Maritime Bluegrass: the Local Meaning of a Global Music
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MARITIME BLUEGRASS: THE LOCAL MEANING OF A GLOBAL MUSIC by Daniel J. Andrews BA, St. Thomas University, 2007 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master's of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Graduate Academic Unit of School of Graduate Studies Supervisors: Peter G. Toner (St. Thomas University), PhD, Anthropology Daniel Downes, PhD, Information and Communication Studies Examining Board: Linda Eyre, PhD, Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies, Chair Peter Toner (St. Thomas University), PhD, Anthropology Daniel Downes, PhD, Information and Communication Studies Neil Rosenberg (Memorial University of Newfoundland), PhD, Folklore This thesis is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK September, 2010 © Daniel J. 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Canada Abstract A thesis examining how it bluegrass-a thoroughly global form of music-is rendered locally meaningful in the Maritime bluegrass festival scene. Inspired by recent experimentations in ethnographic writing, this thesis examines particular aspects of the sociality and musicality of Maritime bluegrass festivals in order to show that these regional manifestations of a global form of music are rendered locally meaningful in two distinct ways: 1) through sustained, positive social interaction that fosters a sense of community, and 2) through the incorporation of elements of non-bluegrass musics that prove personally meaningful to Maritime festivalgoers. Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Drs. Peter G. Toner and Daniel Downes, both for their guidance throughout the process of researching and writing this thesis and for providing me with engaging employment as a research assistant. I would also like to thank both the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the University of New Brunswick for providing the funding that made the project possible to undertake. Last, but not least, I would like to thank the Maritime festivalgoers who participated in the research process and made it such a pleasant and memorable experience. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 CONTEXT. 7 1.2 THEORETICAL ORIENTATION & METHODOLOGY... 21 2.0 AN EVENING ATA MARITIME BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL 48 3.0 ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION 114 3.1 SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS 120 3.2 SOUND RELATIONSHIPS 147 3.3 CONCLUSION 165 4.0 REFERENCES CITED 174 APPENDIX A 178 CV iv 1.0 -INTRODUCTION "You can't play that Bill Monroe song; it's not bluegrass!" is something you might have heard if you tried to play 'It's Me Again Lord' at the weekly Bluegrass Friends jam sessions in New Brunswick's port city of Saint John. If you stepped up to the microphone to play this song with an accordion in hand, you may very well have been ejected from the building. However, the weekly bluegrass jam sessions where you might have experienced this came to an end at the end of the summer in 2008. There is a website and a blog1 published by the jam's coordinator dedicated largely to facilitating communication between jam participants, and much of the controversy that led to the jam's demise is publicly available on its discussion forums2. (At times, access to these online resources has been inconsistent so, as a precautionary measure, I have archived much of their content. Where relevant, some of that content will be made available on an accompanying supplementary disc?.) The premise of these jams was to get together to make traditional bluegrass music; to make what its coordinator and a select few of its participants referred to as real bluegrass music, which I understand to be synonymous with authentic bluegrass music. Ultimately, it seems that a few people striving for authenticity ended up making it difficult for others to participate in more personally 1 Bluegrass Friends website: http://www.bluearassfriends.com Bluegrass Friends blog: http://bluearassfriends.blogspot.com 2 Bluegrass Friends forums: http://bluearassfriends.com/forum 3 My concern with this particular jam and preserving the content of its website is not to criticize its coordinator and committee. Having not been there in person, I feel as though I cannot treat the issue with too heavy a hand; it is simply meant to serve as a rhetorical device to help frame the issues dealt with in this thesis. meaningful ways. One older fellow who is well known in the world of Maritime bluegrass4 said, 'They were trying to hold it to bluegrass. I went down a couple times and I think the third time I was there I was so confused as to what to play that I never got up, because it's hard to know in the traditionalists' mind what is bluegrass and what isn't." Apparently, the jam's strict rules simply proved too intimidating for some of its attendees, especially ones like this fellow, who admits to being delighted when bluegrass musicians play 'outside the box'. To be fair, there is a flip side to this coin. According to posts in the Bluegrass Friends forums, some people's desire to participate in personally meaningful ways (playing whatever songs they liked) made it difficult for those who wanted to play real bluegrass music to feel as though they were at a real bluegrass jam session. Nonetheless, in the case of Maritime bluegrass, there exists a happy medium between authenticity and hybridity. The first and most important rule5 of the jam sessions was that only bluegrass music was allowed to be played. The rules clearly stated that people guilty of breaking this rule consistently would simply be skipped over when their turn came to choose a song. However, defining exactly what constitutes 'real bluegrass music' (as the jam's coordinator and other committee members put it) is not an easy task. To this end, the four-person committee took it upon themselves to personally listen to and evaluate a list of over 2,400 popular songs to determine whether or not they constituted examples of traditional 4 Identity omitted at researcher's discretion. 5 Fig. 1.1 on supplementary disc 2 bluegrass music. What is interesting is that the process of evaluation was carried out without any concrete qualitative criteria. Whether or not a song was sufficiently bluegrass or not was almost entirely at the discretion of the committee's members (there were six very general criteria: 1) newgrass is not allowed, 2) set aside personal preferences, 3) no favouring of artists, 4) ignore song titles, 5) evaluate each song on its own merit, and 6) leave the feelings of other people out of the equation6). The guidelines also urge committee members to consider whether the vocal style employed is more country-like than it is bluegrass, implying that a country-like vocal aesthetic compromises the authenticity of the song in question. (This is particularly interesting since this study situates a country-like vocal aesthetic as a prominent feature of the Maritime bluegrass festival scene and, furthermore, as one that does not compromise the authenticity of the music.) The result of the committee's evaluations of songs was not only a list of acceptable songs7, but also a list of songs disallowed on the basis of not being sufficiently authentic bluegrass music?. In other words, people who did not play what a four-person committee considered to be authentic bluegrass would be marginalized in the Bluegrass Friends jam. Many of the songs listed as non-bluegrass songs straddle the line between country music and bluegrass music, while many others are a progressive form of bluegrass known as 'newgrass'. What is most interesting is the appearance of Bill Monroe's song "It's Me Again Lord" on the list of non- 6 Fig. 1.2 on supplementary disc 7 Fig. 1.3 on supplementary disc 8 Fig. 1.4 on supplementary disc 3 bluegrass songs. Since it was Monroe's use of the term 'bluegrass' to describe his own unique and inherently eclectic style of music that subsequently gave the genre its name in the first place, disallowing any of his songs seems to amount to a claim of being more Catholic than the pope.