The Portable Community

Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life

Robert Owen Gardner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781032174204
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351022040
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the various ways in which individuals use music and culture to understand and respond to changes in their natural and built environments. Drawing on over 15 years of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and participant observation, the author develops the thesis that the relationships, networks, and intimate forms of social interaction in the "portable" community cultivated at bluegrass festival events are significant cultural formations that shape participants' relationships to their localities. With specific attention to the ways in which the strength of these relationships are translated into meaningful sites of community identity, place, and action following devastating local floods that destroyed homes and businesses, displacing residents for years, The Portable Community: Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life sheds light on the strength of such communities when tested and under external threat. A study of the central role of arts and music in grappling with social and environmental change, including their role in facilitating disaster relief and recovery, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in symbolic interactionism, the sociology of music, culture, and the sociology of disaster.

1 “Bluegrass breakdown”

A brief social history of bluegrass music and festival culture

Bluegrass music emerged from a melding of musical forms circulating within the Appalachian mountain region around the turn of the 20th century. A novel invention at its inception, what came to be known as “bluegrass” by fans, performers, and the recording industry in the 1940s and 1950s grew out of traditional folk melodies and songs brought to Appalachia by settlers from the British Isles, Scotland, and Wales. Early pioneers of the genre like Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, The Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys, and Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys blended these traditional sounds with church gospel vocal styling, and musical elements borrowed from popular modern styles as varied as blues, jazz, swing, big band, ragtime, and minstrel music. Over time, bluegrass evolved into a distinct, original form of “traditional” American string band music that flourished in the upland South and industrial cities of the North in the mid-20th century and continues to be performed and recorded by musicians around the world today.

Adhering to this original formulation, traditional bluegrass is played exclusively on acoustic stringed instruments, including the five-string banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, upright bass and occasionally the Hawaiian resonator slide guitar or Dobro.¹ Country music sociologist Richard Peterson explains that the distinctive bluegrass sound consists of “the extremely fast ensemble playing of acoustic stringed instruments with the individual instruments—including the human voice used much like an instrument—exchanging solo choruses” (Peterson 1997: 213). Vocal arrangements include three or four-part vocal harmonies that are characterized by a “high lonesome” falsetto tenor, often sung with a distinct nasal twang characteristic of Appalachian and southern regional dialects.

Modeled after the primitive technology of its time, traditional bluegrass bands rely on minimal sound amplification or manipulation, and often choose to perform by circling around a single microphone to fully capture the tonal dynamics of the group. Soloing performers step up to the mic and propel their instruments and body to the forefront of the band to project above the backing musicians, who must retreat quickly to their place in the circle after their break. Much like a jazz combo, each player takes center stage during their solo performance and delivers his or her unique improvisation of the melody. While there are notable deviations from this model today in performance style, instrumentation, and sound technology, the traditional formula crafted by the early bluegrass string bands continues to anchor assessments of “real” or “authentic” bluegrass music among performers and audiences alike.

Old time string bands and “hillbilly” music

Before the emergence of bluegrass, early Appalachian string bands tapped into a large stock of traditional folk tunes, ballads, and lyrical conventions that were brought to the region by settlers of Scots-Irish heritage. These immigrants brought instruments and melodies from their homeland in the British Isles and passed along the traditional repertoire through familial networks and community performances in the Appalachian highlands. Often these musicians learned the large stock of traditional songs shared by their mother or father, or perhaps a fiddling relative or neighbor who performed traditional tunes at barn raisings, community festivals, church socials, pie suppers, picnics, or barn dances (Rosenberg 1985). Over time these “aural traditions” became firmly established in Appalachia and emerged as emblematic of the region’s social and cultural life. Socially and geographically isolated from the cultural influences of the burgeoning metropolis beyond, many of the established musical styles, songs, and melodies remained relatively intact and sheltered from the modernizing influences of urban culture well into the 20th century.² However, as commercial and economic development burst into remote mountain communities, the region’s people encountered forces that forever changed their social and cultural worlds.

