Navigating Bluegrass Community on the Internet

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THE HIGH LONESOME WEB:

NAVIGATING BLUEGRASS COMMUNITY ON THE INTERNET

KATY E. LEONARD

B.M. BIRMINGHAM-SOUTHERN COLLEGE, 2003

M.A. UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK, 2004

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Music: Ethnomusicology at Brown University

Providence, Rhode Island

May 2011

This dissertation by Katy E. Leonard is accepted in its present form by the Department of Music as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. (signed and dated copy on file at Brown University)

Date______Jeff Todd Titon, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date______Marc Perlman, Reader

Date______Stan Zdonik, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date______Peter M. Weber, Dean of the Graduate School

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CURRICULUM VITAE

Personal

Born May 19, 1981 in Marietta, Georgia, U.S. A.

Education

M.A. in Ethnomusicology, University of Limerick, 2004

B.M. in Music Performance, Birmingham-Southern College, 2003

Teaching Experience

Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham, Alabama (2009-current) Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music, Department of Music Courses taught as instructor of record: Music of the World’s People Music in Everyday Life Literature and Language of Music Music History II Banjos, Blues, and Bayous: American Roots Music Music in Live Performance

Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (2007) Teaching Assistant, Department of Music Courses Assisted: The Changing Broadway Musical (with Rose Rosengard Subotnik)

Presentations

“From the High Lonesome Hills to Music Row: Tradition and Trade in Bluegrass Music” Southeast and Caribbean Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, March 2011 (Nashville)

“The International Bluegrass Music Association: A Twenty-First Century Guild?” American Folklore Society, October 2010 (Nashville)

“Fiddling Around: Navigating the Internet Bluegrass Community,” American Folklore Society, October 2008 (Louisville)

“Is the Grass Red or Blue: Bluegrass and Politics,” New England Chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology, April 2007 (Boston)

Grants and Awards

Brown University Graduate Fellowship (2008-2010)

Brown University Summer Research Fellowship (2006, 2007, 2009)

Academic Administration & Service

Director, Office of Interim and Contract Learning (2009-current) Birmingham-Southern College, Birmingham, Alabama

Planning Committee, American Folklore Society 2010 Conference, Nashville (2009- 2010)

Graduate Student Council, Brown University (2006-07) Music department representative

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost I would like to thank the members of the bluegrass community for welcoming me and for participating in my research. I am forever indebted to the members of this community for their kindness and willingness to share their thoughts and opinions. I would like to acknowledge my former colleagues at the IBMA, Dan Hays,

Nancy Cardwell, and Jill Crabtree, for their assistance with this project.

I am especially grateful for the guidance of my advisor Jeff Titon, whose wise insights and suggestions have proved invaluable. I would also like to thank Marc

Perlman and Stan Zdonik for their patience and guidance in this project.

I am sincerely appreciative of my colleagues and students at Birmingham-

Southern College, who have supported this project through encouraging words and deeds, with special acknowledgement going to Mark Schantz, Kathleen Rossmann,

Martha Ann Stevenson, Jim Cook, and Lester Seigel.

My dear friends and family have kept me centered throughout the research and writing of this work, and I would especially like to acknowledge Nancy Leonard, David

Leonard, Mary Claire Leonard, Dorothy Sharp Lamb, Elizabeth Claire Lamb, Brooxie

Carlton, Elizabeth Jones, Geoffrey Chew, and Andrea Maldonado.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations viii

Prologue 1

Chapter One Introduction 3

Chapter Two What Is Community? 21

Chapter Three Bluegrass Past and Present 39

Chapter Four A Community Built on Relationships 65

Chapter Five The “Virtual” and the “Real,” The Local and the Virtual: On/Offline Community Overlap 100

