scene in the 1972 film Deliverance in which a tourist with a guitar gets into a picking contest with a hillbilly on a banjo, both playing parts of the song "Dueling Banjos" (originally titled "Feuding Banjos") by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith.