| Bluegrass | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | Anglo-Celtic music,also music of African-Americans Appalachian folk music, Blues |
| Cultural origins | Mid to late 1880's United States |
| Typical instruments | fiddle, banjo, acoustic guitar, mandolin, Dobro, and upright bass |
| Mainstream popularity | originally eastern Midwest US and Southeast US, but now diffused throughout US, and in other countries, especially Japan and parts of Europe. |
| Subgenres | |
| Progressive bluegrass – Traditional bluegrass | |
| Fusion genres | |
| Jam band | |
| Regional scenes | |
| Czech Republic | |
| Other topics | |
| Musicians – Hall of Honor | |
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English,[1] Welsh traditional music. Bluegrass was inspired by the music of immigrants residing in Appalachia, and was influenced by the music of African-Americans[2] through incorporation of jazz elements.
In bluegrass, as in some forms of jazz, one or more instruments each takes its turn playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others perform accompaniment; this is especially typified in tunes called breakdowns. This is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment. Breakdowns are often characterized by rapid tempos and unusual instrumental dexterity and sometimes by complex chord changes.
Bluegrass music has attracted a diverse and loyal following worldwide. Bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe characterized the genre as: "Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound."
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Unlike mainstream country music, bluegrass is traditionally played on acoustic stringed instruments. The fiddle, five-string banjo, guitar, mandolin, and upright bass (string bass) are often joined by the resonator guitar (also referred to as a Dobro) and (occasionally) harmonica. This instrumentation originated in rural dance bands and is the basis on which the earliest bluegrass bands were formed.[3]
The guitar is now most commonly played with a style referred to as flatpicking, unlike the style of seminal bluegrass guitarist Lester Flatt, who used a thumb and finger pick. Banjo players often use the three-finger picking style made popular by Earl Scruggs. Fiddlers will frequently play in thirds and fifths, producing a sound that is characteristic to the bluegrass style. The bassist will almost always play pizzicato, occasionally adopting the "slap-style" to accentuate the beat. A bluegrass bass line is generally a rhythmic alternation between the tonic and dominant of each chord, with occasional walking bass excursions.
Instrumentation has been an ongoing topic of debate. Traditional bluegrass performers believe the "correct" instrumentation is that used by Bill Monroe's band, the Blue Grass Boys (mandolin, played by Monroe, fiddle, guitar, banjo and bass). Departures from the traditional instrumentation have included accordion, harmonica, piano, autoharp, drums, electric guitar, and electric versions of other common bluegrass instruments, resulting in what has been referred to as "newgrass."
Aside from specific instrumentation, a distinguishing characteristic of bluegrass is vocal harmony featuring two, three, or four parts, often with a dissonant or modal sound in the highest voice (see modal frame), a style described as the "high, lonesome sound."[4] Commonly, the ordering and layering of vocal harmony is called the 'stack'. A standard stack has a baritone voice at the bottom, the lead in the middle (singing the main melody) and a tenor at the top; although stacks can be altered, especially where a female voice is included. Alison Krauss and Union Station provide a good example of a different harmony stack with a baritone and tenor with a high lead, an octave above the standard melody line, sung by the female vocalist. However, by employing variants to the standard trio vocal arrangement, they were simply following a pattern existing since the early days of the genre. The Stanley Brothers utilized a high baritone part on several of their trios recorded for Columbia records during their time with that label (1950-1953). Mandolin player Pee Wee Lambert sang the high baritone above Ralph Stanley's tenor, both parts above Carter's lead vocal. This trio vocal arrangement was variously used by other groups as well. In the 1960's Flatt and Scruggs often added a fifth part to the traditional quartet parts on gospel songs, the extra part being a high baritone (doubling the baritone part sung in the normal range of that voice; Howard Watts [aka 'Cedric Rainwater] providing the part). The use of a high lead with the tenor and baritone below it was most famously employed by the Osborne Brothers who first employed it during their time with MGM records in the latter half of the 1950's. This vocal arrangement would be the defining aspect of the Osbornes' sound with Bobby's high, clear voice at the top of the vocal stack.
Bluegrass tunes can largely be described as narratives on the everyday lives of the people from whence the music came. Aside from laments about loves lost, interpersonal tensions and unwanted changes to the region (e.g., the visible effects of mountaintop coal mining), bluegrass vocals frequently reference the hard-scrabble existence of living in Appalachia and other rural areas with modest financial resources. Some protest music has been composed in the bluegrass style, especially concerning the vicissitudes of the Appalachian coal mining industry. Railroading has also been a popular theme, with ballads such as "Wreck of the Old 97" and "Nine Pound Hammer" (from the legend of John Henry) being exemplary. There are also songs about the weather, mostly about rain, for example,"No Place to Hide" and "Early Morning Rain".
