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Thread: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

  1. #1
    music with whales Jim Nollman's Avatar
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    Default Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

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    Peace. Love. Mandolin. Gelsenbury's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Interesting! The blog is obviously making a partisan argument rather than making any attempt at detached objectivity, but precisely because of this passionate advocacy it gives the reader a feel of the emotion going into the music.

    I don't know much about either Bluegrass or Oldtime, so I found it very interesting. Some sound examples would be useful.

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    Registered User DavidKOS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelsenbury View Post
    Interesting! The blog is obviously making a partisan argument rather than making any attempt at detached objectivity, but precisely because of this passionate advocacy it gives the reader a feel of the emotion going into the music.

    I don't know much about either Bluegrass or Oldtime, so I found it very interesting. Some sound examples would be useful.
    " The fine art of oldtime guitar backup or even of oldtime bands without continuous chordal backup of any kind has given way to the heavy thumping sound and rhythmic geometry ( Dwight’s squared off meters) of plucked bass and bluegrass guitar tempo favored by modernized clog dancers and festival jams and groove music."

    You think?

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    Registered User Mike Snyder's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Bluegrass musicians use the tune to show off their musicianship. Old Time musicians use their musicianship to show off the tune.
    Mike Snyder

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    I like both but play OT. I am not sure what that quote that David posts means. Guitar backup is relatively modern. Earlier would be primarily fiddle and banjo.

    Frankly I love all music played with soul. I love the square tunes, round tunes, trapezoidal and crooked. It’s all good.
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    While I enjoy playing both within my limited repertoire and certainly have no expertise in either 'old time' or bluegrass, I do enjoy reading and learning about music in all forms so found this an interesting if academic opinion piece.

    But, in remembrance of our most recent BG genre dustup (a mild one indeed out of the innuerable multitude), this line nearly made me spit coffee all over my screen: "So an alternative inclusive cover name for bluegrass derived genres is a non-issue for bluegrass."

    Seriously?

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    poor excuse for anything Charlieshafer's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelsenbury View Post
    Interesting! The blog is obviously making a partisan argument rather than making any attempt at detached objectivity, but precisely because of this passionate advocacy it gives the reader a feel of the emotion going into the music.

    I don't know much about either Bluegrass or Oldtime, so I found it very interesting. Some sound examples would be useful.
    I didn't think there was anything partisan about it. He was simply trying, pretty effectively, to differentiate the two. I do see what his main premise is, though, and that's to avoid lumping forms under one umbrella. That's easy to see that we on the Cafe do that all the time, trying to find what the essence of bluegrass is vs. the new alternative stuff. The trad bluegrassers don't consider it bluegrass, and they're absolutely right, it's not. The urge to put things under an umbrella is one of two things: either a function of folks who need to sell cd's or tickets, or musicology purists who like the historical aspect of the music of their choice, and want to make sure everyone knows it's history.

    There was some post on another thread where a point was trying to be made that they don't sit around an bluegrass late night jams and play Thile's tunes, as if they were unmemorable or uninteresting. That post is missing the point in that Thile doesn't play bluegrass. I wouldn't expect a campground jam at a bluegrass festival to be playing Stravinsky, or working on their Gregorian Chant repertoire, either. That's why the fear of trying to homogenize everything is unfounded. Everyone protects their musical boundaries. Way too much for my liking, but that's just the way I like to listen and play, and not everyone else's.

    I think I disagree with him on one point, though. He stated that bluegrass was firmly rooted in Scrugg's style banjo, or Keith, etc. I'm taking this to mean that the individual musicians were key to the sound, and that no deviation was acceptable (to a degree...). I find that every idiom has it's hard-core proponents. he mentions Koken banjo playing in old time, but that's not a great example, as Walt was one of the hippie dudes in the '70's influenced by the old guys. Old-time hard-core followers are absolutely slaves to the main guys, like a Wade Ward, a Tommy Jarrell, etc. My own son is in this camp, playing tunes from old '78's, and able to play the same tune 4-5 different ways, knowing exactly what recording, by date and studio, where each version came from. When he and his jam partners get together, it's not "Let's play Tune X," it;s "Let's play the August 11, 1937 version of tune X as played by Sunscreen Flipbox on the Okeh label."

    Irish trad players, same thing. So we're all creatures of our own personal preferences, and of our own personalities' predilections for how we follow and play. I don't think the author needs to worry about any big lumped-in umbrella..

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    I wonder how old these posts were that Allen Feldman made. They were all posted on Banjo-L, a listserv. Dwight Diller does not mention a date on these.

    When I first started playing OT music there was a real divide between OT and bluegrass and few players would be caught dead playing the other genres. Over the last few years there has been a mixing of the players. I know of a few bluegrass banjo players who switched over to playing clawhammer. Our jam session has a few bluegrass players learning old time fiddle. Mike Compton, considered by many to be the inheritor of Monroe-style mandolin playing has also been called an old time player.

    I honestly think that most folks don't care and play the music they want in the manner they want.
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    I own and cherish a copy of Allen Feldman's Northern Fiddler and consider it an important book about some of the history of Irish fiddling of Donegal. It's a must read, but unfortunately, long out of print. I admire Feldman for authoring it.

