What Is Bluegrass Anyway? Category Formation Debate and The Framing of Musical Genre

Popular Music (2012) Volume 31/3. © Cambridge University Press 2012, pp.
363–381
doi:10.1017/S0261143012000293
What is bluegrass anyway?

Category formation, debate and
the framing of musical genre
JOTI ROCKWELL
Pomona College Department of Music, 340 N. College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711-6341, USA
E-mail: joti.rockwell@pomona.edu
Abstract
This article examines the contested issue of defining the genre of bluegrass music. Interpreting this
debate as a subjective negotiation and renegotiation of a category, it focuses on the discursive and
musical means through which ontologies of bluegrass are framed. In doing so, the article adds to
a growing body of literature that considers genre in popular music as a flexible construct involving
both musical performance and cultural formations. The article begins by exploring the idea of blue-
grass as constructed by Bill Monroe and a number of early bluegrass scholars, after which it invokes
recent work on human cognition and categorisation to analyse the genre debate among bluegrass
enthusiasts. The article ultimately proposes that such discourse, notwithstanding its apparent futility,
can be regarded as a vital means for a genre’s self-perpetuation.
The biggest job of blue grass is to keep out what don’t belong in it.
(Bill Monroe1)
In July of 2003, the magazine Bluegrass Unlimited received a letter from a disappointed
reader. He had been surprised to see the magazine review an album by the main-
stream country group Dixie Chicks, despite the group’s and the album’s clear
connections to bluegrass music. He expressed his belief that ‘the vast majority of blue-
grass fans do not want . . . your magazine to review any group that is only borderline
bluegrass at best, when there are many true bluegrass bands that never make your
headlines’ (Stanley 2003, p. 13).2 Roughly a decade earlier, a reader denounced blue-
grass star Alison Krauss’s album I’ve Got That Old Feeling for taking on the stylistic
trappings of mainstream music, arguing that doing this was an insult to ‘those of
us who love bluegrass the way it is’ (Fenster 1993, p. 326).
The above comments articulate a fairly common scenario in the realm of pop-
ular music reception: a fan who claims some expertise in and ownership of a specific
genre rejects artists who veer from the genre’s most central practices.3 While
instances of a ‘sellout’ phenomenon in popular music often occur in the context of
increasing commercialisation, involving an abandonment of authenticity and the dis-
illusionment of an artist’s original fan base, the above examples are noteworthy in
that they stress an ontological claim. That is, they are more about ‘bluegrass’ than
they are about the Dixie Chicks or Alison Krauss, since the writers appear less con-
cerned with questions of how good the music is than they are with the question of
whether the music qualifies as bluegrass.
363
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364 Joti Rockwell
As the examples suggest, the world of bluegrass music is notable for its heated,
hackneyed and inconclusive debates over self-definition. The question ‘What is blue-
grass anyway?’ is cliché enough to have received its own acronym, ‘WIBA’, among
fans who discuss the music online, and new artists and recordings continually cause
this question to be revisited. Generic identity is thus a constant area for musical and
discursive negotiation, especially given the hybrid status of bluegrass as a folk music,
a progressive concert music and a commercially mediated form. What, then, gives
rise to these debates? What sorts of opinions about bluegrass occur within genre dis-
course, and how do competing ideas form? What are the consequences of the genre’s
occupation with its own identity?
Adding to a growing body of literature that considers genre in popular music as
a flexible construct involving both musical performance and cultural formations
(Frith 1996; Negus 1999; Brackett 2002; Holt 2007), this article interprets the genre
debate in bluegrass as a subjective negotiation and renegotiation of a category. In
doing so, it devotes itself more toward answering the above questions than answer-
ing the WIBA question itself, a question that will surely never have a conclusive
answer. Accordingly, my purpose is not to define bluegrass but to examine and
theorise the discursive and musical means through which ontologies of bluegrass
are framed. I begin by exploring the idea of bluegrass as constructed by Bill
Monroe and a number of early bluegrass scholars, after which I invoke recent
work on human cognition and categorisation to identify conceptual processes under-
lying the genre debate. Ultimately, I propose that genre debates, notwithstanding
their apparent futility, can be regarded as a vital means of perpetuating a genre.
The idea of bluegrass and the WIBA debate