Chapter Six Text and Communication in Online Community 135

Chapter Seven Conclusion 156

Bibliographic Essay 170

Bibliography 173

Appendix 182

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1 Dailey and Vincent 50

Figure 2: Bluegrass Unlimited Cover, February 2010 54

Figure 3: BGRASS-L Archives 58

Figure 4: The Bluegrass Blog 61

Figure 5: MySpace 62

Figure 6: Facebook 63

Figure 7: SPBGMA jam session 66

Figure 8: SPBGMA jam session 66

Figure 9: Fort Christmas Bluegrass Festival, Florida 72

Figure 10: Soggy Mountain Bluegrass Festival, Arizona 72

Figure 11: The SteelDrivers, MerleFest 2009 75

Figure 12: Rhonda Vincent surrounded by Military Personnel, Awards 2006 116

Figure 13: U.S. Navy Band Country Current, Awards 2006 116

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PROLOGUE

My entrée into the bluegrass world came about in a strange fashion. I moved to

Limerick, Ireland in 2003 to pursue a Master’s degree in ethnomusicology, intending to focus my study on the Irish flute, and perhaps learn about Irish traditional music as a source of American music forms such as bluegrass. I did learn quite a bit about the Irish flute, but I very quickly and very unexpectedly became involved with the Irish bluegrass scene, first as a fan, then as a researcher. As an American from the Southeast, I was amazed that the people whose music I had come across the ocean to study were interested in and even passionate about the music of my own home. Of course, there are oft noted similarities and shared influences, but why were these people with such a rich musical tradition of their own playing and listening to bluegrass? I discovered that a bluegrass session could be found in many of the major cities across the country on any given week and that a number of festivals occurred throughout the country. I made contact with a few key members of the Irish bluegrass community, initially through the

Bluegrass Ireland website, and eventually came to change my research focus from the roots of bluegrass to the bluegrass that is currently being made in Ireland.

During my travels around the country to hear and interview bluegrass musicians, kind bluegrass musicians and fans welcomed me into their sessions and homes, and I truly felt part of their musical community. I have fond memories of having tea with Niall

Toner and his wife in their Bunclody home and hearing Niall tell the story of Bill Monroe’s visit to Ireland, during which Toner took Monroe on a walk through the fields to “survey

1 the territory.” I remember joining the Lee Valley String Band in the Corner Pub in Cork, where pints were on the house for the musicians (and ethnomusicologists), following up the session with a late night viewing of Down from the Mountain with banjo-picker Mick

Daly and a hammered dulcimer player from California.

I was initially drawn to the novelty of hearing the music of my homeland in another country, but I kept my interest over the years because of the feeling that I belonged in the community surrounding the music. When I returned home to Georgia, I sought out local bluegrass festivals and communities and maintained my Irish bluegrass connections through email communication, subscribing to the Bluegrass Ireland electronic newsletter which later became the Bluegrass Ireland blog. While completing my graduate work in Rhode Island, I kept up with the local and worldwide bluegrass community through online connections, local associations, and festival attendance, and I later held a two year position working with the International Bluegrass Music Association in Nashville, combining my passion for bluegrass music and community with my knowledge of online tools and communication. Through the years and the relocations, I have come to rely on the Internet as an essential part of my engagement with the bluegrass community – as a means of communing with both those bluegrass fans living across the street and those living across the globe.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The online bluegrass community is under continuous development, engaging with the Internet as front porch, classroom, and marketplace. Bluegrass music balances between tradition and modernity - some participants applaud the shift to online networks as a welcome way to connect with the global audience, while others bemoan high-tech bluegrass as heresy for departing from its unplugged, down-home image and face-to- face interactions. In this project, I explore the dynamic online bluegrass community, its possibilities and limitations, and how the new venue of the Internet is expanding and changing the context of bluegrass, potentially creating a new tradition in the process.

Bluegrass communities have developed around web sites, forums, and email, marked by regular communication, relationships developed over time, a group identity, shared interest (bluegrass), and shared space (the Internet). The bluegrass community has long been understood as a “statistical” or “virtual” community, including fans who consider themselves part of a community connected through a passion for music despite never meeting in person. The development of bluegrass community online continues and broadens this long-standing idea of “virtual” bluegrass community, allowing people to participate in bluegrass community “virtually” over the Internet.

In this study, I investigate how online opportunities and tools have developed a new space for bluegrass community and the role this online environment plays in the overall bluegrass music community (what Philip Nusbaum calls the experiential domain

3 of Bluegrass) by exploring the new and growing Internet bluegrass-focused sites and forums and the communities surrounding them. I consider the tools of community and the people who participate in them, and I interrogate what makes this group of people a community. I analyze the development and growth of this Internet community, its relationship to the offline bluegrass community, and the changes it may provoke in bluegrass culture as a whole.

When I speak of “bluegrass music,” I refer to the mostly acoustic ensemble music of vocals plus stringed instruments: banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, upright bass, and sometimes resophonic guitar (more commonly called Dobro). Vocals usually include intense harmonies, and in a male-led group, a high tenor vocal line above the sung melody. In this dissertation, I do not focus on “defining” bluegrass, but I offer this description to give a picture of the type of music this community surrounds.1 When I speak of bluegrass community, either online or offline, I refer to musicians and fans

(many of whom are musicians themselves), as well as to others in the bluegrass music industry, such as agents or record producers.

