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Re: [ARSCLIST] Bluegrass
It isn't bluegrass. It's an earlier form of string band music, but the
specific combination of vocal and instrumental harmonies, rhythms and
counterpoint that defines bluegrass didn't appear until Bill Monroe blended
the older string band styles with other musical influences.
To describe the older string band recordings as "bluegrass" would be no
more accurate than to describe the jazz played by Jelly Roll Morton or the
Original Dixieland Jass Band as "bebop".
John Ross
Northwest Folklife
Seattle
At 12:20 AM 12-6-2003 -0500, Steven C. Barr wrote:
Which is fine as far as it goes...but "bluegrass" was nothing more or less
than a term intended to revitalize (and, by extension, increase the sales)
of a genre which had been around for years, if not decades! Listen to any
of the Gennett recordings of "folk" music (other than commercial artists
such as Vernon Dklhart)...and tell me that isn't "bluegrass!"
...stevenc