As Neil Rosenberg has stressed, although music now widely considered to be blue-
grass existed in the mid-1940s, the term ‘bluegrass’ didn’t begin to circulate until
about a decade later (Rosenberg 1985, pp. 95–9). It follows that the idea of bluegrass –
what Rosenberg would regard as the notion of bluegrass as a genre – took shape during
this span of time. Initially the matter was straightforward: Bill Monroe and his band, the
Blue Grass Boys, became commercially successful in the 1940s, in part because of the
distinctiveness of their sound. This sound, which was subsequently emulated by
other artists such as the Stanley Brothers, came to stand for a type of music, and the
idea of bluegrass originated as a reference to any music that sounded like that of
Monroe and his band.
The sound of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys was largely a reflection of
aesthetic preferences that Monroe had developed over the years. It was these prefer-
ences that would later become a set of criteria by which others could define blue-
grass. By the time bluegrass music had been labelled as such, the hallmarks of the
style (e.g. acoustic instruments, fast tempi and high tenor vocals) included many
of the features that had originally made up Monroe’s artistic vision. This vision,
which he continued to impart to scores of bandmates over his career, is the single
most important source of the stylistic and generic parameters that have traditionally
defined bluegrass.
Given Monroe’s central role in originating the music, one may reasonably
inquire as to exactly what his idea of bluegrass was. In looking for a definition
from Monroe, though, one must keep in mind that the motivations behind his
What is bluegrass anyway? 365
musical preferences were quite different from those of the scholars who were later to
define the genre. Monroe was less concerned with an accurate characterisation of a
genre or style than he was with achieving professional success and with maintaining
the signature musical characteristics he had put in place. There is a distinction, then,
between two processes: Monroe’s efforts as a bandleader to construct and sustain a
sound that conformed to his own aesthetic sensibilities while advancing his career;
and the project of defining bluegrass as a type of music that, in theory, anyone
could play. The latter process is not one that Monroe cared to undertake until he
encountered fans and scholars who actively pursued the question in the late 1950s
and early 1960s, at which point his answers conflated the above distinction.4 The
idea of bluegrass music that eventually emerges from Monroe interviews is a recipe
of sorts: a dish that, when prepared using the ingredients he recommends, satisfies
the people who partake of it.
Monroe presented a relatively early version of this idea of bluegrass in a 1966
radio interview.5 By this point, folk revivalists in the Northeast such as Alan Lomax,
Pete Seeger and Ralph Rinzler had identified bluegrass as a musical genre of interest
and had begun to recognise Monroe as its principal exponent. Responding to the inter-
viewer’s inquiry into ‘what bluegrass music is and what elements have gone into its
composition’, Monroe provided what would, in other interviews, prove to be a fairly
routine reply. Although by this time his response had been shaped by people who
were studying his music, Monroe’s remarks are nonetheless worth quoting at length:
To start with, I wanted to have a music different from anybody else; I wanted to originate
something. I wanted to put all of the ideas that I could come up with, that I could hear of
different sounds and, of course, I’ve added the old Negro blues to blue grass. And we have
some of the Scotch music in it – the bagpipes – and we also have hymn singing – you’ll
notice that down through the melodies and through blue grass. Starting with numbers like
the ‘Mule Skinner Blues’, when I first started, it had a timing to it – the beat – that just fit
perfect for what I wanted to do. It’s faster than most people would do ‘Mule Skinner’ and
it’s in a time that you could dance by. It’s good to listen to and it’s good for your lead
instruments like the fiddle to play the music, to play ‘Mule Skinner’, ’cause it’s got the
blues in it and it just makes it perfect like that. We use the mandolin as a kind of a rhythm
instrument in the group, and it sets perfect for the mandolin to keep the time the way
we’ve got it arranged . . .
[asked about where he got the idea to record ‘Mule Skinner Blues’:] You know, I have a yodel with
‘Mule Skinner’ – it’s got a little laugh on the end of it – and when I seen that it would sell, that
little yodel would help sell the number, why, I know then we had something going that would
be to my advantage on down through the years, with the timing of that number and everything.
And with the Blue Grass Boys, it’s been kinda like you going to school – you’ve got a good
teacher over you, somebody that knows what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. So
we have had to kinda set a pattern with blue grass, and, of course, each year, why, I have
brought out a little something different as we’ve gone along. (Ewing 2000, pp. 34–5)
With these responses, Monroe lays out conditions for which music can be considered
bluegrass music: it appropriates elements of styles including the blues, bagpipe
music and gospel music to create an original sound; it has a sense of rhythm and
musical time governed in large part by the mandolin and comparable to that of
Monroe’s version of the Jimmie Rodgers song ‘Mule Skinner Blues’; and it evolves
over time in accordance with Monroe’s aesthetic teachings.
Monroe’s description of bluegrass can be thought of as providing a set of
necessary conditions for defining the genre. If music meets these conditions, it is
bluegrass; if it does not, it is not. Monroe hints at the latter case when he notes
366 Joti Rockwell
that as a teacher, he knows what his band members shouldn’t do. Indeed, in many of
his interviews it is clear that he is as comfortable articulating what bluegrass isn’t as
what it is:
GEORGE GRUHN: I’m sure that nobody could define bluegrass better than you can. What
really makes it different from old-time music, or jazz, or some of the new acoustic styles?
MONROE: Bluegrass is a pure music. You follow the melody right, and you don’t put in no
hot, know-it-all fiddle that don’t belong in there. (Ewing 2000, p. 195)
These remarks recall the comments that began this article: in both instances there are
conventions that must be observed when playing bluegrass music, and any music
violating these conventions is considered to be outside the genre.
Monroe’s idea of bluegrass is relevant today because in most respects, he
maintained it throughout his career. Had he not initially found some measure of
commercial success, he likely would have changed his sound, and the genre of
bluegrass would not have taken shape as it did. Since his conditions for how his
music should and should not sound generally remained consistent, these con-
ditions translated for many people into defining features for the genre. Monroe’s
refusal to adopt many of country music’s stylistic trends in the 1950s, such as
using professional studio musicians to record or embracing instruments such as
drums and electric guitars, gave this idea of bluegrass an ontologically necessary
level of autonomy. In this respect, the innovations occurring in country music,
exemplified by the music of Chet Atkins and the ‘Nashville Sound’, were as impor-
tant to the formation of bluegrass as a distinct genre as Monroe and his band’s own
innovations were. Consequently, from Monroe’s perspective, the concept of blue-
grass is formed both from the positive conditions under which music can be con-
sidered as bluegrass and the negative conditions under which the music is
necessarily something else. The following quotation exemplifies this strict con-
ception of bluegrass: ‘They got a little stuff they call “bluegrass rock”, and I
know there’s no such thing as bluegrass rock, because you got to be pure in blue-
grass. You might come up there and say it’s “bluegrass rock,” but it should be kept
pure, and rock should be kept pure, and jazz should be played . . . where you’re
born on it’ (Ewing 2000, p. 71).
If Monroe was concerned mainly with the conditions necessary for bluegrass
music to exist, those who have written about the music have been equally concerned
with what sufficiently qualifies music as bluegrass. With Monroe hinting that blue-
grass was a recipe but not articulating all of the details concerning how it should
be followed, scholars such as Alan Lomax (1959), Mike Seeger (1959), Ralph
Rinzler (1963), L. Mayne Smith (1965) and Neil Rosenberg (1967) took up the more
comprehensive task of describing what constitutes bluegrass music.6 On a more
practical level, the rise of bluegrass pedagogy likewise contributed to this process
of determining and disseminating the elements that comprise the genre. Starting
initially with song folios and eventually including detailed manuals such as Pete
Seeger’s The Five-String Banjo Instructor (rev. edn. 1954) and Earl Scruggs and the
Five-String Banjo (1968), sheet music and instruction books focused mainly on how
to duplicate an individual performer’s signature repertoire or approach to an instru-
ment. In addition to giving fans an idea of bluegrass based on specific musical
details, this pedagogy provided a collective sense of ownership of the genre, since
it enabled fans to possess not just the recorded sounds of bluegrass music but also
the means of producing them.
The early writers on bluegrass music, all of whom had some connection to the
urban folk revival, shared a reasonably consistent view of what constituted bluegrass
music. Mayne Smith, who in 1965 distilled his master’s thesis into what can be
regarded as the first musicological article on bluegrass, presented his definition of
bluegrass with a five-fold list that can be summarised as follows:
1. Bluegrass is hillbilly music, played by professional, white, Southern musicians, primarily

for a Southern audience.
2. Bluegrass is not dance music.
3. Bands are made up of from four to seven male musicians who play non-electrified stringed
instruments and sing as many as four parts.
4. The interaction among instruments and voices is somewhat like that of jazz, and instru-
ments serve one of three conventionalised, changing roles: melodic lead, ornamental melo-
dic accompaniment, and rhythmic and harmonic accompaniment.
5. Every bluegrass band includes a banjo played in ‘Scruggs style’ or some derivative thereof.
(Smith 1965)
Although it highlights an important connection to Southern culture, Smith’s