Bluegrass “communities” began as associations in the mid twentieth century with localized, regionally based centers of shared musical interest, mainly in southern

Appalachian, rural areas, but also in Northern and Midwestern industrial areas where these rural southerners migrated seeking employment.2 In the late 1950s/1960s, the community grew to include those who had experienced the music through festivals and recordings, through radio shows such as the Grand Ole Opry, the folk revival, and word

1 Bluegrass is a well-known musical genre whose precise definitions have been refined over many years. Readers seeking this kind of treatment should refer to Neil V. Rosenberg’s Bluegrass: A History, Robert Cantwell’s Bluegrass Breakdown, Thomas Goldsmith’s A Bluegrass Reader, or Stephanie Ledgin’s Homegrown Music. Readers are encouraged to listen to the recordings of Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys from 1946-1948 to hear the “classic” bluegrass sound. 2 I will consider the meanings of community extensively in a later chapter, but by “bluegrass community” in this chapter I simply mean “collection of individuals connected by a strong interest in bluegrass.”

4 of mouth. Bluegrass-centered communities surfaced in the American northeast and west as well as in international locations such as the British Isles, Australia, Japan, and the Czech Republic. My previous study of Irish bluegrass focuses on a subset of this international community in greater detail. Regional associations developed to connect bluegrass fans in particular areas. The International Bluegrass Music Association

(IBMA) was formed in 1985 as a trade organization to connect and support musicians, agents, managers, broadcasters, journalists, record producers, promoters, educators, and anyone else involved in bluegrass music in a professional capacity. These local associations and the IBMA continue to provide local and global connection and a sense of community to bluegrass audiences. These local associations sometimes became small communities, while the overall bluegrass fan base was perceived as the

“bluegrass community.”

Over the past few years, the Internet has also become a central location for building and maintaining bluegrass community. Email lists (listservs) provide an outlet for discussion, blogs enable quick display of news and reviews, audio and video services allow performers to present music, and social networking sites encourage bluegrass fans to find and connect with each other.3 The online bluegrass community (or communities) enabled by these tools is not constricted by the barrier of geography. The

Internet has become a new and increasingly prevalent venue for bluegrass interaction, adding to the roles formerly solely occupied by jam sessions, festivals, associations, and concerts, as well as radio and albums. The Internet has altered and enhanced the bluegrass community in some increasingly noticeable ways. It has made possible the creation of a new community, alternative or supplementary to the already established face-to-face community, extending the “statistical” community into a closer-knit group. It

3LISTSERV™ is a trademarked software application currently owned by L-Soft. Both email lists referred to in this study, BGRASS-L and IBMA-L use actual LISTSERV™ software, so I will use the terms “email list” and “listserv” interchangeably in this text.

5 has introduced new faces and ears to bluegrass, particularly among the younger generation (approximately age twenty-five and younger), and it has also facilitated the spread of the music globally. The increasing use of the Internet for bluegrass music connections has led to dialogue on ideas of old and new, change and stagnation, and the future of the music as a traditional and a commodified art form.

Bluegrass community was established pre-Internet, and the intersections of online and offline community are of interest to any scholar who acknowledges the influence of technology on music and on community. Uniquely, bluegrass is perceived as a folk form in the public imagination – revered as “real”4 and steeped in visions of a rural home and unplugged acoustic music played in the outdoors. This image adds an interesting counterpart to online communication, which is or can be plugged in, electric, distanced, isolated, virtual, and high-speed. How does a community prized for its “real” person to person interactions translate to the computer-mediated, “virtual” world?

Acknowledging that there are many people in the bluegrass world who are disconnected from the Internet and thus from the Internet bluegrass community, my research focuses mainly on those who are logged in. A thoughtful look into the concept of online community raises a number of questions. Are tools – blogs, forums, social networking sites – a community themselves or do they merely enable community? What does membership in a community require? Who is included and excluded in such communities and how does this affect the concept of bluegrass community at large?

Who defines what community is and what it is not? This dissertation discusses what the

Internet bluegrass community is, what it does, and how it affects the construction and experience of bluegrass music and culture. Answers to these questions are

4 IBMA’s publicity campaign in 2006 encouraged potential fans to “discover what’s real, discover bluegrass.”

6 fundamental to any inquiry into bluegrass communities, and only after the nature of these communities is established can we begin to make claims about their meanings.

