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Bluegrass Music

Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and it is a sub-genre of country music. It has its own roots in Irish, Scottish and English traditional music. Bluegrass was inspired by the music of immigrants from the United Kingdom and Ireland (particularly the Scots-Irish immigrants in Appalachia), as well as jazz and blues. In bluegrass, as in jazz, each instrument takes a turn playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others revert to backing; 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. Traditional bluegrass is typically based around acoustic stringed instruments, such as acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle, and upright bass, with or without vocals.

For many people, the appeal of bluegrass music is that it is a relatively new form of music that sounds old. Most scholars agree that bluegrass first gained national attention when Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in 1945. In addition to Bill Monroe himself, this legendary band consisted of Lester Flatt (guitar), Earl Scruggs (banjo), Chubby Wise (fiddle) and Cedric Rainwater (bass). The reason that bluegrass music sounds old is that it is a syntheses of many older styles of music.

Bluegrass’s second generation came to prominence in the mid- to late-1960s, although many of the second generation musicians were playing (often at young ages) in first generation bands prior to this. With the second generation came a growth in progressive bluegrass, as exemplified by second generation bands such as the New Grass Revival, Seldom Scene, The Kentucky Colonels,The Dillards. In that vein, first-generation bluegrass fiddler Vassar Clements, mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia (on banjo) and Peter Rowan as lead vocalist collaborated in the band called Old and in the Way; the Garcia connection helped to expose progressive and traditional bluegrass to a rock music audience.

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