first feature, in which he positions bluegrass as ‘hillbilly music’, should be taken in
context. At the time Smith’s article was written, the study of bluegrass music had
not been accepted in academia, so his way of garnering this acceptance was to
characterise bluegrass as a ‘hillbilly’ (hence, a ‘folk’) music.7 With this music featur-
ing much of the traditional repertoire that interested folklorists at the time of Smith’s
writing – the issue of The Journal of American Folklore in which the article was printed
was dedicated to the study of hillbilly music – presenting bluegrass in this context
was a way of garnering its acceptance in the discipline of folklore. Smith’s means
of characterising bluegrass are predominantly stylistic, but also cultural (‘white’,
‘male’), functional (‘not dance music’) and geographical (‘Southern’). Though
aware of the difficulties of defining a style of music precisely, he presented his
characterisation of bluegrass as though it were a recipe of the kind that Bill
Monroe suggested, stating that ‘it is at least possible to specify those characteristics
of a style which, taken together, distinguish it from all others’ (Smith 1965, p. 245).
Smith’s elaboration of his initial list, along with the work of other urban folk
revival writers, brings a relatively thorough, well-delineated and stable image of
bluegrass into focus. By studying these writings, someone looking to form a band
with a bluegrass sound could do so by: (1) using the instrumentation of bass, fiddle,
mandolin, guitar, banjo and possibly Dobro; (2) featuring a combination of blues
songs, traditional ballads, early 20th-century popular song and fast-paced instrumen-
tal breakdowns (primarily from fiddle repertoires); (3) including high-pitched, ‘lone-
some’ male vocals, both solo and in two-, three- or four-part harmony; and (4)
interspersing song verses and choruses with virtuosic instrumental soloing. In
short, a band wanting to make bluegrass music could do so by modelling itself on
the sound of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys when Earl Scruggs was in the
group.
Despite this apparent image of stability, the idea of bluegrass did not remain
unchallenged. During the late 1960s, the performers who had originally served as
exemplars of the style turned to new musical approaches in order to keep their
sound current and to adapt to changing tastes. Chief among these approaches was
the inclusion of drums and electric instruments, which are expressly omitted from
most definitions of bluegrass. As Rosenberg has noted, of the four Grand Ole
368 Joti Rockwell
Opry bluegrass acts of the 1960s (Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, the Osborne Brothers,
and Jim and Jesse), Monroe’s was the only one that did not experiment with more
‘modern’ sounds, and bluegrass fans’ reactions to the experiments of other musicians
were often decidedly critical (Rosenberg 1985, pp. 305–15). Furthermore, the expan-
sion and festivalisation of bluegrass brought it into contact with the counterculture of
the 1960s, spurring bands representative of it and creating a traditional/progressive
divide within the genre. Though these bands, such as the New Deal String Band
and the New Grass Revival, typically had great respect for older artists such as
Monroe, both their image (most notably their long hair) and rock-influenced music
met with disapproval from more traditionally oriented performers and fans.8
What was the problem? The artists at the time, save perhaps for Bill Monroe,
had never proffered strict definitions of bluegrass, so why was there a genre debate
in the first place? One explanation would be to attribute it to a folk revival essenti-
alism, since the debate didn’t occur until bluegrass was adopted by revivalists as a
type of ‘folk’ music.9 In doing so, folk revivalists subjected bluegrass to ideals of
authenticity that have, in recent writings, been almost universally acknowledged
as myth.10 Since bluegrass had its origins as a commercial country music in which
artists performed on the Grand Ole Opry and recorded for major labels, the music
could scarcely hold up as an unchanging tradition that was anti-commercial and
technologically unmediated. The unrealistic foundations of folk ideology, then, can
be taken as grounds for demarcating the inherently unobtainable standards to
which contemporary bluegrass musicians have been held. Critiques of this ideology
are all too easy to find in current literature, much of which is written by revivalists
themselves. As Bruce Jackson describes it: ‘I think the revival can be fairly character-
ized as romantic, naïve, nostalgic, and idealistic; it was also, in small part, venal,
opportunistic, and colonialistic’ (Rosenberg 1993, p. 73). Charles Keil is perhaps
even less sparing: ‘Long study of folklore and folklorists has convinced me that
there never were any “folk,” except in the minds of the bourgeoisie. The entire
field is a grim fairy tale’ (Keil 1978, p. 263).11
Whether the idea of ‘folk music’ is inherently unredeemable, as Keil argues, or
whether it simply has become dated and overly coded with references to specific
performers such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and The Kingston Trio, it has been aban-
doned by many scholars. Philip Bohlman, for example, notes the significance of the
International Folk Music Council’s 1981 name change to the ‘International Council
for Traditional Music’ (Bohlman 1988, pp. viii–xv). In his study of American roots
music, Benjamin Filene replaces the term ‘folk music’ with ‘vernacular music’,
which he hopes can ‘sit above the squabbling over what constitutes “true” folk
music’ (Filene 2000, p. 4).12 The ‘squabbling’ to which he refers involves the
same authenticity politics that undergirds the genre debate in bluegrass. Such a
notion of authenticity necessarily resides in the past, for the moment music is
defined is a moment at which it becomes dated. Thus, the central problem of the
genre debate, as far as folk revival constructions of bluegrass are concerned, is his-
torical change.13
Another explanation for the emergence of the genre debate is that it has less to
do with ideology and more to do with asserting and defending one’s musical taste;
that is, the debate is a question of musical value. By this account, the debate occurs
naturally because evaluative conversations are part and parcel of everyday human
interaction. These conversations are, according to Simon Frith, ‘the common cur-
rency of friendship, and the essence of popular culture’ (Frith 1996, p. 4). If, as
Frith suggests, the rhetoric of this everyday discourse necessarily invokes some
claims of objectivity, it follows that authenticity can provide the basis for such
claims. And since authenticity is, for the most part, fictive, its imagined construc-
tion and lack of grounding in the present stoke the debate; in this sense, authen-
ticity is not only useful but vital to such discourse. Asserting membership in a
genre can thus be a form of cultural affirmation, a process that Allan Moore has
identified as ‘“second person” authenticity, or authenticity of experience’ (Moore
2002, pp. 218–20).
The genre debate in bluegrass has formed as a result of a combination of the
above two accounts. It would certainly be incorrect to refer to it exclusively as a pro-
duct of the folk revival, for the politics of change existed in bluegrass music prior to
the revival’s encounter with it. The active engagement revivalists had with the music
and their ability to put their ideas in print make revival-oriented genre debates pre-
dominate in the existing literature on bluegrass, but debates were occurring earlier in
different forms.14 Given these multiple origins, it is perhaps not surprising that the
genre debate in bluegrass has continued to the present day. As audiences exposed
to bluegrass music have grown in the past 50 years, the percentage of fans who
are actively and overtly contesting different ontologies of bluegrass has perhaps
diminished; nonetheless, the debate within this relatively small group can be remark-
ably intense, and differing ontologies are negotiated among less active fans in more
subtle and casual ways.
As bluegrass discourse occurs through the media that new technology affords,
the debate can become even more heated, since the internet allows for instant inter-
action between strangers from any geographic location and cultural background.
Thus, what one might regard as the regional ‘scenes’ of bluegrass – the progressive
eclecticism of the Bay Area, the jam-oriented ‘newgrass’ of Colorado, the neo-
traditionalism of Kentucky and Tennessee, and the stylistic hybridity and continued
folk-revival influence of Washington, DC and the Northeast – are coming into con-
tact in ways that have not previously been witnessed.15 While the emergence of blue-
grass festivals brought about some of these types of encounters in the 1960s (these
being particularly noteworthy in that they were musical encounters, due to the ritual
of jam sessions), the geographically unconstrained diversity of backgrounds and
opportunity for constant interaction did not exist until the rise of the internet in
the 1990s.
It was the internet that allowed the genre debate in bluegrass to take shape in
the form that the following portion of this article draws upon, the online discussion
group.16 In November of 1991, the email discussion list BGRASS-L was created by a
small group of enthusiasts to serve as a forum for discussing bluegrass and old-time
music in general as well as issues relating to the bluegrass industry in particular. It
likely represents the first instance of this technology being used for the purposes of
exchanging ideas about bluegrass; as such, its initial base consisted of a small group
of people who were interested in the music, had access to the internet, and were
motivated to use the relatively new discussion list technology. As the internet
grew, so did the list, and currently at nearly one thousand members, it is one of
the larger lists devoted to bluegrass music. Other lists of comparable size tend to
either be: (1) regionally oriented, coordinating jam sessions or announcing concerts
in a particular city or area; (2) instrument oriented, drawing together banjo players,
guitarists, mandolinists or fiddlers to discuss different instrument models as well as
aspects of playing technique; or (3) performer oriented, devoted to discussion of an
370 Joti Rockwell
individual artist’s performances and recordings.17 Consequently, BGRASS-L has the