Community is a key concept in this study, and here I will attempt here to delineate (briefly) how I interpret “community” in this work. My working definition, as it specifically relates to online bluegrass community, is “a group of people with at least one similar interest (bluegrass), who derive meaning from involvement/participation in shared online interaction.” As such, a blog is, in general, a tool of or for community, but the group of regular interactive posters to that blog may constitute an actual community. An electronic mail list can be a community if members share interaction, regularly participate, and gain meaning from that interaction and participation. I would consider

“lurkers” (those who read, but do not post or participate in discussions) to be members of the community if, by consistent reading of the list they themselves believe they are part of the community and gain meaning from it. Social networks and new media outlets can also be tools of community (if used as a public relations vehicle or not used to build and maintain relationships) or a community themselves (if interaction occurs and relationships develop).

Bluegrass Music on the Internet

Electronic mailing lists (listservs) continue to serve as a place of community for some bluegrass fans. BGRASS-L, the most popular bluegrass-related listserv, provides its members with news, information, historical facts, gossip, and an opportunity to debate. Anyone can join, and like many listservs, most of the members are “lurkers”

(people who read messages but do not participate in discussion) only. A few participants post regularly, speculations abound, and opinions are often heatedly debated. IBMA-L is a members-only listserv populated by IBMA members, both professional and fan. Only a small percentage of membership belongs to the listserv,

7 and an even smaller percentage regularly participates in discussion. Those who do participate constitute a communal gathering of fans who find this a meaningful shared space for community. Other bluegrass-related email lists are available, such as

BLUEGRASS-L, FIDDLE-L, and BANJO-L.

Social Networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have also become a source of bluegrass community within the larger, fragmented society these spaces represent.

These sites are constantly changing, and so are the ways in which bluegrass fans can create a space for community within the already established society. These web-based neighborhoods hold potential for developing bluegrass community. Many bands and industry professionals have Facebook as well as MySpace pages. Younger groups, such as the Infamous Stringdusters and Cadillac Sky, take advantage of this medium’s potential with active Facebook and Myspace pages engaging fans with constantly updated photos and videos, member-written blog postings and fan comments.

Bluegrass-specific social networking sites, such as GrassSpace, have also been developed. These are smaller and less well-known among the bluegrass community and online community at large. Other online forums include iBluegrass, CyberGrass,

Mandolin Café, and Fiddle Hangout.

Another site of bluegrass encounter on the Internet is the Bluegrass Blog.

Updated multiple times a day, the Blog is a central source of news, reviews, opinions, and sometimes gossip. Births and deaths, band lineup changes, discussions on digital media, and links to relevant articles all fill the pages of the blog. Many in the online bluegrass community, particularly those within the music industry, refer to the Bluegrass

Blog as an important source of information. The blog also has a user-populated discussion board, “The B” and allows and encourages comments on postings. This instantaneous blog format is a significant change from earlier print-media bluegrass news sources, which have a turnaround time of three to four months. Other blogs

8 include the CMT Bluegrass Blog and The Bluegrass Journal. Bluegrass Now and the bluegrass friendly No Depression also transitioned from print to online-only, with

Bluegrass Now folding after less than a year and No Depression continuing to regularly post new articles and host an online archive.

Any bluegrass band with a sound and video recording equipped computer and an

Internet connection can post a music video on the web (predominantly on YouTube) and can compete for viewer attention with mass-market acts on the same network. Niche genre (like bluegrass) videos/songs/artists that would rarely or never appear on MTV,

VH1, CMT, or GAC are uploaded and watched daily on YouTube and other video hosts.

Viewers may enjoy bluegrass videos alongside videos from any other genre. Bluegrass bands have taken advantage of these new Internet media opportunities in seeking to connect to fans and in simply sharing their music for the joy of it.

Participation in online bluegrass community activity can be influenced by economic factors, such as rising fuel costs. The ease and increasing affordability of

Internet access and the availability of “live” performances on venues such as YouTube might encourage some to stay home and watch streaming or prerecorded concert footage, rather than bearing the expense of traveling to a festival or concert. Someone might first be exposed to bluegrass via the Internet or may be able to be involved in the online community while unable to participate in person due to health or geographic limitations. The Internet also creates a new stream of communication for those in the bluegrass world, allowing for the quick spread of news and opinion and a feeling of artist accessibility through email, blog, and video posting.