    But that blog post made up from his online ramblings, I'm sorry. That's a long-winded pile of soapbox bunk. Musical elitism at its finest, looking down the nose of those other inferior types of music. Music is always moving, always changing. His beloved old-time is not even close to what it was in the 1920s. Sorry, much of it too has been Nashville'ized. He lost me at "oldtime music stands against homogenization." Oh, an entire genre defined by who? Cranky 70 and 80 year old internet keyboard jockeys, or the old-time playing kids that will graduate from Berklee College of Music? Or the ones playing it that grew up listening to NSYNC?

    Where can one apply to regain the 10 minutes lost reading that?

    Carry on.

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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.


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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    I thought it was a pretty good article. I like this part:

    "I, for one, do not accept the myth that bluegrass is the lineal descendent of oldtime music. Rather, bluegrass is a modern very urbanized genre, connected to the 1930s-50s industrialization of rural Southerners, that drew on a diversity of musical genres that
    were available through radio and phonograph such as oldtime, western swing, gospel, big band jazz, blues, parlor songs, Hawaiian music, etc in order to create something new that expressed the experience of mountain folk in urban exile."

    I think this is a good description of the problem I see with some bluegrassers' view of the history of the music. A lot of it comes from Monroe/Rinzler and a lot from the baby boomers who embraced the music in the 60s. It's the folk-ization of bluegrass, where it goes from a sub genre of country and western to "folk" music.

    Although ahistorical, it's probably also the only reason people are still into bluegrass today, why more people know about Bill Monroe than Red Foley and Floyd Tillman. I have the "Music of Bill Monroe" book from Rosenberg and Wolfe, which is exhaustively researched, well-written, and put out by a University Press, but there's no equivalent for Roy Acuff even though he sold tons more records. And the fiddling on Roy Acuff's 1940s and 50s recordings owe a lot more to old time than that on Monroe's records.

    And this passage:

    The social organization of the bluegrass band with its division between virtuoso soloist and backup musicians is a product of the mechanized era and of urban individualism. It is a product of mass media and of the proscenium stage (audience/performer divisions, frontstage/ backdrop divisions) where it was originally designed to be performed, or around the microphone– the electronic acoustic equivalent of a proscenium stage. Bluegrass is a musical genre that is also a dramatic form with its soloist and chorus.

    The thing is, I really like stage music. Bands where everybody dresses up, wears cowboy hats, plays a three-minute hillbilly pop song with short instrumental breaks for an audience. Nothing in that description reads as negative to me (maybe "virtuoso" - Monroe could be virtuosic but usually wasn't (maybe like 5% of his recorded breaks strike me as virtuosic), Ralph Stanley and Curly Sechler were good on their instruments but maybe not virtuoso). Popular country and western music is some of my favorite music. That's why I like Jimmy Martin, Jesse McReynolds, Bobby Osborne--they are just darned good country singers and they made great country records. I like these artists for the same reasons I like Porter Wagoner, George Strait, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Conway Twitty, Keith Whitley, etc. They're entertainers who did a great job of entertaining.

    So I think the Bluegrass Creation Myth irks old-time partisans and gets in the way of appreciating bluegrass for what it really is and was.

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    Registered User Roger Adams's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    "This stage-centered music can be contrasted to the very different communalism of the oldtime session, which was part of the Afro-Anglo-Celtic community barn, or kitchen and/or circle dance. Oldtime music’s anti-individualism is characterized by ensemble playing unison melody lines, or antiphonic call and response, forms in which back up instruments may be welcomed but are not essential and can readily be dispensed with, without diminishing the genre. Tunes may not have a beginning or an end. Tommy Jarrell once described the circle as the effect he tried to reach in playing a fiddle tune, a melody that went round and round in an endless continuous curve."

    I enjoy OT music as well as BG, and personally see them as "brothers of the same mother." I like to combine elements of the two in order to give texture and variety to some songs. However, the "communalism" of OT, in my opinion, works poorly as a performance model. The "endless continuous curve" of the fiddles sawing around in a seemingly endless circle simply numbs most folks, outside of a contra dance.
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    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mandolin Cafe View Post
    That's a long-winded pile of soapbox bunk. Musical elitism at its finest, looking down the nose of those other inferior types of music. .
    Yes!

    There is a video that we were all sharing around, called "Why Old Time" that I thought did a good job of making distinctions without making speeches. I don't know what ever happened to that video.
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    Registered User DavidKOS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Snyder View Post
    Bluegrass musicians use the tune to show off their musicianship. Old Time musicians use their musicianship to show off the tune.
    That also sounds like a prejudiced comment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Garber View Post
    I like both but play OT. I am not sure what that quote that David posts means. Guitar backup is relatively modern. Earlier would be primarily fiddle and banjo.
    I was using a quote from the article to show how the writer had a bias against BG in favor of Old-time.

    Of course, though, one must admit BG music is the deliberate, commercial product of highly professional musical entertainers, unlike Old-time music.

    In my opinion, that's why it has been so popular.

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    poor excuse for anything Charlieshafer's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    The good thing about threads like this is they give you something to do if you're stuck in yet another nor'easter. Outside of that..