least specificity and is thus more conducive to discussion and debate about the genre
of bluegrass as a whole.
In what follows, I consider quotations taken from the BGRASS-L discussion
group as well as subsequent correspondence I had with people who posted to it.18
While I would not want to argue that the postings of this group fully represent blue-
grass fan discourse, I have found that many issues and ideas that appear on
BGRASS-L often match, in a more concentrated form, those I have encountered in
my own experience of performing, attending festivals and participating in jam ses-
sions across the United States over roughly the last 15 years. In other words, the
list represents what Holt calls a ‘center collectivity’, a group of ‘specialized subjects
that [has] given direction to the larger network’ (Holt 2007, p. 21). The archives of the
list, which date back reliably to 1996, contain an extensive record of the genre debate,
and the WIBA question has been appearing regularly since then, with participants
demonstrating a full awareness of the question’s prior existence.
While ontologies of bluegrass certainly predate the internet – many issues
underlying the genre debate go back to the formation of the genre itself – the
BGRASS-L archive has a greater breadth than existing records of fan opinion from
these earlier periods. The archive is noteworthy in that the discourse therein has
occurred independent of the act of collecting it. The members of the list include
fans, amateur- to professional-level performers, DJs and record collectors (these cat-
egories frequently overlapping) from throughout the United States and a few other
countries, and the most prevalent demographic is white men over the age of 30.
High-profile performers occasionally appear, such as Ron Block of Alison Krauss’s
band Union Station and former International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA)
president Pete Wernick. Consequently, the archive is a useful forum with which to
gauge the reception of the music and the views of those who produce it.
It may be tempting to explain the argumentative rhetoric of the genre debate in
BGRASS-L simply in terms of ‘flaming’ or ‘trolling’, interactions specific to the inter-
net in which discussants take advantage of their relative anonymity in order to
provoke or even attack other members of a list. Individuals who do this, however,
tend to have no investment in the topic at hand, whereas the posters to BGRASS-L
often have close personal or professional connections to the genre. Moreover, like
most email-based discussion lists, BGRASS-L expressly forbids such practices.
Since some of the people on the list have ties to the industry, whether working
for record labels, doing radio shows, or teaching the music, their investment can
be economic as well as aesthetic. While some occasionally participate in the debate
because they enjoy playing the role of provocateur, most have a deeper rationale
for and investment in determining how bluegrass is defined.
In July of 2006, the WIBA debate flared up yet again regarding the question of
whether or not festivals featuring progressive bluegrass and non-bluegrass music
should include ‘bluegrass’ in their name. Banjoist Pete Wernick played a key role
in the debate by putting forward a defence of relatively traditional definitions of
bluegrass, arguing that a festival that hires mainly non-bluegrass acts creates need-
less confusion by labelling itself a ‘bluegrass festival’.19 Wernick is an important
figure in the bluegrass world as a result of his success as a performer in the band
Hot Rize, a teacher running bluegrass camps and writing instructional books, a his-
torian who has done numerous interviews with bluegrass musicians, and the first
president (serving for 15 years) of the International Bluegrass Music Association.
Keeping in mind, then, that his response carried an unusual amount of authority on
the listserv, one can instantly observe how defining the genre for him is not simply an
academic matter; rather, it carries deep personal meaning. His posting, delivered
with the subject heading ‘“bluegrass” is a word worth defending’, included the fol-
lowing comments:
I generally stay clear of any debate trying to define ‘bluegrass’. Too many exceptions, too hard
to codify perfectly. But I do hope we can all agree that the music we love and call ‘bluegrass’
would be better off if its name really did stand for something – which would have to include at
least some common understanding of what it ‘is not’.
OK, what accounts for the high emotion?
Answering for myself, I guess I’m so devoted to bluegrass music, I do get emotional on the
subject of using the word ‘bluegrass’ to describe something I consider clearly ‘not bluegrass’. . . .
If someone started marketing 80% coyote/20% beef mix as ‘hamburger’, they’d get in trouble
with the feds. Even if the label mentioned the coyote, ‘hamburger’ is supposed to mean
something. If the company prez said ‘Everyone knows that our brand includes coyote meat’,
that wouldn’t satisfy the feds. They have reason to retain the meaning of the word. . . .
What concerns me is a general tendency toward entropy and dilution of a word that stands
for . . . A GREAT THING, a major thing in my life, that it took many long decades to
nourish, protect and build, through the hard-fought, lifelong efforts of a lot of amazingly
talented people, many of whom are dead and gone – Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, and Don
Reno, naming just a few. These are musical heroes of mine, and I think they’d approve of a
bluegrass lover wanting to defend the word ‘bluegrass’ when they’re not around to do so.
These comments reflect a desire to maintain and preserve the connection between blue-
grass as a concept and the performers who mark the beginnings of the genre’s history.
The comments also reflect the high degree of dedication that many fans have to the
music. Nonetheless, there is more at stake than the acknowledgement of bluegrass
music’s main progenitors or a professed devotion to the genre. When interviewed sub-
sequently about the issue of defining bluegrass, Wernick invoked the welfare of blue-
grass performers as a reason for protecting traditional meanings of the term:
There’s a significant reason why bluegrass should be shored up and it’s worth defending the
word bluegrass, because bluegrass has tangled with outside elements and has been blended
with outside elements and often comes out injured as a result of the interaction. Not
always, but often. When a bluegrass festival starts using rock ‘n’ roll acts, sometimes the
rock ‘n’ roll acts start to dominate with louder music and louder fans, and the bluegrass can
be left out in the cold.20
Wernick’s comments highlight bluegrass music’s complex and sensitive connec-

