Bluegrass performance - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages The music has long been influenced through jazz by the African-Americans and other migrants (Nemerov, 2009).
Traditional acoustic stringed instruments are used to play bluegrass music. Instrumentations such as mandolin and five-string banjo accompanied by harmonica and Dobro (resonator) were used in the ancient traditional dance bands and influenced the current bluegrass bands. The currently flat picking style of playing the guitar evolved from the ancient thumb and finger picking (Cantwell, 2002). This was introduced by Earl Scruggs who influenced the three-finger pick. Despite the recent introduction of new grass due to electronic versions and new instruments such as harmonica, traditional instruments are still used and culture maintained.
The theme of bluegrass music revolves around narratives about the people who first developed the music. The vocals in the music are a representative of the hardships that people of Appalachia in the ancient days and other rural areas went through living with limited financial resources. However, the currently evolving music includes interpersonal tensions, resistance to changes like the mountaintop coal mining and laments on love that was lost are part of the theme. The Appalachia railing of roads is also an integrated theme as performed by ballads like Nine pound hammer, form John Henry legend and Wreck of the Old 97.
The vocal harmony, apart from instrumentation displays Bluegrass music as a cultural product. The high lonesome sound style represents the hardships that the ancient Appalachia people used to go through living with less financial resources. The style includes dissonant sound on the highest produced by two to four parts (Olson, 2006) . The baritone voice in the stack played in the 1950s by the Stanley brothers is still played and some parts added to the traditional parts.
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