Bluegrass, as a distinct musical form, developed from elements of old-time music and traditional music of the Appalachian region of the United States. The Appalachian region was where many English, Irish, Scottish and German immigrants settled, bringing with them the musical traditions of their homelands. Hence the sounds of jigs and reels, especially as played on the fiddle, were innate to the developing style. Black musicians infused characteristics of the blues to the mix, and in a development that was key to shaping the bluegrass sound, introduced the iconic banjo to the region.
The music now known as bluegrass was frequently used to accompany a rural dancing style known as buckdancing, flatfooting or clogging. As the bluegrass sound spread to urban areas, listening to it for its own sake increased, especially after the advent of audio recording. In 1948, bluegrass emerged as a genre within the post-war country-music industry, a period of time characterized as the golden era or wellspring of "traditional bluegrass." From its earliest days, bluegrass has been recorded and performed by professional musicians. Although amateur bluegrass musicians and trends such as "parking-lot picking" are too important to be ignored, it is professional musicians who have set the direction of the style.
Bluegrass is not and never was folk music under a strict definition, although there are clear derivatives—the topical and narrative themes of many bluegrass songs are highly reminiscent of folk music. In fact, many songs that are widely considered to be bluegrass are in reality older works legitimately classified as folk or old-time music that are performed in the bluegrass style. Hence the interplay between bluegrass and folk forms has been academically studied. Folklorist Dr. Neil Rosenberg, for example, shows that most devoted bluegrass fans and musicians are familiar with traditional folk songs and old-time music, and that these songs are often played at shows, festivals and jams.
Exactly when the word bluegrass itself was adopted to label this form is not certain, but is believed to be in the early 1950s,[5] and was derived from the name of the seminal Blue Grass Boys band, formed in 1939 with Bill Monroe as its leader. Due to this lineage, Bill Monroe is frequently referred to as the "father of bluegrass",[6] although his style drew upon the country, gospel, and blues music with which he had grown up.
Monroe's 1946 to 1948 band, which featured banjo prodigy Earl Scruggs, singer-guitarist Lester Flatt, fiddler Chubby Wise and bassist Howard Watts (also known as "Cedric Rainwater")—sometimes called "the original bluegrass band"—created the definitive sound and instrumental configuration that remains a model to this day. By some arguments, while the Blue Grass Boys were the only band playing this music, it was just their unique sound; it could not be considered a musical style until other bands began performing in similar fashion. In 1948, the Stanley Brothers recorded the traditional song "Molly and Tenbrooks" in the Blue Grass Boys' style, arguably the point in time that bluegrass emerged as a distinct musical form.[7] As Ralph Stanley himself said about the origins of the genre and its name:
"Oh, (Monroe) was the first. But it wasn't called bluegrass back then. It was just called old time mountain hillbilly music. When they started doing the bluegrass festivals in 1965, everybody got together and wanted to know what to call the show, y'know. It was decided that since Bill was the oldest man, and was from the Bluegrass state of Kentucky and he had the Blue Grass Boys, it would be called 'bluegrass.'"[8]
First generation bluegrass musicians dominated the genre from its beginnings in the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s. This group generally consists of those who were playing during the "Golden Age" in the 1950s, including Wade Mainer and his Mountaineers, Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, the Stanley Brothers, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs with the Foggy Mountain Boys, Hylo Brown and The Timberliners, Ervin T. Rouse, who wrote the standard "Orange Blossom Special", Reno and Smiley, the Sauceman Brothers, Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, Jim & Jesse, Jimmy Martin and the Osborne Brothers, Red Allen (who also recorded with the Osborne Brothers for MGM in the mid-fifties), Mac Wiseman, Mac Martin and the Dixie Travelers, Carl Story and his Rambling Mountaineers, Buzz Busby, The Lilly Brothers and Jim Eanes.
A second generation of Bluegrass musicians began performing, composing and recording in the mid- to late-1960s, although many had played in first generation bands from a young age. Some Bluegrass musicians in this group are Doc Watson, J. D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson, Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, John Hartford, Jerry Douglas, Norman Blake, Frank Wakefield, Bill Keith, Del McCoury and Tony Rice. As they refined their craft, the New Grass Revival, Seldom Scene, The Kentucky Colonels, and The Dillards developed progressive bluegrass. In one collaboration, first-generation bluegrass fiddler Vassar Clements, progressive mandolin player David Grisman, Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia (on banjo), and Peter Rowan on lead vocals played in the band called Old and in the Way. Garcia, Chris Hillman, the Stanley Brothers and others in the 1960s and 1970s helped introduce rock music listeners to progressive and traditional bluegrass. Bush, Grisman, and Clements developed strong jazz elements in most of their playing – Clements liked to refer to his music as "hillbilly jazz" – but each owes much to traditional bluegrass.