tion to more commercially viable forms of popular music, which by opposition mark
bluegrass as distinctive but can also sap the genre’s prospects for economic sustain-
ability. Accordingly, the stakes for the debate extend beyond questions of identity
construction among fans, and ontological determinations can have tangible conse-
quences regarding the stylistic evolution of bluegrass, the commercial suitability of
specific performers, and the relationships between fans and artists. At the heart of
these determinations is the means by which people conceive of bluegrass as a cat-
egory. For the remainder of this article, I will thus invoke recent work in cognitive
science to consider how genre categories are constructed, while using this perspective
to examine the WIBA debate in more detail.
372 Joti Rockwell
Framing the genre debate

My interpretation of the genre debate in bluegrass consists of the following points:
first, in an effort to preserve features of music they hold dear to them, bluegrass
enthusiasts sometimes construct ‘bluegrass’ as a classical category. Second, bluegrass,
as with most concepts, does not function as a classical category – hence these claims
are ultimately untenable (with many fans fully realising this). Third, the fallacy of
misconstruing bluegrass as a classical category can have beneficial consequences
for the genre. I will elaborate on these points by first discussing classical categories,
addressing the third point at the conclusion of the article.
The following discussion takes as its cue the work of Lawrence Zbikowski,
who has provided an account of musical ontology in terms of processes of categor-
isation (Zbikowski 2002, chapters 2 and 5). He distinguishes between two basic
types of categories. One type, the ‘classical’ category, is marked by necessary and
sufficient conditions, and it represents a common way for humans to think of cat-
egories.21 An example of such a category could be ‘paid ticket holders for the
Grey Fox bluegrass festival’. For this category, having a ticket that was bought is
both a necessary and a sufficient condition, such that anyone who has such a ticket
is a member of the category, and anyone who is a member of the category has
necessarily paid. Classical categories such as these are clearly defined according
to properties that all members share. As a result, no one member is a better example
of the category than any other.
Most research, however, has shown that the categories people use in daily life
in fact have graded membership, which is to say that not all members of a category
belong to it equally. In the 1970s, Eleanor Rosch, drawing upon the writing of phi-
losopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, presented this alternative view by demonstrating
how categories exhibit prototype effects in which some members of a category
serve as better examples than others. Such prototype-based categories can involve
‘metonymic reasoning’ in which a member of a category may be such a good
example that it stands in for the category in general. Such instances will often feature
asymmetries in how members of a category are considered similar: members are
judged in comparison to the best examples, but not the other way around (Lakoff
1987, pp. 12–57).
Lawrence Barsalou (1992) has suggested how prototype-based categories can
be represented with relational networks, or ‘frames’ that include the category in
question, attributes for the category, values for these attributes, and individual
cases that are connected to these values. Example 1 presents a simplified case for
the category ‘chair’, in which some of the prototypical attributes for the category
are indicated with asterisks. This example illustrates Rosch’s common-sense finding
that people find desk chairs to be more representative of the category than barbers’
chairs. Even with this ‘partial’ frame (partial because it could in principle include a
great deal more attributes), one can easily see how other members of the category
such as lifeguards’ chairs, electric chairs, etc., lie rather far away from the
prototype.
While Zbikowski has shown the relevance of this perspective to the question of
musical ontology, taking as his examples recordings of popular songs from the early
20th century, I find the work to be suggestive with regard to the ontology of genre.
The variability of such a perspective proves useful for studying genre debates, since
different subjects are free to weigh certain attributes and values differently in
Example 1. Partial frame for the category ‘chair’. Values corresponding to the prototype have an asterisk
above them.
Table 1. Classical vs. prototype-based categories.
Category type Characteristics Examples
Classical Necessary and sufficient conditions ‘Odd numbers’

Membership is objectively determined ‘Paid ticket holders’
All members are equal
Prototype-based Family resemblances ‘Chair’
Some members better examples than others ‘Bird’
Involves ‘metonymic’ reasoning
Boundaries for membership are flexible
Asymmetries in similarity between members
conceiving of a prototype. Considering genre according to frames and prototype

effects thus pays attention to ‘the individual and the particular’ (Holt 2007, p. 7)
while also allowing for genre to function as a shared construct. By including attri-
butes that affect the production and consumption of music as a commodity, this
approach can incorporate studies of how genre is defined in relation to market forces
(Frith 1996; Negus 1999). And since attributes within a frame can include aspects of
musical sound as well as broader characteristics such as race, class and gender, this
approach can accommodate what Brackett has highlighted as a complex relationship
between style and sociological factors within genre construction (Brackett 2002,
pp. 66–7, 79).
Table 1, which summarises the characteristics of classical and prototype-based
categories, serves as a point of departure for how perspectives on categorisation shed
light on debates about bluegrass music. For bluegrass to be a classical category it
would need a rigid set of necessary and sufficient conditions for category member-
ship; that is, a detailed and determinate version of the recipe Monroe hinted at but
never clearly delineated. The list below consists of statements made on BGRASS-L
374 Joti Rockwell
that in some way treat bluegrass as such a category. While the following list does not
provide a full context for the stated opinions, it is important to note that classical cat-
egorisation is not always specific to individual participants, since people often post
comments exhibiting elements of multiple kinds of category formation.
1. If it ain’t got a BANJO in it, it ain’t BLUEGRASS! (signature of Ed Bolton)

