String band

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This article is about the style of old-time American music. The term string band also referred to the ensembles now known as scratch bands, part of the music of the Virgin Islands.

The string band originated as a subgenre of old-time music. It spotlights a group of acoustic string instruments, sometimes even to the exclusion of vocals.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, other stringed instruments began to be added to the fiddle-banjo duo that was essential to dance music of the early 19th century United States. These other instruments included the guitar, mandolin, and double bass (or washtub bass), which provided chordal and bass line accompaniment (or occasionally melody also). Such an assemblage, of whatever instrumentation, became known simply as a "string band."

The genre gave way to country music in the 1930s and bluegrass music in the 1940s. String bands continue to perform in events such as the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia and the Appalachian String Band Festival in Charleston, West Virginia.