Historical Background

Over the past ten years, a fundamental shift has occurred in the production, listening, and consumption of music. As Steve Jones states in “Music and the Internet,”

9 few technological transitions have had as much across-the board impact on cultural, business, and industrial processes as development of the Internet into a global commercial medium” (Jones 2000: 219-220). Mark Coleman goes so far as to assert that “in the twenty-first century, radical advances in music technology threaten to overshadow the music itself” (Coleman 2005: xiii). These points of evolution in music consumption have occurred throughout history. For the upper middle classes, a shift occurred in the fifteenth century when printing presses enabled hymn books and sheet music to become affordable and available, thus allowing those with access to a piano and printed music to play music in the home and allowing geographically disparate people to learn the same tunes. A later transition affecting all socioeconomic categories occurred in the late nineteenth century when the phonograph entered the homes of ordinary individuals, allowing those who might never leave a particular region to hear music from all over the world. The first mass-market record player, the Victrola, was created in 1906, influenced by Emil Berliner’s 1887 invention, the gramophone.

Throughout the twentieth century, families and neighbors might gather around the record player, sharing in the music listening experience and absorbing the tunes and styles represented on the recordings.

In the early twentieth century, radio and television ushered in a new era of music enjoyment, allowing a variety of music and programming to be heard wherever the signal could be intercepted. It was during this era and through the means of radio and records, that bluegrass began as a viable commercial genre, with a connection, if contrived, to what one might consider “the folk.” In “Music on the Move: Traditions and Mass Media,”

Krister Malm states that in order to sell musical recordings, companies “had to release records with musics of different ethnic groups, geographical areas and social strata”

(Malm 1993: 339). Early twentieth century race records and hillbilly records sold to

“niche” markets demonstrate this claim. Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys appealed

10 mostly to southerners and displaced southerners early on, though from the 1960s forward (and even earlier in some locations), people outside the obvious ethnic, geographic, or socioeconomic category grew as a bluegrass fan base. Rather than choosing to be involved with music familiar to them, some people increasingly sought out new and different sounds. The availability of radio and television enabled the spread of music styles even more than international tours of the musicians themselves.

Later, eight-tracks (1960s), cassette tapes (1960-70s), and finally compact discs

(1980s) became the primary means of music consumption, producing a culture of bootleg concert recordings and tape trading. Radio and television maintained a hold on public interest, but these mediums were not as important as they once were. Live performance often came second to the musical artifact of the album or single. John

Duffey, mandolinist for the D.C. based progressive bluegrass band the Country

Gentlemen, reflects upon bootleg taping and the difference in quality between vinyl and tape in a 1967 letter to Bluegrass Unlimited titled “So You Don’t Like the Way We Do It

(or Damn Your Tape Recorder)”, accusing fans of making it difficult to earn a living as a bluegrass musician because of fan taping and borrowing.

In the early 1990s, the music world once again began to change, with the introduction of the Internet for public use. Music began a transition to the Internet, and away from prerecorded albums, with the introduction of Napster in 1999. A new music experience was born, digitally replacing home made song compilations and tape trading with an unlimited, unprecedented level of openness and availability. Coleman reports that in 2001, the New York Times claimed that blank compact disc sales outnumbered recorded compact disc sales (Coleman 2005: xv). Between 1999 and today, this online music world has evolved from a fringe, illegal, cutting-edge culture to one increasingly seen as the predominant mode of musical discourse. However, many bluegrass fans today continue to purchase compact discs and even cassettes, perhaps more so than

11 fans of other genres. Over time, the shift in music consumption will more strongly affect the bluegrass world as it has other genres. For now, technology has impacted the community surrounding the music (the music culture) perhaps more than the music itself.5

Research Experience

During my M.A. studies I spent a year, 2003-2004, in Ireland researching the idea of home as it relates to Irish bluegrass. Much of the preliminary research was done via the Internet, utilizing the Bluegrass Ireland webpage – which has since evolved into the Bluegrass Ireland Blog – as well as by making connections with resources by email.

At that point in time, the Internet was still growing as a worldwide network for community and information in the bluegrass world. My M.A. studies in Ireland introduced me to a network of international contacts whom I find invaluable not only as friends and collaborators, but as sources for expanding my studies outside of the American-centric view of bluegrass community.

I have been a continuous member of the online bluegrass community since

2003. I have been a subscriber to the electronic mailing lists BGRASS-L since 2003 and

IBMA-L since 2006. I check the Bluegrass Blog daily and I regularly search YouTube,

MySpace, and Facebook for bluegrass profiles and videos. Outside of my two years working with the IBMA, I consider the online bluegrass community to be my primary bluegrass-related community.