2. Anyone who thinks AK&US [Alison Krauss and Union Station] has turned their backs on
bluegrass should take in a show. I haven’t noticed any drums on stage yet, nor electric gui-
tars. (Dian Newell, 10 August 1997)
3. For moi: pedal steel, drums, and saxes: Nope. Accordion, ‘disciplined’ electric bass, acous-
tic piano, autoharp, harmonica: Yep. (Bill Knowlton, 25 September 1997)
4. One thing I haven’t seen here, but have heard expressed elsewhere (in interviews with
Frank Wakefield and Butch Robins), is the notion that it’s appropriate to describe the
music of Bill Monroe AND NOBODY ELSE as ‘bluegrass’ (or ‘blue grass,’ I guess it
would then be). It’s a position I don’t quite buy, but nonetheless sort of admire. (Paul
Birch, 27 September 1997)
5. True Bluegrass cannot be obtained by people who live in a city and have not lived in the
country at all, or the mountains or at least lived in that way of life. (Carl Towns, 5 January
2005)
In all of the above comments, the category of bluegrass is in principle defined

strictly and objectively, and the discussants provide a variety of necessary and sufficient
conditions for category inclusion or exclusion. Notwithstanding its prevalence in the
WIBA debate, this classical construction of bluegrass is argued against by fans who
invoke aspects of a prototype model similar to what Rosch has theorised. The ‘family
resemblances’ argument, for example, includes questions such as the following:
Is Bill Monroe’s best-known recording of ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’ (1954) bluegrass or not?
According to Bangs’s one-size-fits-all definition, it’s not (no banjo); . . . Is the Foggy
Mountain Banjo album – the best-known, most-beloved (and, IMO and that of many others,
the best) 5-string banjo ever made bluegrass or not? According to the definition, it’s not
(drums); . . . Is the Osborne Brothers’ recording of ‘Rocky Top’ bluegrass or not? According
to the definition, it’s not (drums, pedal steel). (Jon Weisberger, 24 September 1997)22
The fact that some recordings are better examples of bluegrass than others is agreed
upon by even the staunchest classicists, and it is reflected in the common metonymic
construction of ‘bluegrass’ in which Bill Monroe’s music from the mid-1940s rep-
resents the entire category (this is distinct from the first classical opinion above, in
which case Monroe’s music is the category). Finally, recalling the last characteristic
in Table 1, the prototype effects for bluegrass also become apparent through asym-
metries in similarity judgments: for example, a statement such as ‘The tenor vocalist
from the band I saw last night sounds a lot like Ricky Skaggs’ is far more common
than ‘Ricky Skaggs sounds a lot like the tenor from the band I saw last night’.
That a prototype model is more appropriate than a classical model as a way of
conceptualising the genre is something bluegrass enthusiasts have taken notice of as
the debate has evolved. The following comments illustrate this awareness, both
through tongue-in-cheek parodies of the classical model and by invoking a centre-
periphery metaphor in accordance with the prototype model:
1. I think everyone agrees with the makeup of the core of bluegrass music. But we seem to
disagree where the edges are. . . . Clearly, it’s time to renew my call for IBMA to stop all
this silly professional stuff and start lobbying Congress to pass the Bluegrass Purity and
Licensing Act, to ensure that the centuries-long tradition of The One True American
Bluegrass Music is preserved against pretenders like Vince Gill, Alison Krauss and Dan
Fogelberg. (Archie Warnock, 25 September 2007)
2. I haven’t tried to establish any ‘boundaries’ for bluegrass, in the sense of necessary
and sufficient conditions. What I maintain is that there must be such boundaries, however
blurred they may be. The boundary will lie at a certain level of deviation from the para-
digm. The bluegrass paradigm is not a matter of performers, or originators, or anything
else; it’s a matter of a particular sound, and that sound is exemplified in the music of the
Blue Grass Boys during the Flatt and Scruggs era. (Bangs Tapscott, 25 September 1997)
3. AND – not just ANY Martin guitar can be used – it must be a D-18 (with a Lester Flatt
pickguard) or a D-28 (with a Larry Sparks pickguard?) or maybe a D-45 (to play Jimmy
Martin songs with) – not any other Martin, especially not any other size but a ‘D’. The
mandolin must be a Gibson F-5 signed by Lloyd Loar in 1924 (OK if peghead scroll is bro-
ken off and name is scratched out). Guitar and mandolin picks must be pure tortoise shell.
The Gibson banjo must be a Mastertone. . . . A real bluegrass band travels together in a
1930′s vintage car with the bass strapped on the top. . . . (Harry Moore, 28 December 2000)
4. Personally . . . my favorite definition goes back a few years, and was offered by Bangs. . . .
He compared it to a pebble thrown into a still pond, and the widening circles that went out
from the center. The center being Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, while Earl and
Lester were with him. (Dian Newell, 3 December 2001)
Given that bluegrass breaks down as a classical category, it can be represented

