Many of you may be familiar with The Prism Coffeehouse in Charlottesville, VA. It is one of the area’s premier listening rooms, and has been home to some great bluegrass concerts. I just recently discovered that the venue has a blog associated with it now. The blog is called Prism News and is run by Sean Tubbs, the webmaster for The Prism’s main website. Most of the blog posts seem to be informational about upcoming concerts, but there are a few that diverge from that path. Some are historical, giving background information about artists that are performing at the Prism. Others are more opinion driven.
The most recent post, A Bluegrass Primer is one of these. It’s an interesting read about what exactly bluegrass is. Here’s an excerpt:
Bluegrass, however, has the unenviable distinction of also being America”s most widely misunderstood, and “misunderestimated” (sorry, but I love that word!) form of American music, and the confusion is not helped by mainstream music writers who, most often coming from a pop-rock orientation, use Mr. Monroe”s handy two-syllable term to characterize almost anything that involves a banjo, fiddle or mandolin. This is as great a disservice to the disciplined, highly-skilled musicians who play this music as it is to the uninitiated listeners who may be easily misled into believing that they have experienced bluegrass when in fact they have not.
Visit the Prism News blog to read the whole thing.