I have also participated in and continue to participate in “offline” bluegrass community, primarily through festival attendance. Festivals I have attended include

5 Readers interested in the history of recorded sound should look to the readings listed in this section as well as Paul Théberge’s Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology (1997) and Greg Milner’s Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music (2010).

Bluegrass Fan Fest and SPBGMA in Nashville, TN; the Boston Bluegrass Union (BBU)

Winter Joe Val Festival near Boston, MA; MerleFest in Wilkesboro, NC; and the Rhythm and Roots Festival in Kilkenny, Ireland. I consider myself a fan and a participant observer, though my participation often occurs through volunteering at events rather than playing an instrument, as I do not play a bluegrass instrument, myself.

I worked for the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) in Nashville first as an intern and then as a full-time staff member from June of 2006 through June of

2009, though I am no longer employed by the organization. As an IBMA staff member, I actively participated in the bluegrass industry as a whole and in IBMA programs and activities in particular. I was involved in the planning and running of the World of

Bluegrass events between 2006-2009, serving as an attendee and volunteer in 2010.

The World of Bluegrass consists of three events: a business conference, awards show, and fan festival. I was a class member of Leadership Bluegrass 2008 while serving as a staff member in preparing for and assisting in the program. I participated in Board activities and meetings as a non-voting but opinionated (and uniquely young and female) staff member. As a staff member, I had the opportunity to use the extensive resources available – access to bluegrass artists, audiences, and other professionals, a sizable music library, and an archive of publications and periodicals including Bluegrass Now,

Bluegrass Unlimited, International Bluegrass, and Bluegrass Music Profiles. My role also provided me with some perceived authority as a “leader” in the bluegrass community and an awareness of events and news in the bluegrass world.

Methodology

I undertook the research for this study predominantly as a participant-observer in both the “real” world and virtual bluegrass communities. I conducted individual interviews and an online survey of participants in Internet bluegrass communities: fans,

13 bloggers, listserv participants, social networkers, and creators of new media. I interviewed people involved in both the production and consumption of each area of

Internet bluegrass community. These interviews were conducted both formally and informally, in person and over email. The majority of my interviewing was completed via email correspondence, as seemed appropriate for a project focusing on Internet communication. I supplemented the written interview structure with in person contact and interviews with fans and professionals whom I had access to on location in

Nashville. Questions asked were intended to seek out what changes have occurred in the overall bluegrass community through the introduction of an active, widespread online community. Questions included: Are participants within the online community involved in any bluegrass communities offline? How do they participate online and/or offline? Does participation seem to be affected by demographic influences? What constitutes a community and what is only a tool of community?

I observed the BGRASS-L and IBMA-L listservs for seven years and four years respectively, and perused the archives of both lists, particularly focusing on the topics discussed, the number of active participants and their involvement in bluegrass

(professional or fan, musician or non-musician), and how these lists are monitored or mediated. I also regularly read the online publications Bluegrass Blog, Bluegrass

Journal, and CMT.com, seeking out what types of topics were covered, the timeline of information presented (how quickly or slowly articles are posted), the format of each publication, and how these might constitute, develop, or aid community. I searched for and observed bluegrass-related content and individual profiles on MySpace and

Facebook, noting the ways in which these social networking tools are used to create or seek community among bluegrass artists and fans.

Virtual Ethnography

Increasingly, ethnomusicological scholars are becoming open to the idea of virtual fieldwork, though many maintain reservations. In the foreword to the Second

Edition of Shadows in the Field, Bruno Nettl acknowledges that many ethnomusicologists today take advantage of the Internet as a research tool and supplement to face-to-face communication. Acknowledging that some ethnomusicological scholars such as René Lysloff and Kiri Miller have focused on

“virtual” realms of study, Nettl refers to Timothy Cooley, Katherine Meizel, and Nasir

Syed’s chapter from the same text “Virtual Fieldwork: Three Case Studies”, emphasizing the “need to embrace virtual worlds as means to an end, namely, the goal of studying real people making real music” (Nettl 2008:19).

