View source for Notes on 'A brief opinionated history of bluegrass' 22 Feb 2026

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'''Class offered by {{m|Maddie Witler}} on 22 Feb 2026'''

* Bill Monroe Opry "Big Bang"
* Prior to record music, banjo was a family of instruments that hadn't been codified into 5 strings, steel strings, etc

==1930s==
* Emergence of 'country stars', including Monroe brothers
** Hired to dance on radio show.  (Kinda weird :-) ).  Apparently live audiences attended as well.
** Proto-bluegrass sounds: beginning of backbeat emphasis and guitar rhythms, as well as Charlie abandonment of rhythm occasionally to play licks, but no calculated g-run yet.
* Split of music emerges: lineages of modern country music and R&B (and eventually hip-hop) split between "hillbilly" and "race" records.
** Some artists billed as both, with different names used for personas of different racial/ethnic identities.

==1940s==
* Monroe split - {{b|Kentucky Partners}} and {{b|Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys}}
* Lester Flatt w/ Kentucky Partners
* {{m|Sally Ann Forrester}} playing accordion
* {{m|Earl Scruggs}} on banjo - impact can't be exaggerated
* Scruggs style already in ether - Snuffy Jenkins, Don Reno.
* Early Bluegrass Boys tours heavily influenced by minstrel shows.
** Town-to-town, set up a tent
** Played baseball against local teams
** Bill challenging local men to bare-knuckle boxing
** Video exists of Bill Monroe carrying band through town?  (link?)

==1950s==
* Musically great time for bluegrass, financially terribly time
* Emergence of {{m|Jimmy Martin}}
** Transitioned to playing G-shape for G5 sound, away from Capo3 w/ E shapes
** Big beat 1, carving out space for G-run
* Rock and Roll grows
* Bluegrass imitators, but nobody using the word "bluegrass" as genre

==1960s==
* Folk revival 
** Nothern college students, especially in Boston and Berkeley, highly engaged
** Distinction between country, folk, and "bluegrass" - first use of that word as a genre
** Hippies with privilege gravitating toward perceived authenticity and nostalgia
** Imitating bluegrass leads to jam approach
* First bluegrass festival 1965, {{m|Carlton Haney}}, students started traveling to attend
* As bluegrass becomes defined, excludes folk, which excludes certain technical pickers, especially women
** {{m|Elizabeth cotton}}
** {{m|Ola Bell Reid}}
* Jams form sets of rules to facilitate jams

==1970s==
* Beginning of bluegrass as an intentional genre
* People who grew up listening to bluegrass starting making own records
** Engaging with tradition in intentional, calculated way
** JD Crowe, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, Tony Trishcha, Pete Wernick, Bela Fleck
** Newgrass revival
* Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Will the Circle Be Unbroken
** Genre-defining moment
* Eat My Dust, Bonny and Clyde

==1980s==
* Heroes / Legends take shape - earlier generation becomes exalted 
* Bluegrass Album band, becomes reference for jam learning
** Leads to Jimmy Martin-heavy and Flat-and-Scruggs-heavy repertoire

==1990s==
* Polished bluegrass sound
** AKUS, Nickel Creek, Bela Fleck, etc
* [[Mash Style]] - downbeat heavy, no swing at all, ultimate expression of Jimmy Martin removing the 3rd
** Lineage (70s and 80s): Jimmy Martin forms own band, banjo players (Allen Munde, JD Crowe) -=> JD Crowe and New South gets slightly tighter and straighter
** Even less major sound, more integrated modes
** Culminates in {{b|Lonesome River Band}}: first bluegrass records recorded to click?
** Banjo-defining w/ 8th note grid

==2000s - 2010s==
* O Brother
* AKUS, Nickel Creek hitting new highs
* Crooked Still, Kentucky Thunder, Sam Bush Band, Punch Brothers, Infamous Stringdusters
* "Chamber Bluegrass" - many bands trying to make sounds like Punch Brothers, gives way to "Jam Band Bluegrass"
* Final performances of many trailblazers, first new bands to emerge when founding generation was no longer alive
* Rise of {{m|Billy Strings}}, becomes biggest act in bluegrass history so far
** Making end-run around labels
* Lonely Hearts Stringband signed with Rounder - "We knew it was a mixed bag, but there wasn't another great option"

==Opinions==
==="What is Bluegrass?"===
====Concise or big-tent definitions possible====
* Following Jazz, we need to find big-tent definitions
* No obvious way to describe Punch Brothers without using the word "bluegrass"
* People might hear rolling banjo in Mumford and Sons and think, "oh that's bluegrass" - best not to tell them they're wrong
* The concise definition has been used insidiously and negatively for a long time to police the genre and exclude people
** People become trained to say "that's great, but that's not bluegrass"
** Quintessential definition becomes five white men from the south in the 1940s
** People with different influences, people of color, people who are smaller / have smaller hands invariably make different sounds on the instruments; concise definition excludes them
====Bluegrass is a uniquely American music====
** Mixing of cultures: immigrants who came by choice, slaves who came here not-by-choice (similar to Jazz)
** Most prevalent factor: banjo.  Came from Africa, commodified by capitalism
** Instruments were more unique to specific luthiers prior to mass-production 

===Jams===
* Important to think of musical spaces you inhabit (difference is audience)
** Practice 
** Jamming
** Performance
* Some bands perform in jam-fashion
** Tends to satisfy spectators who watch as sport
** Others may regard as bad music

===Arbiters of Taste===
* Evolved from listeners at record labels who had listened to a lot of music to numbers on social media
* Has forced musicians to be exciting, regardless of whether they're good

===2010s Chamber Music===
* Flatt and Scruggs Live at Carnegie Hall
* Opinion formed that treating it as chamber music (concert halls, like classical music) was ultimate expression
* Privilege vector
** Many bands that emerged in this era were music school kids
** Music that is made for listening might not be accessible - takes years of training to listen effectively
** Failure of the art to reach a greater audience
* 2019 Chris Thile, Live From Here
* Billy Strings gave people a way in, didn't ask as much of listener
* Similar to 2016 election - failure of left to provide a pathway for people with less privilege

===Not disconnected from rise of fascism===
* Bluegrass and country provides easier way of romanticising south, past
* "I don't want to be in Kentucky in 1949"
* Nostalgia, but for what?
* Several moments of surge have happened amidst moments of conservatism - 1960s folk revival exception?
* Important to be aware, not just glibly singing songs
* Historically, bluegrass has existed almost in opposition to progressive movements - imagining Jimmy Martin in room making fun of Woody Gutherie
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* Usually, if Maddie is going to listen to bluegrass, she puts on Hot Rize - Radio Boogie (Live at the Boulder Theater, 1996)

* "For every instrument, if you wanted to learn entirely from recordings by women, you can do that, and that's new"

* "The copyright system relies on this false idea of pure creation"

----
* Cycles of snap-back-to-tradition, then progress, then snap-back
** O Brother as snap-back
* New bands are acting like Billy - plugged in and shreddy - snap-back may be coming
* Rise of AI, which is keen to make polished guitar sound, may prompt appetite for more acoustic instruments
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* Hang out with any bluegrass artist for a day?  {{m|John Hartford}}