What Is Bluegrass, Anyway?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Re-upping this piece from November 3, 2017.

It's a question that has perplexed even veteran bluegrass artists, with the possible exception of Bill Monroe, who fathered the genre; a question revisited so often that, in bluegrass circles, it has its own acronym -- WIBA.

What is bluegrass, anyway?

You'll never hear the same answer twice.

Even I, in the relatively-short lifespan of this blog, have suggested different answers.

It might seem strange, but I was pushed to solidify my position on this issue after viewing a superb documentary called "How Britain Got the Blues", which I wrote about here.

The parallels between the way the Mississippi Delta blues gained popularity with British middle class kids in the 50s and the way American college kids embraced traditional bluegrass music just a few years later are striking: White kids, middle class, well-educated, on the liberal end of the socio-political spectrum, with a healthy respect for the original artists, a profound understanding that they had nothing in common with the life experiences of those artists, and the steadfast refusal to act as though they did.

Fast forward to 1996, and award-winning "bluegrass" wunderkind, Alison Krauss, interviewed by Jim Macnie for Rolling Stone in January of 1996.

"You and your band have changed some perceptions about what bluegrass can be and what country is," Macnie observes. 

Krauss: "I think whatever we have slipped by somebody is great. [Laughs.]"

It's hard not to think of Led Zeppelin, who have been sued more than once for ripping off traditional blues artists, and have demonstrated only the most flippant regard for the consequences of their actions. It's interesting to note that Krauss and Zeppelin's Robert Plant were romantically linked for years.

Could it be that what bluegrass is, has do to with morals and ethics?

For me, the answer is definitive: It's how you -- as a fan, promoter, journalist, DJ, publicist, record company exec, or artist -- treat the art and culture of people who have almost nothing but their art and culture to mark their place in the world.

It's whether you seek to redefine or replace that art and culture to entertain privileged, white audiences while reinforcing the idea that they and you are preserving an artistic and cultural expression that is both cutting-edge and authentic.

But, it's the 21st century! If you don't do bluegrass the way everyone else is doing it, how can you do it at all?

Theologian, Eugene Peterson, suggested a better way when he wrote, "The poor are not a problem to be solved, but a people to join."

Regardless of what their belief systems may have been, both Mike Seeger and his half-brother, Pete, exemplified this mindset in the way they collected, distributed, performed, and promoted American vernacular music, and the way they respected its original artists.

Sadly, though there are those who hold similar views today, they lack the prevailing influence on the culture that the the entire Seeger family had. Today's amateur musicologists look to American Idol and Madison Avenue for their promotional strategies, scorning preservation as drudgery, and an impossible task, besides.

If, as many bluegrass traditionalists claim, bluegrass music is dying, it's because the vast majority of "bluegrassers" don't believe they have a moral imperative not to kill it.

One River, Two Branches

In “Can’t You Hear Me Callin’”, his award-winning biography of Bill Monroe (a must-read for anyone who seeks to understand bluegrass music), Richard D. Smith talks about how bluegrass music separated into two strains – one influenced by the pioneers of the genre, the other by the collegiate sensibilities of the late 50s-early 60s folk boom.

Mandolinist Chris Hillman, who would later become a founding member of The Byrds, was clearly in the latter camp with his bluegrass band, The Hillmen. There are precious few blue notes in this blues, but the driving rhythms of traditional bluegrass are here in abundance. Oh, and a tag respectfully lifted from first-generation bluegrassers, Flatt and Scruggs.

This is The Hillmen with a song they learned from Pete Seeger, who learned it from Leadbelly – “Winsborough Cotton Mill Blues”.

Pete Seeger doesn’t get enough credit for his unique banjo style. You know it’s him from the first few notes. This song is no different.

That’s not what I want to focus on, though.

It would be a mistake to think that, because the song and the style are old, and the performer passed away that the people and problems addressed here have passed away, too. It would be a huge mistake to confuse Seeger’s gentle compassion for misty-eyed nostalgia.

These days, railroad cops keep the hobos off the trains, and permanent suburban freak-out keeps them in the cities, where the vast majority of people – liberals and conservatives alike – keep them at arm’s length,  congratulating themselves on how enlightened they are all the while.

That attitude held sway during the Great Depression, too. The film My Man Godfrey documents it to perfection, while managing to convince the audience that it’s a screwball comedy.

Pete Seeger grew up privileged, lived through the Depression, and made his living collecting, performing, and preserving songs from hard-working people and hard-luck people, never forgetting that he could have landed in their place.

Some people use that realization as justification for greed, inaction, and cruelty. Pete Seeger used it to help the downtrodden as best he could.

This is “Hobo’s Lullaby”.

What a treasure this is; it must have been very nearly the final performance for them both.

Makes you wonder why everybody wants to sound like everybody else these days. When you heard  Pete Seeger or Doc Watson – or both – you knew from the first couple of notes who was playing. Nobody else sounded like them, because nobody was like them.

Here they are with a song that’s fitting, I think: “You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley”.

Quite a few modern old-time/string band-influenced acts have a version of this song in their repertoires, but I haven’t heard one yet that touches Pete Seeger’s for sheer desperation, for simplicity that is never stark.
This is “Rye Whiskey”.