I went to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco and captured some photos for this blog. So how does the American music of bluegrass fit in here?
Bluegrass is really the combination of three different types of music:
Irish music, blues and European folk. It came out of the Kentucky region originally, thus many people think that it's named after the famous grass from that area. But I recently had a music professor explain another theory - the name comes from the combination of Blues and grassroots or folk music.
Anyway, most of the bluegrass musicians I know also play Celtic and blues and most of the celtic musicians I know play blues and bluegrass as well. The styles really are similar.
Here is a punk rock girl playing bluegrass fiddle during the festival so she can earn some money.
One group I didn't get a photo of because it didn't occur to me until too late was The Pine Leaf Boys. They had a singer who played bluegrass but sang all his songs in traditional Creole - a mix of French, English and Spanish that's often only heard in Louisiana. That language alone is worthy of its own Teriyaki Donuts post.
Maybe another day, though.
2 comments:
My friend Chip Dunbar plays in a blue grass band (I think it's called Under the Radar) and he was just mentioning to me that he was running into younger players who naturally slip hip-hop and punk riffs into bluegrass. They love bluegrass, it's just that what's "natural" to them is different now and it's really exciting to hear the fusion of the two.
I hear its an awsome event. And who can beat that price?
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