Last week I posed the question, “Can Lloyd Loar’s memory be
rightly honored through a Bluegrass Festival?”
In order to sort through this question, I need to give thought to
several things; the first being, “What is the history of Bluegrass ?”
As settlers migrated into the Appalachian
Mountains around the 1700s, they brought their musical talents and
traditions with them. Some brought
instruments from their homeland, such as the fiddle, others engineered
“instruments” from whatever they had available.
For years, their songs of life on the farm and in the hills echoed
through the remote mountains, but no further.
Big stages, instrument amplification and glitzy clothes weren’t even
heard of. Family and friends simply came
together for fellowship anywhere there was space to gather and music was often
their common ground.
Mountain music was also greatly
influenced by African-American slaves who brought their harmonic blues and the
banjo to the region in the 18th century. With the emergence of mail order catalogs,
instruments such as the “mountain” dulcimer, autoharp, guitar and mandolin soon
became popular in Appalachia and set the stage for
string bands.
With the invention of the
phonograph and radio, in the early 1900s, this “mountain music” filtered into
the homes of the rest of the world.
While many refer to what developed as “mountain hillbilly music,” one of
its most influential pioneers,
Bill Monroe characterized the genre as:
‘Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'.
It's Methodist and Holiness and Baptist.
It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound.’”
Bill Monroe, a Kentucky
boy with Scottish roots, was born on the farm into a musical family. By “default,” Monroe
grew up playing the “less desirable mandolin” while his two brothers played the
fiddle and guitar. After his mother’s
death, when he was 16, Monroe lived
with his uncle Pen who played the fiddle.
Love for many of the traditional fiddle tunes was now in Monroe ’s
blood.
After having played with several
bands, at the age of 28, Monroe
formed “The Bluegrass Boys” in 1939.
This band is recognized as having “created
the definitive sound and instrumental configuration that remains the model to
this day for what is known as Bluegrass music. In Bluegrass , as in some forms of jazz, one or more instruments each takes its turn
playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others perform
accompaniment; this is especially typified in tunes called breakdowns. This is in contrast to old-time music, in
which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the
lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment. Breakdowns are often characterized by rapid
tempos and unusual instrumental dexterity and sometimes by complex chord
changes” (http://renoandharrell.com/content/short-history-bluegrass-music). Monroe
became know as “The Father of Bluegrass.”
Mountain music, a “simple” farm boy playing his mandolin and
the development of “Bluegrass music; what does all of
this have to do, if anything, with the musical genius, Lloyd Loar?
Stay tuned for week three of Bluegrass & Loar.
Whole-Heartedly,
Bonnie
P.S. Please
feel free to contact me with questions, thoughts, topics you’d like to ponder
or to read past articles at: http://whole-heartedlife.blogspot.com/. You may also contact me at:
Bonnie
Jaeckle
In Search
of the Whole-Hearted Life
Diagonal
Progress
Posts
