Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Regionalism and Bluegrass


The essay below is a slightly revised version of an essay I posted on the Welcome Page of the California Bluegrass Association's web site last month.  I write a monthly column for the CBA, which effectively manages to maintain a regional and a national perspective in its newsletter and web site.

The other day, in response to a post examining issues of taste and breadth of vision in bluegrass I was accused of being a Yankee (guilty) and of bringing a Yankee sensibility to my analysis of what's happening in bluegrass music (maybe not so guilty). The post, however, raised to a higher level of consciousness, some questions that have been growing in me. How do regionalism and internationalism affect the growth and development of bluegrass music in the contemporary world? Recently, Gabrielle Gray, Executive Director of the International Bluegrass Music Museum in Owensboro, KY, said to me that “bluegrass represents the authentic rural voice of America.” This seems to me to be as fine a summation of what bluegrass music is as I've heard anywhere. And I think it's true of the history of our music. But it occurs to me that rural America, as represented in bluegrass music historically, hardly exists any longer in contemporary life, and, as such, new music created in our current world will only be an imitation of the earlier voice rather than a representation of the world we currently live in. If this is so, then how can bluegrass continue to grow and prosper?

What I'm writing about today is speculative and exploratory in my mind. I hope to grow in my insight as I try to develop these ideas with the aid of the people reading this. I have been wrestling with the question that attending many bluegrass festivals raises in sometimes not-so-subtle fashion. The question: Does bluegrass music so fully represent a rural, southern, mountain culture that people not coming from that environment can't adequately understand, listen to, respond to, perform, or write it? And there's a corollary question: Can people learn to play and sing the music any other way than by ear on the porch of their grandfather's mountain cabin?

These two questions reflect at least an implicit reaction I've felt communicated to me. A year or so ago we attended a small festival in north-central North Carolina. The performance area was roped off and hung with signs asking attendees not to smoke or drink therein. When I wrote about the amount of alcohol and tobacco smoke in the area making it difficult for some people to enjoy the music, someone posted on my blog that because I am a Yankee, I'm incapable of understanding the way that southerners enjoy themselves! At another festival, this one in Georgia, a noted bluegrass banjo player played a series of patriotic American songs, and concluded with an instrumental version of “Dixie.” At the first notes of this great southern battle song, almost everyone in the audience stood up, doffed their caps, and held them over their hearts. In my mind, there's only one song requiring me to behave in such a way, and I've noticed, frequently, that the people tending to agree with me are often wearing clothes suggesting that they're veterans. Regardless, it seemed to me that the action represented a kind of regionalism that pervades much of our music. I bow to no-one in my appreciation of the quality of that great song “The Ballad of the Rebel Soldier,” or the deeply affecting one sung by David Davis about Stonewall Jackson's death at Chancellorsville. It does bother me somewhat that a man at many festivals we attend always requests Rebel Soldier and then, dressed in a rebel campaign hat, comes to the front and stands at attention for it. Many other great songs celebrate a more universal rural experience that depicts the joys of life on the farm, the closeness of rural family living, the risks of work in the mines, and the isolation of life in the cities.

It seems to me that there's also a northern sensibility, one might call it Yankee Bluegrass, found in songs and festivals in the northeastern part of the country. For instance, the Gibson Brothers song “Sam Smith” pictures a Civil War veteran living “somewhere north of Canaanville, along the borderline,” who's returned injured and gone to live alone in the woods saying, “They'll never get me back again and march me off to war.” Smith, to me an obvious sufferer from what we would now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder represents a very different sensibility than the rebel soldier or the glory of battle to save a lost cause. Another Gibson Brothers song “Iron & Diamonds” (nominated for Best Song in 2009 by IBMA this year) depicts immigrant miners (Poles, Lithuanians, and Italians) emerging from the dark of the mine to play baseball each Sunday afternoon after church. The baseball game gives them the dignity their work never offers. Dawn Kenney, a Boston singer/songwriter, has penned a song that symbolically presents a huge, old tree on a hill in a meadow as a spiritual guide. Such songs suggest a different world view than many written for southern audiences.

Now I'm really going to step into it a bit, and suggest what I think I perceive as a “California” approach to bluegrass, too. This is really risky for two reasons, first, I haven't been to California in twenty-five years or so, and second, I knew nothing about bluegrass when I was there (some maintain I still know nothing about bluegrass...a different issue.). I think of the music of Laurie Lewis as being quintessentially Californian in nature. Her sometimes airy melodies and focus on nature, the natural world, and finding peace through connecting closely to nature present a kind of secular gospel rarely found in southern gospel music where such emotions are directly connected to Christian belief and practice. Northern and western approaches to what might be the subject matter but not the direct content of something connected to spiritual existence are less Gospel (that is, Biblically) oriented than those found in southern gospel music.

I have yet to see the bluegrass song celebrating suburban living or the joys of urban life. While Bill Monroe played baseball in the afternoons before his barnstorming concerts, I'm not familiar with any song of his about baseball, or any contemporary song about learning to play in Little League. I guess we have to leave that to the rockers. Billy Joel may be the poet of the suburbs, but I'm not familiar with Joel songs that have been grassed. Anyway, readers of this piece are urged to view it as tentative and open to lots of development. The ideas are a result of my musings over the past few months, and this is my first effort at getting them out. I look forward to your responses, either on comment section here, or via e-mail directly to me.

