"Blues has little to do with bluegrass." This is quite incorrect. Robert Cantwell's definitive overview, "Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern Sound," is all about how Bill Monroe crystallized a retrospective vision of all the threads of southern music, including hillbilly, gospel, country and folk. Cantwell thinks the blues singing style, with its characteristic descending scale, had more influence on bluegrass than blues songs (although there are plenty of those, like "Muleskinner Blues") and lots of 'traditional' bluegrass tunes directly show it:
See that freight train, comin' around the bend See that freight train, comin' around the bend You know I ain't had no lovin', since the Lord knows when But the final word has to go to Bill Monroe: "If you listen to my work," Monroe reminds us, "you see that there's blues in it." What strikes me is that the development of bluegrass and techno are so similar in structural respects. Both are invented forms, combining elements of numerous musical styles with new recording techniques. Bluegrass rigorously stayed with acoustic instruments and avoided drums (which sets it apart from "country and western" and what became the Nashville status quo), but it was entirely shaped by recording and broadcasting technology. Techno and house (which are basically simultaneous and intertwined inventions) depend on changes in the instrumentation used to create the music (simple sequencers and samplers emulating or sampling standard acoustic/electric musical instruments). I don't want to carry the analogy too far because the connection is only suggestive, but in both cases technological change opened the way for the musical ideas to move in a new direction. In neither case was the musical form completely new; as always it springs from the influences of the surroundings. phred