As my own research examines the overlap between on and offline, my field is both the Internet and physical realms of bluegrass experience, such as festivals, association meetings, and casual fan conversations. Though, as Nettl acknowledges, the virtual field now plays an increasing role in ethnomusicological research, few publications are available on the topic of virtual ethnography as it relates to music culture. The topic has been actively discussed and written about in anthropological and sociological circles, and thus many of my scholarly influences have come from these areas. Arturo Escobar’s 1994 article “Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture” is an early reflection on ethnographic research online. A number of articles dealing with cyberculture and virtual ethnography have been published in journals of anthropology and sociology beginning in the 1990s. Ethnomusicology, a smaller field, has presented several articles dealing with music and technoculture and music and the Internet, including Jeff Titon’s “Hypertext and Ethnomusicology” (1994),

Steve Jones, “Music and the Internet” (2003), and René Lysloff and Leslie Gay’s Music and Technoculture (2003). None of these texts explicitly deal with online research and

15 ethnography nor do they address the ethical and practical issues specific to online research. René Lysloff’s “Music Life in Softcity: An Internet Ethnography” specifically addresses virtual research and ethnography, however, notably, the article was published in Cultural Anthropology rather than a journal of ethnomusicology. I should note that the annual conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology has included a number of papers addressing ethnomusicology and the Internet, though few of these papers have made their way to publication.

There is much overlap between ethnomusicology and anthropology as well as sociology and culture studies in our fieldwork methods, but the study of music/culture online presents unique questions and difficulties. Music is freely available online both legally and illegally. How does an ethnomusicological researcher obtain permission to record or use a recording when the “owner” may not be the performer? How does a scholar obtain consent – or does a scholar obtain consent – when email list archives are available to the public? In my own study, I chose to err on the side of caution, requesting consent whenever possible.

Studies seem to be published daily in the mainstream press on the subject of how the Internet is affecting (or has affected) personal relationships. The most recent,

Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From

Each Other, contrasts earlier breathless reports of the Internet’s ability to connect people with the current reality of people choosing to communicate in a mediated way (text messaging, email, virtual chat) rather than face-to-face or even voice-to-voice. Other reports, such as Lev Grossman’s The Connector: How Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg rewired our world and changed the way we live, an expansion of Zuckerberg’s TIME magazine’s 2010 Person of the Year profile, examines and even promotes the benefits of online social networking as a means for people to grow closer to one another.

Samuel M. Wilson and Leighton C. Peterson acknowledge the “ephemeral nature of the new media, the often elusive and ambiguous constructions of individual and collective identities mediated by these technologies, and the problem of gaining an ontological footing within rapidly obsolescing technologies” (Wilson and Peterson

2002:451). It is for this reason that I have chosen to focus heavily on bluegrass listservs which have existed in the same form for approximately twenty years, rather than social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, which change constantly. These sites deserve ethnomusicological study, as they play a significant role in music culture, and I hope that a scholar will soon undertake that task.

In “Life after Cyberspace” Philip Agre states that “the Internet is not growing apart from the world, but to the contrary is increasingly embedded in it” (Wilson and Peterson

2002:451). The concept of an embedded field, or fieldwork as everyday life, has also been discussed in anthropological and sociological circles, with the 1986 text Writing

Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography edited by James Clifford and George

Marcus leading the way. In the present day, “the field” in most cases lacks clearly defined boundaries. Fieldwork away from home is often not entirely immersive as technology continues to advance and spread. Many researchers have chosen to undertake fieldwork “at home” or at least near home, while others have served as workers or advocates in the field. In “‘Informants’ Who Come ‘Home,’” Sarah Pink discusses the new field of “everyday life,” in which the distinctions are blurred between field and home, personal and professional, informants and colleagues (Pink 1999:96).

Pink discusses the twenty-first century dilemma of intersections between research and everyday life, made even more complex when much of one’s work is undertaken electronically. My own email inbox is a combination of messages pertaining to research, work, and personal communication. My responses to these messages mix together and overlap – research, personal, and professional. Pink describes this concept of fieldwork

17 intermingled with other aspects of life as a “web of interconnected narratives” (Pink

1999:99). For this project, my methodological template involved maintaining a loose interpretation of what “the field” is – the Internet, Nashville, life.

Chapter Outline

Chapter one of the dissertation introduces the project. Chapter two presents definitions of “community” from a variety of fields, in an attempt to understand both the diversity of opinion on the subject and to provide a basis for the examination of online bluegrass community in the following chapters. This chapter includes the voices of a number of sociological scholars in addition to scholars from ethnomusicology, folklore, and anthropology.

Chapter three is a brief overview of the history of bluegrass and a discussion of bluegrass music in the twenty-first century, specifically bluegrass music on the Internet.

