Exploring the Roots of Bluegrass Music: A Journey Through History
The History of Bluegrass Music
I'm Jack Baker. I started Fretted Instruments School here in Manhattan in 1970, and I've been teaching guitar and banjo ever since. What follows are some notes on where bluegrass music came from and how it got to where it is.
The Birth of Bluegrass
Bill Monroe is the father of bluegrass. He came out of Appalachia and pulled from traditional folk, blues, and jazz to build something faster and more rhythmically charged than what came before. His band, the Blue Grass Boys, is where the name originates, from Monroe's home state of Kentucky. This all happened in the 1940s.
What Shaped the Sound
Bluegrass didn't come from one place. Traditional Irish and Scottish tunes fed into it, as did African American musical ideas, syncopation especially, and improvisation. Country music was in there too. The instrumentation that came out of all this: mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar, and upright bass.
The Banjo, and What Earl Scruggs Did
When I'm teaching banjo at the school, a lot of what we're working toward is Earl Scruggs's three-finger picking style. He's the one who developed it, and it's still what defines bluegrass banjo. There's no shortcut to getting it clean. You slow the metronome down until you can hear every note, then you slow it down again.
Fingerstyle folk guitar sits alongside the banjo in this tradition. It fills out the rhythm and harmony, and once a student starts playing with a fiddle or banjo player, something clicks about how the parts are supposed to fit.
How I Got Into It
I heard bluegrass for the first time at a small local festival. Watching the musicians interact with each other, the way they listened and responded, was what convinced me to take the music seriously. I try to give students some version of that experience.
Where Bluegrass Is Now
Bands like Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers have pushed the music in new directions while keeping the core of it intact. At the school, we teach the traditional side, Monroe, Scruggs, the old forms, and let students figure out what they want to do with it from there. Lessons are available in Manhattan and online.
If you want to work on banjo or fingerstyle guitar, get in touch with the school to set up a lesson.
About This Post: Written by Jack Baker, founder of Fretted Instruments School. Dedicated to the preservation and teaching of Delta blues guitar traditions since 1970.