    I was going to use the old "Old-time is meant for playing in groups just looking to have fun" thing, but then, so is bluegrass, and I have a trumpeter friend who plays New Orleans parade music with a bunch of guys for fun, my wife plays in a Baroque group that meets every Friday, for fun, I play in a stringboard/jazz group for fun, all of us play in some sort of weird mutant group that we go terrorize open mics, for fun. So the "playing together in a group for fun" thing is meaningless.

    Another tenet of old-time is that's it's for dancing. But so's Irish, Scots, Baroque, blues, hip hop, so that doesn't work.

    Maybe any given idiom exists strictly for discussion in forums, so we can all whine when some guy doesn't do this or that right, and applaud when this or that person does do something right, and pat ourselves on the back when we know the difference.

    Basically, we're all the same nuts, we just landed in different bowls.

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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mike Snyder View Post
    Bluegrass musicians use the tune to show off their musicianship. Old Time musicians use their musicianship to show off the tune.
    There is truth to that. Bluegrass is more of a performance music, and solos and breaks to show the talent of the performers.

    Old time, at least traditionally, is not really a performance music. To my experience (and infinite pleasure) it has more of the porch about it than the stage, more about enjoying the moment than getting it exactly right for a recording. And working to make the moment with the tune something subline, infinite and fun.

    There are, of course, exceptions and overlap. The biggest exception, to my mind, is the large increase in old time recording and old time performance. But I would think most folks with experience in both genres could agree on this distinction as being for the most part true.

    Not bluegrass:

    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

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  28. #17
    music with whales Jim Nollman's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    I detect a bit of anti-intellectualism in some of these comments. It reminds me of why we keep opinions about religion, politics, and bluegrass away from the dinner table.

    The author starts from the premise that all great music is derivative. In this example, bluegrass marries the improvisational form of New Orleans jazz to the content of the old time tunes of Appalachia. And yes, certainly, other influences are flowing in this river as well. Or check out a similar discussion in the thread that does (or does not) connect old time to rags. It's the same discussion about musical genres, although ragtime clearly doesn't stir the same passions as bluegrass.
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  30. #18
    poor excuse for anything Charlieshafer's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Nollman View Post
    I detect a bit of anti-intellectualism in some of these comments.
    But isn't the intent of music we're discussing non-intellectual? Old time certainly was low country (as in worker, farmer, folks of "low intellect" as per the mill owners, plantation owners, bankers, city dandies, etc. Bluegrass certainly didn't come from the drawing boards of Vienna, or the Sutton Place brownstones of NYC. If anything, the temptation is to try to over-analyze everything. I don't think anyone is trying to be anti-intellectual; the whole point of the article in question was to show the roots or differences, and for that you need to go to the original intent. The phrasing you use to discuss the music can be as intellectual as you want, but the music itself isn;t, so perhaps ;looking at it from a non-intellectual view might be more intellectually enlightening.

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  32. #19
    music with whales Jim Nollman's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Sure, old time music was decidedly non-intellectual. One irony is that most of the folks I seem to meet out here on the West Coast who live and breathe this music are all college educated. They are the same folks who, years ago, rediscovered country blues.

    Anti-intellectualism attacks opinions by attacking opinion-makers as never having lived in the so-called real world.
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    Peace. Love. Mandolin. Gelsenbury's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by JeffD View Post
    Not bluegrass:

    Inspiring! What a vivid example.

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    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Nollman View Post
    I detect a bit of anti-intellectualism in some of these comments. It reminds me of why we keep opinions about religion, politics, and bluegrass away from the dinner table..
    The refuge from all of this, from anti-intellectualism, from pseudo-intellectualism, and the rest of it, whether suspected, demonstrated, implied or inferred, is:

    Playing the music. Its what we mandolinners can do. We can play the music.

    Talking about the music is not playing the music.
    Reading about the music is not playing the music.
    Researching the history of the music is not playing the music.
    Writing about the music is not playing the music.

    We can play the music with friends with whom we have nothing to talk, nothing upon which we agree. And have such a wonderful intimate visiting and sharing experience, deeper than we could have if we had something to say.

    Play the music. That is the important part. The rest is just a monkey chattering.
    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelsenbury View Post
    Inspiring! What a vivid example.
    The lyrics tell you when to laugh. What else could

    "Ha, ha, ha, you and me,
    Little brown jug, don't I love thee!"

    possibly mean?
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  39. #23
    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Not bluegrass:



    Is bluegrass:





    Oh and I dearly dearly love both.
    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidKOS View Post
    I was using a quote from the article to show how the writer had a bias against BG in favor of Old-time.
    Oh, I know and I knew that you weren't saying that.
    Jim

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  43. #25

    Default Re: Why old time and bluegrass are not the same.

    Quote Originally Posted by Charlieshafer View Post
    ... I play in a stringboard/jazz group for fun, all of us play in some sort of weird mutant group that we go terrorize open mics, ...
    Lol! That does sound like fun!

    Quote Originally Posted by Charlieshafer View Post
    ... Basically, we're all the same nuts, we just landed in different bowls.
    Good one!

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