Blue Grass – A Different Style Of Country May 15, 2008

When I was at the Tamworth Country Music Festival I heard mention of this sub-genre in country music called “Blue Grass”. I sort of shrugged it off, mainly because everyone talked about it in relation to Kasey Chambers who would have to be my least favourite musician, however when I looked at the CMT website a few days ago I noticed a blog on Bluegrass. It detailed some great new music from a hand full of Blue Grass musicians but it didn’t really satisfy my curiosity. After all, what is Bluegrass? There are so many Bluegrass bands but until recently I had never even heard the name, never mind even hearing the musical style. So, with this in mind, I have set out to try and shed a little lite on the country sub-genre that is Bluegrass.

Bluegrass is a form of American roots music, inspired by the music of immigrants from the United Kingdom and Ireland as well as jazz and blues. In bluegrass music, each instrument takes a turn playing the lead and all the rest take up the role of backing music, as opposed to most music where the instruments work in conjunction to make a joint melody. Bluegrass is distinctively acoustic in instrumentation, not using electrical instruments of any kind. It relies on stringed instruments such as fiddle, five string banjo, acoustic guitar, mandolin, and upright bass and are often joined by the resonator guitar.

There is a wide debate among musicians, fans, and scholars though, over what instrumentation constitutes a bluegrass band. Since the term ‘bluegrass’ came from Bill Monroe’s band, “The Blue Grass Boys“, many consider the instruments used in his band to be the ‘traditional’ bluegrass instruments. The instruments used in this instance were the mandolin, the fiddle, guitar, banjo and upright bass. Besides instrumentation, a distinguishing characteristic of bluegrass is vocal harmony featuring two, three, or four parts, often featuring a dissonant or modal sound in the highest voice which is often described as the ‘high lonesome sound’.

This form of music was originally played by rural ‘black’ dance bands but then was turned down in favour of jazz and blue forms until being re-discovered by ‘white’ musicians.

It developed during the 1940’s mainly with “The Blue Grass Boys” who were thought to be the very beginnings of the Bluegrass style. The style however, remained solely with “The Blue Grass Boys” until the late 40’s when other Bluegrass bands began to emerge. Throughout the late history of Bluegrass there have been a few different generations with their own style. The first generation of Bluegrass music (1940‘s) was very pure and was considered the ’Golden Age’ of Bluegrass. The second generation emerged around the 1960’s and was mainly consistant of musicians who were somewhat involved in first generation Bluegrass but were now producing a more mature sound. However, in 1980’s Bluegrass took a fairly large leap into the third generation. Now Bluegrass had an increased availability of high-quality sound equipment. Due to this large change, an electric bass became a generally, but not universally, accepted alternative to the traditional acoustic bass, though electrification of other instruments continued to meet resistance outside progressive circles.

Since the late 1990s, several mainstream country musicians have recorded Bluegrass albums and Bluegrass has gained wider publicity through movies such as George Cloonies “O Brother, Where Art Though?” and even “Cold Mountain”.

I actually quite like the Bluegrass style, and I have actually heard that Kasey Chambers is a lot more interesting with the Bluegrass style in her music. It is a very twangy style but it is one of those styles that you can’t help to tap your foot down. To me, it seems like typical ‘hoe-down’ music and I kind of want to organise a barn dance now. It has a truly distinctive country sound and is a really fun style of music to listen to.

By Jacki Tipton