Washington, D.C.--our nation's capital, and so much more--presents an entertaining paradox to the musical world. On the one hand, its cultural focus is the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where various forms of high culture are presented to rather elite audiences. On the other hand, quite apart from the world of politics and international affairs, the Washington area boasts more performing bluegrass musicians than any other city in the country.
In November 1986, bluegrass and the big time came together when Washington's premier stage featured the world's best bluegrass group for a birthday party. The Seldom Scene's fifteenth anniversary celebration packed the Kennedy Center Concert Hall and brought down the house with a rollicking performance topped off with surprise appearances by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Ricky Skaggs. From the first note that night it was clear that something special was going on. The evening was recorded and presented very handsomely by North Carolina's Sugar Hill Records; it surpasses all expectations. This is the collection bluegrass fanciers have been waiting for.
The 15th Anniversary Celebration album marks the coming of age of bluegrass music, which has been off the beaten path of American musical interests since its birth fifty years ago. Bluegrass has always manifested something authentic, eminently American, in its reliance on acoustic (unamplified) instruments played true to the soil and the traditions that bore them. But it has never broken into the big time for long, until now. This year the Grammys added a major category for bluegrass; this album was nominated, along with one by Bill Monroe, known as the father of bluegrass, which naturally enough won the prize--how often is it that the creator of a musical style is still around and playing after fifty years? Any other year the Celebration album would have won hands down.
Bill Monroe's Legacy
The birth of bluegrass can be traced directly to the Appalachia of the 1930s where Bill Monroe brought together the lively mandolin and fiddle tunes of the mountains and the rhythmic guitar and banjo traditions of down-home music, so popular in hoedowns throughout the mid-southern states. Monroe grew up in the Kentucky hills and learned to play the mandolin after his older brothers claimed the fiddle and guitar. Life in those hollows was poor indeed, and music, both spiritual and the traditional down-home variety, was often the only pastime for entire communities. It was really the heart of church, family, and community life.
Like so many of their fellow southerners, the Monroe boys went north looking for work, once they were old enough. They wound up in an Indiana refinery district, not far from Chicago, moving fifty-five-gallon drums around for a living. First with his brothers, then on his own, Bill formed groups that played on WLS (Chicago) Radio's Barn Dance Tour and anywhere else they could find work. Finally, in 1939, the Blue Grass Boys made their first appearance on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, and bluegrass music had begun.
Monroe's first group included guitar, fiddle, mandolin, and string bass; the distinctive syncopated banjo style (with a basic beat of 3-3-2 in 6/8 time) developed during the 1940s, pioneered by Earl Scruggs, who joined the Blue Grass Boys in December 1945. Until bluegrass was
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