The Evolution of Music Part - XVI
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The Evolution of Music Part - XVI
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and is a sub-genre of country music. It has roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music. Bluegrass was inspired by the music of immigrants from the United Kingdom and Ireland (particularly the Scotch-Irish immigrants in Appalachia), and African-Americans, particularly through genres such as jazz and blues. Traditional bluegrass is typically based on a small set of acoustic stringed instruments including mandolin, acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle, resonator guitar and upright bass, with or without vocals.
Bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe characterized the genre as “Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddling. It’s Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It’s blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound. It’s plain music that tells a good story. It’s played from my heart to your heart, and it will touch you. Bluegrass is music that matters.”
History
Bluegrass as a style developed during the mid-1940s. Because of war rationing, recording was limited during that time. As with any musical genre, no one person can claim to have ‘invented’ it. Rather, bluegrass is an amalgam of old-time music, country, ragtime and jazz. Nevertheless, bluegrass’s beginnings can be traced to one band. Today Bill Monroe is referred to as the ‘founding father’ of bluegrass music; the bluegrass style was named after his band, the Blue Grass Boys, formed in 1939. The 1945 addition of banjo player Earl Scruggs, who played with a three-finger roll originally developed by Snuffy Jenkins and others but now almost universally known as ‘Scruggs style’, is considered the key moment in the development of this genre.
Monroe’s 1946 to 1948 band, which featured 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. In 1947, the Stanley Brothers recorded the traditional song “Molly and Tenbrooks” in the Blue Grass Boys’ style, and this could also be pointed to as the beginning of bluegrass as a style.
Bluegrass was generally used for dancing in the rural areas which eventually spread to more urban areas and became more popular.
In 1948, bluegrass emerged as a genre within the post-war country-music industry. This period of time is characterized as the golden era, or wellspring of “traditional bluegrass.”
First generation
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 among others.
Second generation
A second generation of Bluegrass musicians began performing, composing and recording came 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 J. D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson, Sam Bush, John Hartford, Norman Blake, Frank Wakefield, Harley ‘Red’ Allen, 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.
Third generation
Third generation Bluegrass developed in the mid-1980s. Bluegrass grew, matured and broadened from the music played in previous years.