as a prototype-based category through the use of frames. Example 2 presents a par-
tial frame for the category ‘bluegrass music’, a subsection of the sort of category
structure that a bluegrass listener could employ when deciding whether or not a
given recording fits the generic label. The pieces represented in the example are
Alison Krauss’s contemporary recording of the song ‘Every Time You Say
Goodbye’, written by former bandmate John Pennell, and Bill Monroe’s ‘classic’
1947 recording of his song ‘I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky’.23 Prototypical values
highlighted with asterisks correspond to common definitions of bluegrass examined
thus far in this article, many of which explicitly posit Bill Monroe’s centrality. It thus
comes as no surprise that, for this example, Bill Monroe’s recording fits the prototype
perfectly, while Krauss’s song succeeds on some counts and fails on others. The
extent to which listeners consider Krauss’s recording to be bluegrass depends on
how far away from the prototype they are willing to go and how much they
weigh certain attributes when determining category membership.
Since it includes recordings of bluegrass as ‘individuals’ rather than artists more
generally, Example 2 is relatively detailed with regard to elements of musical style.
Were it instead to more broadly include ‘Alison Krauss’ and ‘Bill Monroe’ in this col-
umn, the attributes would have more to do with image, and prototype determi-
nations would more directly involve questions such as race (is the performer
white?), gender (male?), place (from the rural south?) and career trajectory (how
mainstream?). Such considerations, as well as additional aspects of style (form, lyrics,
etc.), could make for a more comprehensive though potentially unwieldy model. As
it stands, the example gives a relatively constrained framework for determining how
the recordings sound or do not sound like bluegrass music.
Depending on his or her level of connoisseurship, a subject employing the
frame can use it at different ‘magnifications’. In other words, listeners largely unfa-
miliar with bluegrass may hear what I have labelled as ‘lo-fi’ in Monroe’s example
and simply conclude that the Krauss recording is not bluegrass since the sound is
less scratchy. More specialised listeners might be able to tell that Monroe’s recording
was made with one microphone and that Krauss’s recording was multi-tracked (since
376 Joti Rockwell
Example 2. Partial frame for the category ‘bluegrass’.
she would not play fiddle lines such as the double stops at [2:46] while singing), con-
cluding that, despite the proper instruments being used, the music was not per-
formed live and is thus inauthentic.24 Listeners having some familiarity with
bluegrass might note that, despite the differing approaches to melody and harmony
^
at cadences (Monroe prototypically uses tonic harmony pitches over 5 for a
dominant-function harmonic construction, in contrast with Krauss’s employment
of a leading tone), both examples include a mandolin introduction of one and a
^ ^
half beats that moves from 5 up to 1, thus considering both examples to be bluegrass
(see Examples 3a and 3b). A dissenting connoisseur might then counter that Adam
Steffey’s use of a leading tone on the kickoff, the low action and mellow timbre of
his mandolin relative to Monroe’s, and his choice of a B♮ in the third full measure
to make a smooth pop-sounding IVsus2 harmony render the Krauss introduction fun-
damentally different from the Monroe recording.
While many traditionalists evaluate Alison Krauss based on a classical model of
bluegrass, those more receptive to her style seem to lean more toward a prototype
Example 3a. Differing approaches to harmony at cadences.
Example 3b. Mandolin kickoffs for the Monroe and Krauss songs.
model such as that of Example 2. Consider, for example, how the following listener
becomes more accepting of the attributes that take a piece away from a bluegrass
prototype:
I don’t know what to tell you – I love the new AKUS album. Like their last couple of recordings,
there are parts that need to grow on me slowly, but for me it seems to be because they are
producing such new sounds that it takes a while for my ears to catch up. I remember really
disliking the little tag that ends ‘Everytime You Say Goodbye’ because it sounded out of
time, like a mistake. Now that I’m used to it, I can’t imagine the song ending any other way . . .
(Elizabeth Burkett [now Elizabeth Loring], 2 April 1997)
378 Joti Rockwell
Example 4. Guitar tag at end of ‘Every Time You Say Goodbye’.
The passage in question is the syncopated guitar accompaniment occurring at