Third generation Bluegrass developed in the mid-1980s. Bluegrass grew, matured and broadened from the music played in previous years. This generation redefined "mainstream bluegrass." High-quality sound equipment allowed each band member to be miked independently, exemplified by Tony Rice Unit and The Bluegrass Album Band. Tony Rice showcased elaborate lead guitar solos, and other bands followed. The electric bass became a general, but not universal, alternative to the traditional acoustic bass, though electrification of other instruments continued to meet resistance outside progressive circles. Nontraditional chord progressions also became more widely accepted. On the other hand, this generation saw a renaissance of more traditional songs, played in the newer style. The Johnson Mountain Boys were one of the decade's most popular touring groups, and played strictly traditional bluegrass.
In recent decades Bluegrass music has reached a broader audience. Major mainstream country music performers have recorded bluegrass albums, including Dolly Parton and Patty Loveless, who each released several bluegrass albums. Since the late 1990s, Ricky Skaggs, who began as a bluegrass musician and crossed over to mainstream country in the 1980s, returned to bluegrass with his band Kentucky Thunder. The Coen Brothers' released the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? in (2000), with an old-time and bluegrass soundtrack, and the Down from the Mountain music tour and documentary resulting.
Meanwhile, festivals like the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Rocky-Grass in Lyons, Colorado and the Nederland, Colorado based Yonder Mountain String Band in the United States, and Druhá Tráva in the Czech Republic attract large audiences while expanding the range of progressive bluegrass in the college-jam band atmospheres, often called "jamgrass." Bluegrass fused with jazz in the music of Bela Fleck and The Flecktones, Tony Rice, Sam Bush, Doc Watson, and others.
There are three major subgenres of bluegrass and one unofficial subgenre.
Traditional bluegrass emphasizes the traditional elements; musicians play folk songs, tunes with simple traditional chord progressions, and use only acoustic instruments. Generally, compositions are performed on instruments that were played by Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys in the late 1940s. In the early years, instruments no longer accepted in mainstream bluegrass, such as the accordion, were used. Traditional bands may use their instruments in slightly different ways; for example playing the banjo by the claw-hammer style, or using multiple guitars or fiddles in a band. In this subgenre, the guitar rarely leads but acts as a rhythm instrument, one notable exception being gospel-based songs. Melodies and lyrics tend to be simple, often in the key of G, and a I-IV-V chord pattern is common. Although traditional bluegrass performers eschew electrically amplified instruments, as used in other forms of popular music, it is common practice to "mike" acoustic instruments during stage performances before larger audiences.
Traditional bluegrass bands Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Del McCoury, Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, and Dan Paisley and the Southern Grass enjoy nationwide popularity. California mountain bluegrass, a variation on traditional, has enjoyed regional popularity with such bands as Rita Hosking and Cousin Jack.
Another major subgenre is progressive bluegrass. Groups use electric instruments and import songs from other genres, particularly rock & roll. Although a more recent phenomenon, progressive bluegrass has roots going back to one of the earliest bluegrass bands. The banjo and bass duets Earl Scruggs played even in the earliest days of the Foggy Mountain Boys hint at the wild chord progressions to come. The four key distinguishing elements (not always all present) of progressive bluegrass are instrumentation (frequently including electric instruments, drums, piano, and more), songs imported (or styles imitated) from other genres, chord progressions, and lengthy "jam band"-style improvisation. The String Cheese Incident is one band that sometimes mixes a bluegrass tune with a jam band feeling, especially in original tunes like "Dudley's Kitchen". A twist on this genre is combining elements that preceded bluegrass, such as old-time string band music, with bluegrass music.
"Bluegrass gospel" has emerged as a third subgenre. Many bluegrass artists incorporate gospel music into their repertoire. Distinctive elements of this style include Christian lyrics, soulful three- or four-part harmony singing, and sometimes playing instrumentals subdue. A cappella choruses are popular with bluegrass gospel artists, though the harmony structure differs somewhat from standard barbershop or choir singing. Mainstream bluegrass artists Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver and IIIrd Tyme Out have produced bluegrass gospel music. While The Issacs, Mount Zion and The Churchmen play Bluegrass Gospel exclusively.
A newer development in the bluegrass world is Neo-Traditional Bluegrass. In the 1990s, most bluegrass bands were headed by a solo artist such as Doyle Lawson and Rhonda Vincent, with an accompanying band. Bands playing this subgenre include The Grascals, Mountain Heart, The Infamous Stringdusters, Steep Canyon Rangers, Pert Near Sandstone, Cadillac Sky, Waterfall Blue Boys, and Cherryholmes who all have more than one lead singer.
Recent developments in the Punk scene have lead some musicians to incorporate the traditional sounds of folk and bluegrass with punk rock attitudes and messages. Of notable examples, Cactus Attack hailing from Massachusetts blends punk rock attitudes, bluegrass and folk with tough melodies and lyrics reminiscent of lyrics of old.
East Tennessee State University, in Johnson City, Tennessee, is the only four-year university in the world with a comprehensive program in bluegrass and old time music studies. The program includes a variety of bluegrass and country music courses, both performance-oriented and academic. Beginning in 2010, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music was added to existing Minor courses of study.[9]
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