What Is Bluegrass Music?
As country music splintered off into honky-tonk and more pop-oriented genres, groups like The Blue Grass Boys and The Foggy Mountain Boys kept the spirit of hillbilly music alive in the sounds of bluegrass.
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History
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Bluegrass music originated out of traditional string band music that formed the basis of country music. It took its songs and structures and made them "faster, harder and more technically demanding," according to allmusic.com.
Geography
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Communities with a Scottish or Irish geritage in the Appalachian mountain region originated bluegrass music during the 1940s.
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The Blue Grass Boys
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Bluegrass gets its name from The Blue Grass Boys, the backing band for Bill Monroe, considered by many to be "The Father of Bluegrass."
Instrumentation
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The standard instrumentation of a bluegrass band consists of a fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo and upright bass, the same set up used by Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys. Bluegrass groups have introduced other instruments over time, including the accordion, piano, drums and resonator guitar.
Expert Insight
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Bill Monroe described bluegrass music as having "a hard drive to it. It's Scotch bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound."
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