Bill Monroe is said to have defined bluegrass as “contemporary music arraigned for these instruments.”
I wonder if the same applies to oldies?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE6-HisLxug
When Bluegrass Ain't About Country
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I liked the young people playing at 30 seconds and again at 1:35. Was that Bela Fleck? Saw our friend Gerald Jones playing banjo at the end.
I don’t know about that definition of bluegrass. I love traditional bluegrass, I struggle to like progressive bluegrass, but I don’t want to be critical of something someone else dearly loves.
It’s like the end of the move Bull Durham… “I don’t want to think about baseball. I don’t want to think about quantum physics, and I don’t wanna think about nothin’. I just want to be”.
This is one of my favorite arrangements:
All I can say is I wish more bands were brave enough to try stuff this cool!
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This is where things get fuzzy. When Mr Monroe invented bluegrass, it was cutting edge stuff, a clean break with the traditional way of doing things. And he played modern songs, written by professional song writers.
Somewhere during the Folk Revival, labels became very important. “Hillbilly” singers were out & “Traditional” was in. And bluegrass bands were labeled “traditional.” So even though we were listening to new songs written by modern writers, we embraced it as traditional. “Long Black Veil” for example. It sounds like a traditional old murder ballad, but it was a modern song written by that modern country artist, Lefty Frizzell.
So I reject battle lines between musical genres. If it has a banjo in it, I approve, even if I don’t like the song.
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Everything you need to know about Kentucky Bluegrass is in the palm of his hand
