Redefining A Genre! A Prescription Bluegrass Editorial

Bluegrass as we have known it to be over the last 60+ years certainly has changed.  Each new picker that plays the same old standards always puts a little of their own style and flair into it so that it's never exactly the same as the original.

Even Earl Scruggs himself said that he didn't know any musician who actually played the same tune the same way twice in a row. So change in varying degrees is bound to occur as a natural evolution.

However, change for the sake of change is all about reinvention. It's about creating something new and different no matter from where the origins came.

Here is where we run into trouble with the folks who want it the way it was and the folks who want it to be something else – each drawing a line in the sand and standing firmly to the ground they think they hold.

A recent news story about a bluegrass film festival got us interested in previewing some of the films or their trailers. One highly acclaimed project, called Generation Bluegrass, from Riverbend Media, is about some of today's musically talented teenagers and family bands.

The trailer begins with graphic text on a black screen with the words “Carter Family” and in the space of a few seconds the words transition into several other bluegrass stalwarts that came later showing a progression through Sam Bush, Bela Fleck and on to Alison Krauss and Union Station. If the viewer hasn’t gotten the idea at this point, the video asks, “Will the next generation carry on the legacy?”

All the while the text is dancing on the black screen, little flashes of young pickers enter and exit while the music they are playing fills the background.

The title of the film is “Generation Bluegrass” and the point they're attempting to show is that while these young pickers obviously know their roots they want to go beyond. This is not anything new. Each generation before them has done this with their music.

No doubt these young musicians have talent. No doubt they can pick circles around any standard bluegrass tune; and, just perhaps, that becomes somewhat boring because of the lack of a challenge for the amount of talent they possess. But the music played to represent “their bluegrass” in this trailer isn't bluegrass at all.

So if we know we're wanting to change and the old can't stay the same then why do we want to hang on to the old name? If we know it's not bluegrass, why call it that? What these musicians are actually playing on this video is darn good Jazz. I can't help but ask; what is their aversion to Jazz or to calling themselves Jazz Musician's?

The problem, as I see it, is not in their efforts to grow musically or to be creative but rather in their miss-guided attempt to claim that what they are playing is actually bluegrass. At least Sam Bush and Bela Fleck didn't attempt to call their music bluegrass but instead found a descriptive name that represented what they were doing and also the roots from whence it came.

While I certainly admire and even enjoy what these kids today are doing, the fact still remains that in the process they can actually dilute the genre. It has happened before in other genres.

In 8th grade science class we learned that a beaker full of pure distilled water with just one drop of blue ink added changed the molecular structure. The class all tasted the mixture but none of us could tell by taste which beaker had the additional component. The question was how much ink needed to be added to the beaker of water in order for us to taste the change and then how much more before we could actually see a visible difference in the color of the water.

The point I'm trying to make here is that we've been able to hear the difference in bluegrass music for quite some time, but due to our own stubbornness we are refusing to see or to recognize the difference.

When I talk with musicians, they usually don't like labels put on their music, but labels are necessary. Your own name is a label. The car you drive has a label on it and you most likely chose that car in part because of it. You watch a certain news program on TV at night that is labeled.

The world is full of labels. So why are we having a problem with giving bluegrass it's boundaries? Why is it that no one want's to say, “sorry, but you've crossed the line”?

I'm pretty sure that those who are playing this music are feeling that traditional bluegrass is too limiting and by stretching those boundaries they have more freedom to be creative. But I'll challenge that. Actually working with in the traditional standards of bluegrass and coming up with something different, something that wins awards, that sells records and downloads is actually more difficult and therefore more challenging than roaming around all over the musical spectrum.

So what's the harm in this, you ask … if it's good, and you like it, what difference does it make what we call it? My English teachers would all frown now when I attempt to answer a question with another question.

So what's the harm in me calling you Elmer when your name is really Bob? What's the harm in saying that this one dollar bill I'm giving you is really a one HUNDRED dollar bill and now our debt is settled?

It is what it is and renaming it to suit the whims of a few doesn't make it so or make it right.

Granddad always said; “You can't paint stripes on a horse and make him a zebra.” Using traditional bluegrass or old-time string instruments to play Jazz music while calling it bluegrass doesn't make it bluegrass any more than a hand full of rocks that you call “diamonds” are really precious stones.