Bluegrass music has its roots in America, but springs from folk traditions carried to the United States from Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland and contains elements of African music, jazz, gospel, blues and old time Appalachian mountain music. The banjo, a mainstay of bluegrass bands, originated among African slave communities in the early United States.
Bluegrass bands gravitate toward stringed instruments in small bands of three to five members with guitars, banjos, mandolins, the Dobro and fiddles. A stand-up bass may carry the rhythm, but drums and other percussion instruments are seldom used. Banjo player, Earl Scruggs, placed his mark on the genre with his driving three-fingered, plucked string style. The Dobro guitar, invented in the U.S. by the Dopyera Brothers, immigrants from the Slovak Republic adds a mournful metallic sound as popular with bluegrass bands as the wailing tones of a fiddle.
Bluegrass, unlike its predecessor, old-time music, plays arrangements in which individual instruments take turns leading musical breaks with the remainder of the band playing backup, much like jazz musicians do when jamming. Tunes called breakdowns serve to demonstrate the playing prowess of the individual band members, as each in turn, performs complex riffs to show off his or her playing prowess while the rest of the band plays harmonic support.
Bluegrass founding father, Bill Monroe once characterized bluegrass music as "Scotch bagpipes and ole-timey music." During the early days of bluegrass music, country music singers like the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers set the vocal tone for both genres. Bluegrass performers embraced close, droning harmonies, acapella and solo harmonic vocal riffs. Bluegrass vocals feature two- to four-part dissonant or modal harmonies with high-pitched elements -- what Bill Monroe called the "high, lonesome sound." The vocal layering or "stack" used in bluegrass may include a high tenor above the main melody. With female vocalists, the stack may be altered to include two higher harmonies above the melody line and a high tenor or baritone also above the melody line sung by the female lead.
Bill Monroe came from Kentucky, the "Bluegrass State," so he called his new band, "Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys." The band gave the new genre its name in a series of appearances on the Grand Ole Opry radio program beginning in 1939. Bluegrass music became known for its driving, powerful style, delivered on acoustic instruments accompanied by close vocal harmonies. Song lyrics came from gospel music, work songs, blues and the "shout" songs of black laborers, all delivered with Bill Monroe's trademark "high lonesome" lead singing and backed by Earl Scruggs driving, percussive banjo playing. Other bands like the Stanley Brothers and Flatt and Scruggs (who left Monroe to strike out on their own) followed suit, calling their own music "bluegrass."
Bluegrass music enjoyed a revival in the 1950s through televised country music shows and a brief revival of interest in folk music. Bluegrass festivals helped establish an audience for live bluegrass music. Almost every state hosts a bluegrass festivals or two. Movies like "Bonnie and Clyde," "Deliverance" and "O Brother Where Art Thou?" have made bluegrass songs like "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," "Dueling Banjos" and "Man of Constant Sorrow" popular standards. The rise of the Internet, propelled bluegrass beyond American borders, with bluegrass radio stations, fan groups and Internet sites springing up in Lithuania, The Czech Republic, The Philippines, The British Isles and out of the way places on every continent.