The refined variations between old-time and bluegrass music

This Friday and Saturday, Raleigh Wide Open is taking on the streets of our state’s capital. The competition is a celebration of American roots music starting from gospel to folks and likewise options arts, crafts, and meals from native distributors.

It additionally affords attendees a heavy dose of each old-time and bluegrass music from a few of North Carolina’s main artists within the genres. To the informal listener, these two varieties of music is perhaps onerous to inform aside. Both genres of music predominantly function stringed devices like fiddles and banjos, and whereas there are variations, they are often refined.

“This is something I run into a lot as a teacher,” stated Tatiana Hargreaves , considered one of this era’s most achieved fiddlers who teaches on the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. “Oftentimes, what I say to my students is that old-time is what existed before bluegrass. Bluegrass is really a modern genre, it didn’t really congeal into a genre until the 1940s.”

Bluegrass got here out of old-time, blues, gospel, and jazz.

“So old-time is part of the roots of bluegrass,” stated Hargreaves.

While Native American music predates it, old-time is called one of many earliest types of conventional music in North America. It has roots in numerous cultures from world wide starting from Africa to Ireland.

“It’s based around dancing and community gatherings. Bluegrass is more of a performance genre,” Hargreaves stated. “That’s changed a lot over time, but bluegrass originally started as commercial, performance music.”

Once you get into the historical past and nuances of the 2 kinds of music you study that individuals might be drawn to them for barely totally different causes. There are loads of individuals who take pleasure in and play each kinds of music, however there’s additionally a little bit of a playful rivalry between modern-day gamers.

“There’s a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek ribbing that goes on back and forth,” stated bluegrass band Hank, Patty & The Current’s Hank Smith. Smith additionally teaches banjo, guitar, mandolin, and bluegrass fundamentals at UNC-Chapel Hill. “It’s like two teams going against each other when they actually play for the same team.”

For essentially the most half, the ribbing is all in good enjoyable. Players of each kinds of music usually convene with associates and friends for jam classes.

Joey Pilot is a musician who runs an open bluegrass jam at Bond Brothers brewery in Cary each Sunday afternoon. His band is the Eastside Ramblers and he notes that they play “both types” of music. At the jams, Pilot’s band opens issues up with an hour-long set earlier than letting whoever exhibits up with an instrument take over to jam. “It’s a good place for people to come hang out and listen to music and have a great time,” he informed WUNC.

Pilot says that whereas he performs each varieties of music, old-time jams is perhaps extra approachable to newcomers. “Bluegrass jams tend to have more preconceptions about who they want and what they want,” he stated. “In old-time, since you’re generally playing the same rhythms together, you can get away with things you can’t in bluegrass. People might feel more self-conscious in bluegrass because you’re more exposed and you’re really putting yourself out there.”

Russell Johnson, the director of the bluegrass ensemble on the UNC-Chapel Hill says that lately it is fairly simple for folks beginning out to discover a bluegrass jam to affix, together with one with PineCone, the Raleigh group that works to protect and promote conventional folks music.

“It’s a slow jam and I think they even have the chords there for everybody,” Johnson stated. “A lot of jams are almost like concentric circles. There’ll be an inner circle of people that probably know the song, and then there’ll be people in the outer circles that are just playing along and learning.”

Misconceptions inside the worlds of old-time and bluegrass

While old-time is thought for its repetition, Hargreaves says that there’s a false impression about it not being improvisational music.

“There is totally improvisation within old-time,” she stated. “It’s not virtuosic solos like in bluegrass, but there are all these little micro adjustments and improvisations happening. You hardly ever play the tune the same way twice, and you’re responding to the other instruments like you would in a band. One thing that frustrates me about the way bluegrass musicians sometimes talk about old-time music is they think it’s simple. There are a lot of subtleties and complexities in old-time that don’t exist in bluegrass.”

Speaking about misconceptions within the bluegrass world, Hank Smith notes that the style is not as inflexible as some folks make it out to be. “There is some of that, but it really depends on where you go,” he stated. “In the southeast we have a lot of ‘capital B’ bluegrass that is strictly in the tradition of Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe. But if you go out west to Colorado the definition is a lot looser. It may just be a rock band with a banjo in it. Up north it’s folkier. It might have more of a Kingston Trio or Pete Seeger influence to it.”