the end of the song, which Example 2 indicates simply as a ‘complex acc.’ value
for the ‘rhythm’ attribute and which Example 4 illustrates via transcription. Since
the excerpt features a guitar playing displaced sixteenth-note accents, it is indeed
not the most common approach to time that one finds in bluegrass.25 But as the lis-
tener became used to the piece, she grew to embrace the musical characteristics that
had initially distanced the song from prototypical bluegrass. Frames such as that of
Example 2 can thus highlight the detailed musical dimensions of the evolving struc-
ture and content of genre debates.
I would like to conclude by returning to the viewpoint with which I began, that
of the staunch bluegrass ‘classicist’. Assume that, after making a judgment that cer-
tain artists are ‘not bluegrass’, he listens to other new artists and draws the same con-
clusion, outlining the classical conditions that justify exclusion from the category.
These conditions, along with other rigidly defined boundaries for the genre, even-
tually get called into question by WIBA polemicists who subscribe more to prototype
theory (or who have different classical formulations), forcing the classicist to refor-
mulate his definitions and go through the process again. The result is that the
WIBA question remains unanswered, while a number of beleaguered fans may
wish to hear no more on the issue. However hackneyed the question may be, though,
the critical point is that, during the course of the debate, those participating in it are
actively interpreting and listening to the music. As long as the debate continues,
people continue listening, and as long as people continue listening, performers are
able to continue producing the music under discussion. The debate, then, is an
important reason why the genre is sustained. Genre, as a contemporary form of
musical and cultural expression, thus fuels itself through discourse.
Acknowledgements
This article began as a paper given at the 2005 International Bluegrass Music
Symposium at Western Kentucky University. The author would like to thank
Erika Brady, Jonathan T. King, Neil Rosenberg, Lawrence Zbikowski and the mem-
bers of BGRASS-L cited here for discussion and support. He would also like to
acknowledge and thank fiddler James Luther (‘Bud’) Rhodes (1930–2010) for many
years of music, encouragement and enjoyable conversation about value and propri-
ety in bluegrass.
Endnotes
1. Interview with Doug Benson in 1966. Reprinted 2. The motivation behind this letter was apparently
in Ewing (2000, p. 37). political as well as stylistic: at the time, the Dixie
Chicks were being castigated within country bluegrass by the folk revival played a fundamental
music as a result of their critical remarks about role in keeping it from becoming solely a historical
George W. Bush and the war in Iraq (see genre within country music.
Watson and Burns 2010). Nonetheless, the appeal 12. The phrase ‘vernacular music’ itself has a tangled
for a rigid definition that keeps bluegrass separate semantic history. See Green (1993) as well as
from mainstream music is common among blue- Hitchcock (1987), which draws a distinction
grass fans, regardless of political orientation. between ‘vernacular’ and ‘cultivated’ music.
3. Examples from other genres include: Metallica’s 13. Neil Rosenberg describes how both he and fellow
‘selling out’ in the 1990s (Pillsbury 2006, revivalist Pete Kuykendall wrote articles on blue-
pp. 133–81); jazz writers ‘decrying a musician grass music that ‘[made] authenticity unobtain-
for selling out, bleaching the music, betraying a able in the present’ (Rosenberg 1993, p. 200).
legacy, abandoning the audience or playing “anti- 14. One can, for instance, locate a nascent genre
jazz”‘ (Gabbard 2002, p. 2); and country music debate in Bill Monroe’s criticism of the Stanley
fans becoming upset that artists ‘go the other Brothers and Flatt and Scruggs, which, though
way on us’ (Fox 2004, pp. 103–4). ultimately amounting to a case of personal and
4. Monroe’s initial lack of interest in developing the professional jealousy, Monroe couched in terms
idea of bluegrass as such is evidenced by his scep- of the bands’ lack of authenticity.
ticism toward musicians who copied his sound, 15. These ‘scenes’ conform to Barry Shank’s notion of
most notably the Stanley Brothers (Rosenberg a scene as ‘an overproductive signifying commu-
1985, p. 85). Nonetheless, this imitation ‘proved nity’ (Shank 1994, p. 122).
that Bill’s music had gone beyond being the 16. In this respect, the following portion of this study
sound of just one band. It was now a true, recog- resembles that of Farrugia and Swiss (2005), who
nizable genre’ (Smith 2000, p. 93). show how DJ discourse, as represented by online
5. The interview, transcribed and printed in debates, negotiates technological change within
Bluegrass Unlimited magazine in 1967, is reprinted electronic dance music communities. Similarly,
in Ewing (2000, pp. 33–46). Ahlkvist (2011) analyses online album reviews
6. Most of these writings are compiled in Goldsmith written by fans as a way of examining varying
(2004). definitions of progressive rock.
7. Generally speaking, hillbilly music refers to the 17. Examples of each include: (1) the Yahoo group
commercialised folk music of the rural south bgrass-chatbox-illinois for the Illinois/Chicago
that was recorded and marketed to a white audi- area and the Google group DCAB-L for the
ence during the second quarter of the 20th cen- Washington, DC area; (2) BANJO-L and
tury. Musicians considered part of this genre COMANDO for banjo and mandolin enthusiasts,
include Al Hopkins and the Hill Billies (con- respectively; and (3) the Yahoo group PeterRowan
sidered to be the origin of the term), Charlie for Peter Rowan fans and, interestingly, the
Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, Gid Yahoo group BlueGrassBoys, which is restricted
Tanner and the Skillet Lickers, and Uncle Dave to former members of Monroe’s band (as of
Macon. See Malone (1985, pp. 31–75). January 2011, this discussion group had 64
8. Witness, for example, the New Deal String Band’s members).
performance of ‘Love Potion No. 9’ at Carlton 18. All quotations from BGRASS-L are used here by
Haney’s 1971 Camp Springs festival, on the permission. I include the quotations exactly as
DVD Bluegrass Country Soul (2006). Adler (1979, they initially appeared, except for a few minor
pp. 630–3) documents members of the New edits in cases of obvious typographical errors
Grass Revival recounting how Monroe disap- and one adjustment to hyphenation and capitali-
proved of them, despite their open admiration sation at the request of the author.
for him and his music. 19. Indeed, a telling precedent exists for a festival chan-
9. The corollary in jazz discourse to this type of ging its name to reflect its relatively wide generic
revivalist essentialism is the ‘moldy fig’ phenom- scope. The annual ‘Strictly Bluegrass Festival’,
enon (Gendron 1995), in which purists who value which staged free concerts in San Francisco’s
relatively older forms (such as swing) rally against Golden Gate Park, featured some artists in 2003
contemporary ones (such as bebop). who are not traditionally associated with bluegrass,
10. Keir Keightley, in arguing how rock music was such as Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Willie Nelson.
able to employ folk ideology while simultaneously Hence, beginning with the 2004 festival, the organ-
being a product of mainstream culture, uses the isers changed the name to the ‘Hardly Strictly
idea of ‘Romantic authenticity’ to outline these Bluegrass Festival’.
types of ideals (Keightley 2001, p. 137). 20. Pete Wernick, personal interview, 14 November
11. Keil’s article is quoted in Middleton (1981), which 2006.
is also a critique of folk ideology. I would like to 21. Zbikowski refers to this as a ‘Type 2′ category,
thank Thomas Gruning for calling Keil’s com- although I find the term ‘classical’ as used by
mentary to my attention. Convincing as it may Lakoff (1987) more apt for present purposes.
seem to be to highlight the faults of this ideology, Marc Perlman uses the term ‘everyday structural-
it is also important to note how relatively well ism’ to describe the common, practical usage of
bluegrass satisfied it compared to contempora- classical categories even when non-classical cat-
neous country music genres, such as Western egories would more faithfully reflect the concepts
swing and honky tonk. Indeed, the adoption of at hand (Perlman 2004, pp. 20–21).
380 Joti Rockwell
22. Jon Weisberger made the suggestion to me (Goertzen 1996, pp. 359–61) and the mixture of
that the WIBA debate maintains its strength popular-contemporary and classic-bluegrass
because many fans construe bluegrass as sounds on her albums (Fenster 1993).
though it were a religion, meaning that blue- 24. For some bluegrass fans, not just live performance
grass entails a deeply held belief system (per- but solely microphone-assisted live performance
sonal interview, 18 December 2006. See also is a necessary condition for category membership.
Weisberger 2011). This notion of genre func- In a revealing exchange on BGRASS-L in 2005,
tioning like a religion recalls Daniel Cavicchi’s one discussant dismissed Kraus’s music as not
examination of people who experience a ‘con- being bluegrass because her band supposedly
version’ to Bruce Springsteen fandom had pickups wired into their instruments. Band
(Cavicchi 1998, pp. 42–59). member Ron Block replied by describing in detail
23. Neil Rosenberg and Charles Wolfe (2007, p. 231) how few of the band’s instruments in fact
refer to ‘I’m Goin Back to Old Kentucky’ as a included such wiring.
‘chestnut from Monroe’s glory years at 25. Instead, this tag seems to derive from classic rock,
Columbia’. Krauss, on the other hand, has a since the key, rhythm and fingering technique for
long history of balancing traditional and progress- this passage are strikingly similar to the guitar
ive approaches to music, as evidenced by her introduction for ‘Listen to the Music’ by the
Texas-style contest fiddling as an eleven-year-old Doobie Brothers.
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Discography
Bluegrass Country Soul, dir. Albert Ihde. Time Life Records, M19264. 2006
Alison Krauss and Union Station, ‘Every Time You Say Goodbye’, Every Time You Say Goodbye. Rounder, 0825.
1992
Bill Monroe, ‘I’m Going Back to Old Kentucky’, 16 Gems. Columbia/Legacy, 53908. 1996

What Is Bluegrass Anyway? Category Formation Debate and The Framing of Musical Genre

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What Is Bluegrass Anyway? Category Formation Debate and The Framing of Musical Genre

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Popular Music (2012) Volume 31/3. © Cambridge University Press 2012, pp.

What is bluegrass anyway?

The idea of bluegrass and the WIBA debate

1. Bluegrass is hillbilly music, played by professional, white, Southern musicians, primarily

Although it highlights an important connection to Southern culture, Smith’s

individual artist’s performances and recordings.17 Consequently, BGRASS-L has the

Wernick’s comments highlight bluegrass music’s complex and sensitive connec-

Framing the genre debate

Table 1. Classical vs. prototype-based categories.

Category type Characteristics Examples

Classical Necessary and sufficient conditions ‘Odd numbers’

conceiving of a prototype. Considering genre according to frames and prototype

1. If it ain’t got a BANJO in it, it ain’t BLUEGRASS! (signature of Ed Bolton)

In all of the above comments, the category of bluegrass is in principle defined

Given that bluegrass breaks down as a classical category, it can be represented

Example 2. Partial frame for the category ‘bluegrass’.

Example 3a. Differing approaches to harmony at cadences.

Example 4. Guitar tag at end of ‘Every Time You Say Goodbye’.

The passage in question is the syncopated guitar accompaniment occurring at

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