In the early part of the 20th century, Appalachia became a hotbed of mineral and resource extraction, namely in the form of coal and timber. The mining operations, textile mills, and heavy industry in the larger regional centers pulled economically strapped landowners and farm workers down from the highland areas in search of stable employment. Extensive rail lines were also built through established villages and hollows to link these regional centers of commerce and to haul out the buried riches that lie beneath the mountain soil. Both developments introduced city dwellers and hill country residents to previously unfamiliar cultures and influences. As the hammers of African-American rail workers began to ring through the mountain highlands, their work songs reverberated through the hills as they laid the first rail lines into remote mountain hollows. The automobile and other forms of mass transit brought traveling minstrel and blues musicians to the region and introduced unfamiliar, syncopated African rhythms and instruments like the banjo. Over time, these influences shaped Appalachian folk traditions to create an altogether new synthesis of musical forms.

Post–World War I migration out of Appalachia and the decline in the family farm led many Appalachians to leave their home communities to seek employment in the industrial areas further north. With the onset of the Great Depression, displaced musicians would often travel around from place to place in search of a stable income and to showcase their musical skills. Their audiences frequently sought out forms of entertainment to remind them of home and loved ones left behind or perhaps to grapple with the harsh economic realities of the times (Roscigno and Danaher 2004). For many traveling musicians, factory or farm work was viewed as a “temporary expedient” when the music jobs played out (Peterson 1997: 111) as their preference was often to play music professionally over laboring on the factory floor. To supplement their sporadic factory incomes, these musicians would often hire out their skills by playing local dances and house parties at which they could each earn four or five dollars a night. If these musicians gained enough exposure and recognition performing, they would often be hired in support of traveling comedy or minstrel shows, or perhaps used as advertising entertainment for traveling snake oil salesmen who ventured from town to town hawking their herbal tonics or patent medicines.

Over time, acts like the Monroe Brothers, Fiddlin’ John Carson and his daughter “Moonshine Kate,” Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Carter Family gained admiration and became sought after by record and radio producers alike. When factory or farm work was sporadic, these early string bands would often travel from town to town by automobile and perform 15-minute slots at local radio stations, which would then be recorded and broadcast throughout the week. Though they would make barely enough money to pay for their food, lodging, and gas money for the next stop on their radio tour, they found that these radio programs were an excellent form of publicity that could land them future gigs or recording deals.

Fifty-thousand-watt clear channel transmitters pumped the early country music sounds across the country into both the hustle and bustle of the metropolitan city and remote mountain villages and hollows. During this time, the advent of country barn dance radio performances like the National Barn Dance featured on Chicago’s WLS radio or the Grand Ole Opry hosted on Nashville’s WSM radio, became popular forms of family entertainment showcasing these early string bands. These weekly programs provided many of the burgeoning professional musicians a stable and enjoyable form of employment.³ As their popularity rose, certain bands became nationally recognized as these programs reached network status (Cantwell 1984). Some even garnered enough national recognition to warrant cross-country excursions to perform for audiences in other major cities.

Intended initially to appeal to rural, working-class audiences, these programs were crafted by promoters as symbols of down-home community life as they often took on the feel of an extended family gathering. Described by folklorist Neil Rosenberg (1985) as “the dramatic equivalent of an idealized family ‘get together’” (57), these variety shows featured performances by prominent hillbilly string bands and polished semi-professional musicians, interspersed with skits and comedy acts. Pumped into the parlors and living rooms across the country, this cross-fertilization of mountain and city life provided a market for city dwellers who were fascinated with rural life and folk culture they never experienced directly as well as newcomers seeking to reconnect with a world and culture they left behind.

Seeking new commercial markets, record producers began pursuing the “authentic” mountain sounds of Appalachian fiddlers and string band ensembles to attract the growing number of displaced rural refugees who joined the droves of immigrants and working classes in the industrial workforce congregating in cities further north (Peterson 1997; Rosenberg 1985). This growing market for rural Appalachian vernacular music, then referred to as “hillbilly” or “old-time” by record producers and radio hosts, referenced the diverse and wide-ranging mixture of religious, dance, popular, and folk music that began to seep slowly into national consciousness. In its formative years, old-time music appealed mostly to blue-collar workers, farm families, and other members of the rural working class. However, many in the upper crust of metropolitan culture loathed the growing popularity of hillbilly music, “seeing it as a constant reminder of the rustic rural past contrasting sharply with the sophisticated and classy urban image to which they aspired” (Peterson 1997: 27). Even though record producers themselves also loathed this painfully “lowbrow” music, a genre they perceived as culturally backward and “hayseed,” they found that this traditional mountain music was among the most profitable and sought after in their record catalogs and therefore continued to market it (Peterson 1997).

