Bluegrass

Primary Stylistic Influences (Traditional Bluegrass):

• Old-Time Country Music, Appalachian Folk Music, Acoustic Blues

Secondary Stylistic Influences (Traditional Bluegrass):

• British Folk Music, Jazz

Primary Stylistic Influences (Progressive Bluegrass):

• Traditional Bluegrass, Mainstream Country Music, Jazz, Rock of various sorts

Secondary Stylistic Influences (Progressive Bluegrass):

• Folk Music, Electric and Acoustic Blues, various other genres

"It’s got a hard drive to it. It’s Scotch bagpipes and old-time fiddlin’. It’s Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It’s blues and jazz and it has a high lonesome sound. It’s plain music that tells a story. It’s played from my heart to your heart, and it will touch you.

—Bill Monroe

Bluegrass is a form of American music related to Folk Music and Country Music. It has its origins in Appalachian music, folk music from the British Isles, and 19th-century African-American music. It began to be recognized as a musical genre in the 1930s, and got its name from Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys; though it has its origins across the region of Appalachia, it is most commonly associated with the state of Kentucky, where the first settlers found huge fields of tall grass with blue flowers at the tips (species Poa pratensis). Bluegrass is traditionally played on some combination of banjo, mandolin, acoustic guitar, fiddle, dobro, and upright bass. Bluegrass songs typically have the instruments take turns playing the melody or improvising on it. In songs with vocals, the lead singer is often accompanied by one or more harmony voices.

There are two main sub-genres of bluegrass: traditional and progressive. In traditional bluegrass, only acoustic instruments are used, and the music and chord progressions are usually simpler. In progressive bluegrass, elements from rock music and jazz are borrowed, chord progressions are often more complex, percussion and electric instruments are sometimes used, and songs from other pop genres are covered more often. Bluegrass gospel is sometimes considered to be another category of bluegrass music. Contemporary bluegrass acts frequently dabble in Alternative Country and old-time country, as well.

In spite of the virtuosity/musicianship of the performers, bluegrass has an undeserved reputation of being an unsophisticated, provincial style of music, but, in recent years, it has been growing in popularity (partly due to its use in films like O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Many mainstream country artists have released bluegrass albums, and celebrities as diverse as Jerry Garcia, Steve Martin, and Yo-Yo Ma have dabbled in it. It is also becoming more well-known world-wide.

Notable bluegrass musicians:

• Alison Krauss & Union Station
• Béla Fleck & The Flecktones
• Bill Monroe
• The Country Gentlemen
• Del McCoury
• The Dillards
• Doc Watson
• Dolly Parton, on a few albums.
• Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
• Flatt & Scruggs
• Gillian Welch
• Grace & Tony
• Hot Rize
• Jalan Crossland
• Jim & Jesse
• JD Crowe & the New South
• John Hartford
• The Native Howl (mixed with alternative rock/thrash metal)
• New Grass Revival
• Nickel Creek
• Old Crow Medicine Show
• Osborne Brothers
• Panopticon, while primarily a metal band, often performs acoustic bluegrass material. Examples appear on Kentucky (half the songs, making up about a third of the album by running time), Roads to the North ("The Long Road Part I: One Last Fire" and "Norwegian Nights"), Autumn Eternal (though only the intro), Collapse (about the closing five minutes of the opening track), It's Later Than You Think ("...Speaking... (Collapsed Version)"), the Waldgeflüster split ("Trauerweide II"), and apparently the second half of the forthcoming The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness, the last of which will have no metal material.
• Punch Brothers
• Seldom Scene
• The Stanley Brothers
• Steep Canyon Rangers

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