A style of American country music that grew in the 1940s from the music of Bill Monroe and his group, the Blue Grass Boys. It combines elements of dance, home entertainment and religious folk music of the rural South-east. A bluegrass band typically consists of four to seven individuals who sing and accompany themselves on acoustic string instruments: two rhythm instruments (guitar and double bass) and several melody instruments (fiddle, five-string banjo, mandolin, steel guitar and second guitar). Lead instrumentalists take solo breaks between verses of a song and provide a harmonic and rhythmic background often in a responsorial relationship to the vocal part. Instrumental works have alternating solos as in jazz. Notable performers who have initiated bluegrass instrumental techniques are Earl Scruggs (banjo) and Monroe (mandolin). The vocal range of bluegrass music is higher than most country music singing, often reaching c''. In vocal duets the second (tenor) part lies above the melody, trios include a baritone part below the melody, and in religious songs a fourth (bass) part is added. Usually these parts are harmonic, but in duets particularly they provide vocal counterpoint. The music is mostly in duple meter with emphasis on the offbeats. Tempos are generally fast: an average slow song has 160 crotchets per minute, a fast one 330.
The bluegrass repertory includes traditional folksongs but is dominated by newly composed music, including sentimentally reminiscent secular songs, religious spirituals, revival hymns and instrumental numbers. Phonograph records have always been important for disseminating the repertory and style. In the 1940s most groups played on the radio and toured rural communities in the South. During the 1950s they appeared on television and in ‘hillbilly bars’ in the urban North-east. In the 1960s the folksong revival opened up college concert halls, coffee houses and folk festivals to bluegrass performers, and in 1965 Carlton Haney established the First Annual Blue Grass Festival in Fincastle, Virginia, the prototype for many such yearly events nationwide. During the 1970s and 80s bluegrass music included many styles, from ‘traditional bands’, such as the Johnson Mountain Boys and Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers, performing the 1945–55 repertory, to ‘progressive’ and ‘newgrass’ groups, such as the Seldom Scene and New Grass Revival, that combine rock songs and techniques with bluegrass instrumentation and performing style. In the 1990s bluegrass changed significantly with the emergence of women like Alison Krauss and Laurie Lewis as featured vocalists, instrumentalists and bandleaders. Meanwhile the repertories and styles of the leading performers now tend toward an eclectic mix of traditional and progressive elements.
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NEIL V. ROSENBERG