Originally Posted by
sblock
1. I'm afraid that the answer to your question is YES, you ARE being a grumpy old man to complain about this.
5. Early bluegrass music, especially from groups like Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Blue Sky Boys, etc., was often played live, as dance music -- not to some seated audience. A lot of American folk dance music (e.g., clogging, contra) is designed to be up-tempo.
6. Bluegrass music was famously described by the late Pete Seeger as "folk music in overdrive." Very apt. When Bill Monroe invented this form of music in the late 1940's, he deliberately raised both the instrumental tempos and the vocal keys (songs sung in Bb and B) to sound more exciting! The introduction of Earl Scrugg's fast, 3-finger picked banjo helped in this regard, too. These tactics worked well, and bluegrass became a commercial success, esp. on the radio. It was more exciting than most oldtime folk music of the day to a large segment of the listening audience, and it sold recordings better. So, you could make the case that it was changed for commercial reasons.
7. This may not be true of you, but in my own experience, the majority of beginner and intermediate mandolin players who claim to "dislike" fast bluegrass tempos often do so not merely because they're unhappy with the sound, but mainly because their own playing technique is insufficiently advanced to keep up, for example, in bluegrass jams or playing alongside bluegrass recordings. As their own technique advances, these complaints tend to go away! The best mandolinists whom I know don't ever complain about bluegrass tempos -- just the beginners. That tells me a lot. I have never heard Chris Thile, Sam Bush, Tim O'Brien, Mike Marshall complain about bluegrass tempos.
8. Certain oldtime musicians tend to be extremely conservative, and they have long rejected all the "new-fangled" innovations in bluegrass to this very day, including both the higher vocal keys and the raised tempos. These same people might also object to the occasional non-traditional chords found in bluegrass. Of course, we later got a generation of conservative bluegrass fans who proceeded to object to Newgrass/Dawg music, which had introduced further musical idioms, phrases and chords, not previously heard in Bill Monroe's music. And so it goes. We call this progress.
9. We're all entitled to our opinion! You might find others who share your opinion and prefer to play bluegrass standards at slower-then-usual tempos -- and not just 'cuz they're beginners and can't manage higher speeds. If so, then more power to you, I say!
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