North Texas Irish Festival

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	Bluegrass Has Green Roots The Appalachians are a 1,700-mile mountain chain that extends from Quebec to Alabama. In America's infancy, they provided a natural barrier to westward expansion, but once settled, the Appalachians became a harbor to cultures that had vanished in less remote areas. In 1567, a French explorer gave the mountain range its Choctaw Indian name, "Appalachee," which translated to, the "people on the other side". Appalachia described the central and southern regions of the chain, and the term became synonymous with poor folk enriched by a proudly traditional culture. The Scottish-Irish music of southern Appalachia was a powerful form of entertainment as folks gathered in the evenings to dance and socialize. In the first half of the twentieth century, talented families of musicians were getting air-time on radio stations, and this simple form of acoustic music was gaining in popularity. In this mountain society, a music called bluegrass was born and soon began to evolve. The "people on the other side" who created bluegrass were proud of their deep Anglo-Celtic roots, which the "high lonesome sound" was pegged. But the people that played this new music were children of 20th Century America too, and no matter how remote a mountain or valley they inhibited, outside influences visited in the form of sheet music, Victrolas, medicine shows, and in time, radio. There was a new swing in bluegrass music, and it came from an enthusiastic awareness of Black influences such as ragtime, blues, jazz, and gospel along with other facets of western swing, singing cowboys, and pop music of the time. The lure of fame and fortune started to transform the music as the use of electric instruments became popular on the airwaves. Families and teams began to fragment as members took different directions. There were those who insisted on maintaining the traditional sound. Chief among them was Bill Monroe, who's tireless effort and soaring popularity brought the pure form of country music to millions of people. As modern country music began to take shape, Bill Monroe and the "Bluegrass Boys" defined the intense high-pitched sound of modern bluegrass. Bluegrass music continues to evolve as it finds a niche in urban settings, but the traditional instrumentation (fiddle, bass fiddle, acoustic guitar, 5-string banjo, mandolin, and eventually dobro) remains the same. Bluegrass can be considered a kind of folk music, but its earliest artists were professional musicians and entertainers, not just weekend back-porch pickers. While bluegrass has been proclaimed "old as the hills", the fact of the matter is, many bluegrass historians agree it is maybe a decade older than rock and roll. The force that drove bluegrass was not one of cracker barrel or campfire sing-alongs but one of the competitive live radio business in the 1930s. Complex vocal harmonies and piercing high-register leads became trademarks of this new music, and its effect was electrifying. Soon hosts of Southern bands followed the lead of Bill Monroe, and by 1950, country music disc jockeys named the musical style bluegrass after Monroe's band, the Blue Grass Boys. It may be what we call bluegrass was one of those inevitable musical movements that would have happened regardless of who brought it. But few musical genres have ever been as closely identified with a single individual, as is bluegrass with Bill Monroe. He is called the music's father, and no one has dared dispute that paternity placed on him.	The North Texas Irish Festival is a production of the Southwest Celtic Music Association

Bluegrass Has Green Roots