7 comments:

  1. Right on target with this difficult subject, Ted, and I especially like the CA version of bluegrass. (That must be southern, CA, of course!!) My only quibble is with your aside that "the people tending to agree with me are often wearing clothes suggesting that they're veterans". I'm not sure how far you want to push this profiling thing! But thanks for putting it here, and I'd be interested in comments from here as well as the CBA article.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A very fine northern bluegrass singer/rhythm guitar player who worked for the government was transfered to the New Orleans area where he met an excellent southern bluegrass singer/player. They enjoyed performing together as "The Old Southern Boys" doing brother duets and early bluegrass music at various deep south venues. How did they get that name? Another fine southern gentleman said he though the northerner was "an old southern boy". A compliment, no doubt, and also an indication that some northerners can "pass".
    MS

    ReplyDelete
  3. At this point, my wife and I spend a large potion of our life playing bluegrass -- I retired a couple of years ago.

    When I first got into bluegrass some 40 years ago, I sort of felt like you. Even though my family was from western NC, I was raised in North Florida and educated in Boston. In the early 60s, I played folk music and felt, like folkies are suppose to, the bluegrass was just a different kind of folk music.

    When we moved to Atlanta, some 40 years ago, we started traveling into the mountains and discovered (it took several years) the rural mountain bluegrass community. What we found blew us away. The community we found was huge, but almost invisible until you took the time to find them. They were (and are) breathtaking.

    At this point, we love to jam -- it is our primary social activity. We do it with all kinds of people at all kinds of levels at all kinds of places and we love them all -- these are our friends. We have done it in 27 states, three provinces in CA, Japan, and the Czech Republic.

    But the music in the mountains is not the same. It is pretty invisible if you don't take the (years) required to find it and to be accepted, but it is definitely there in force and is very culturally based. Of course, in a genre like bluegrass which has gained some popularity outside of its native area, it will attract good musicians -- and it has. But on average, the musical intensity and virtuosity is so much greater in the southern highlands -- it really is part of who they are.

    An odd result of these is that virtuoso bluegrass musicians in the highland south are much less appreciated that outside the area. There are so many quality musicians around, the supply simply outstrips the demand.

    I was really interested in this topic 25 years ago when I was still finding the real stuff, and I wrote a couple of related articles that were published in BU. One was on jamming -- pretty well understood at this at date but sort of a mystery to the outside world in the 80s when BG popularity started to grow. The other was on the cultural history of the US as it relates to bluegrass.

    You can read these articles if you like at

    http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~barnwell/Echoes.htm

    and

    http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~barnwell/rolesx.htm

    TPB

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ted,

    In spite of regional variations, I still maintain we are more alike than we are different. For me, bluegrass is more a state of mind than a geographic location.

    Dr. B

    ReplyDelete
  5. We are located in the Upper Midewest (Northern Wisconsin) and have played/attended/jammed at bluegrass events from Eastern Wisconsin to Montana and south. We have inebriated dancers in front of the stages in Eastern Wisconsin to a much more "civilized" scene as we travel west. To the south and southeast we are somewhat rejected until it is noticed that we do indeed play the same music. The music seems to be purty much the same wherever we go, whether it be newgrass, traditional or Christian gospel. In Wisconsin bluegrass is still very small and many do not really know what it is. It appears to have a slow but steady growth.

    ReplyDelete
  6. "But it occurs to me that rural America, as represented in bluegrass music historically, hardly exists any longer in contemporary life, and, as such, new music created in our current world will only be an imitation of the earlier voice rather than a representation of the world we currently live in. If this is so, then how can bluegrass continue to grow and prosper?"
    Fitting observation sir, and an obstacle not lost on anyone trying to write new "bluegrass" tunes while paying homage to it's roots. I don't know the answer either, but it seems that the performance and therefore preservation of the traditional and original stuff, if it's recognized and respected as such, can co-exist with the modern versions whatever their form. Many of the themes are timeless of course, and there a lot of newgrass bands still finding creative ways to express them. When my darlin' leaves me, she can go to the airport unstead of the railroad station and I'm still going to almost be a-losin' my mind.
    I Enjoy your blog very much. Regards, Dan Burke
    Freeport, ME

    ReplyDelete
  7. Being a Southern Belle, so to speak, (=D)I grew up around Bluegrass music here in North Carolina, attending many festivals with my Daddy, in which I learned alot about the music through him and my Paw Paw. I know more about the traditional bluegrass than any of the "newgrass" or "yankee bluegrass". I can appreciate it all, but it's the traditional that means the most to me because of where it came from. Bluegrass has it's roots and most new bands have expanded further away from the roots to create their own sound. I think it's all just based on everyone's opnion of what genre they like. Most music is like that anyway, it's all expanded out to different genres. So for people like me who appreciate the traditional sound more, it's just a little harder to get used to when it's such rooted music as Bluegrass. Thanks for the read, Ted. :)

    ReplyDelete