The birth of bluegrass: Music of longing and displacement

In the fall of 1939, after breaking off his duo performances with his brother Charlie, Bill Monroe brought a new string band lineup to audition at the Grand Ole Opry. Immediately impressed with their reception, program producers approached Monroe and his evolving band—the Bluegrass Boys—and offered them a permanent spot on the show. However, it wasn’t until 1945 when Monroe (mandolin) cultivated his legendary lineup featuring Lester Flatt (guitar) and Earl Scruggs (five-string banjo). Unlike anything listeners had heard before, the syncopated three-finger picking style of Scruggs’ banjo playing, the lightning fast, streamlined ensemble playing, and their polished stage persona propelled Monroe’s band into the limelight. Bucking the hayseed stereotype of earlier hillbilly string bands, Monroe required his bandmates to dress in sharp formal suits, jodhpur trousers, and cowboy hats to create an image of stoic sophistication. Though no one was calling this music “bluegrass” at the time, the genre as we know it today evolved from this formative lineup.

From its inception, the formal elements of the original “bluegrass sound” became synonymous with the characteristic template Monroe, Flatt, and Scruggs established. It wasn’t until record executives and radio and concert promoters needed a label for this novel form of American string band music—named for Monroe’s iconic backing band and his native home of Kentucky—that the name “bluegrass” gained cultural currency. Even today, fans, performers, and record and festival producers battle over the distinctions between “real” or “traditional” bluegrass and its more progressive offshoots by assessing the extent to which a particular band conforms to the original Bluegrass Boy mold.

The highly polished and streamlined musical style of early bluegrass music appealed to new urban audiences. It referenced the rural social and cultural world to which many displaced Appalachians longed to return without resorting to parody or caricature in representing rural people or their cultural practices (Cantwell 1979).⁴ In this way, bluegrass resonated both with rural populations, urban émigrés who felt a longing for lost home, family, or love left behind when they moved to the city as well as city folks longing for authentic forms of culture and community in a rapidly changing world. As a popular entertainment of the time, the “universal” appeal of bluegrass songs symbolized for many the deeply held places, traditions, and ways of living that were fading from direct experience for those displaced from home and community.

In the early 20th century, rapid industrialization ravaged the Appalachian frontier; entire mountain hollows and homesteads were plowed under to make way for extensive rail systems, or were laid bare by mining and deforestation. Hard economic times forced many family farms out of business, pushing many young men to travel alone to the industrialized North to support their families or perhaps, to “ramble” and experience the intrigue and mystery of city life. As acres of land holdings were sold to northern-based entrepreneurs and corporations for coal and timber extraction, miles of rail line were laid through existing towns and communities. These once isolated mountain hollows became a hotbed of natural resource development and the places that mountaineers once called home were changing drastically day by day.⁵

As sociologists Vincent Roscigno and Bill Danaher so carefully demonstrate in The Voice of Southern Labor, songs played by early string bands provided displaced mountaineers and mill workers a narrative through which they could understand and cope with their present conditions, the lyrics of which became the “voice” of southern labor around which the Piedmont and other textile strikes revolved (Roscigno and Danaher 2004). As a social outlet for disgruntled mine and mill workers, labor songs were often performed by impromptu string band groups at union meetings and other gatherings. Musicians like Bill Monroe got their start singing and playing in these informal gr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The quest for community in bluegrass festival culture
• 1 “Bluegrass breakdown”: A brief social history of bluegrass music and festival culture
• 2 “What have they done to the old home place?” : Family, home, and kinship in the “New” American West
• 3 Welcome home I: Building place in the bluegrass festival camp
• 4 Welcome home II: Performing place in the vernacular village
• 5 The portable community: Inclusion, intimacy, and simplicity in bluegrass festival life
• 6 “The festival world is so much better than the real world”: Performing self and identity in festival spaces
• 7 “We’ve got grit”: Community resilience, displacement, and rebuilding after the flood
• Conclusion: The quest for community and place in the New West
• Appendix A: Methodological notes
• Appendix B: Festival performance as social drama: The interactionism of Kenneth Burke
• Index