Re: Not much of a mando culture in my area
Up (to many of you anyway) here in Ottawa (the Canadian one), we don't have much of a mandolin culture, but bluegrass and Celtic music are popular, so there are a few jams where mandolins are welcome. A few groups have generalized (pop, folk, country, etc.) acoustic jam sessions as well. Our urban area has about a million people, making the population big enough that music stores generally have a few mandolins for sale, not a great selection but I can buy mandolins from $150 to $4,000-plus close to home. However, like other places, we're getting fewer and fewer music stores. To the best of my knowledge, the mandolin was never an important instrument in Canada, though I find a great many people are familiar with mandolins, and generally expect the owner to be a bluegrass musicians. My mother, from rural Prince Edward Island, was quite familiar with mandolins from her youth before the invention of bluegrass, though she never mentioned mandolins being played around her until I took up mine. If you really want to experience obscurity and isolation, take up blues mandolin.
Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
"I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.
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