In this chapter, I discuss the longstanding relationship of bluegrass music with media, specifically magazines. The bluegrass community has been widely dispersed since the genre’s inception, and the community has been considered “virtual” or “statistical” long before the Internet was commonly used. In this chapter, I present the history of different venues for bluegrass community on the Internet, including email lists, social networking, and blogs.

Chapter four examines the connection between community and relationship in online bluegrass activity. The chapter examines the commonly repeated idea of bluegrass “family,” the individual and the group in bluegrass music and community, as well as ideas of bluegrass community membership, belonging, and boundaries.

Chapter five explores the overlap between on and offline bluegrass community and the concepts of virtual and real community. For many fans, the online world is simply a part of the overall bluegrass community, one of the many ways to connect with

18 other fans of the music. This chapter explores the differences and similarities between on and offline community activity and how the “virtual” bluegrass community may be considered part of the “real world” bluegrass community rather than an opposing force.

Chapter six examines the concepts of text and communication as they relate to online community. As online community activity primarily takes place through the written word, community norms and conversational cues must take place through text alone.

This chapter furthers the discussion of text and communication by examining ideas of age, anonymity, demographics and personality, as well as time and space.

Chapter seven furthers the discussion of Internet bluegrass community using the findings of previous chapters to reach conclusions about the nature of Internet community, how bluegrass may continue to develop online, and the potential benefits and pitfalls for the future of the Internet bluegrass community. I examine the ways in which the Internet both builds and breaks down community - what is gained and what is lost, as well as how Internet bluegrass community both meets and fails to meet the definitions of community presented in chapter two.

Scholarly Contributions

The “field” of the Internet and studies of musical technoculture are becoming more common in both ethnomusicology and folklore. In recent years a number of conference presentations have addressed Internet culture and music/folklore on the

Internet, however there are few recent publications on this topic, with Trevor J. Blank’s

Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World being the exception.

Specific to this study, bluegrass communities existed before the Internet, and the intersections of online and offline community/communities are of interest to any scholar curious about the influence of technology on music community. How does a community prized or even self-mythologized for its person to person interactions translate to the

19 virtual world? The meeting of two worlds, virtual and real, provides a way to explore how music genres and their surrounding communities evolve to meet the needs of the twenty-first century – the obstacles, outcomes, questions, and solutions.

I intend for this work to serve as a reference useful not only to bluegrass fans, but also to those of other “folk” or “folk-related” genres - musics that are independent, less commercially driven, and outside of the mainstream. Most writings on technoculture are obsolete within a few years, but they are valuable as resources and as documented histories of a place in time. In the immediate future, I hope that my text will provide a clearer picture of the intersection of on and offline music community and about those who participate in Internet community at this place in time. As technology changes, and the information within becomes outdated, I hope this work will provide documentation of change in a small music community: how bluegrass community affects and is affected by the Internet.

CHAPTER TWO

What is Community?

In order to begin to examine the bluegrass community today, one needs to be clear about what is meant by the term “community.” In ethnomusicology, the term

“music-culture” is commonly used to describe a group of people’s total involvement with music (Titon 2009:15-26). The word “community,” a key concept in the scholarship of sociology, anthropology, and ethnomusicology, differs from music-culture in the sense that community encompasses more extra-musical meanings. At its simplest definition, a community is a collection of people, linked by some thread – location/geography, interest, activity/practice, or identity/kinship. Likewise, music communities may be linked by geography, practice or interest, or cultural identity.

It seems that every contemporary scholar in the social sciences has an opinion of the definition of community. Ethnomusicologists regularly refer to “community” without stating precisely what they mean by the term. Scholars in other fields such as sociology, anthropology, and folklore have focused intensely on community and the definition of community. I will reference many scholars outside the realm of ethnomusicology throughout this text in order to encompass a variety of perspectives on the concept of community.

The word community has many associations and divergent uses in modern life, from the traditional village, to the larger “global community,” to “Community Supported

Agriculture,” to “community development.” The term is bandied about with regularity in

21 daily conversations and dialogues, and I am interested in understanding how people in the twenty-first century, particularly bluegrass fans, perceive their community – on and offline. Does the definition rest on physical markers, psychological perception, or a felt reality?

Definitions of Community

Definitions of community range from family unit to local village to a web address to an idea or perception. Defining elements of community may include shared/common experience(s), self-awareness, physical co-presence, solidarity, commitment, involvement, mutual interdependence, responsibility, respect, collective action(s), ties of affect, connectedness, loyalty, personal interest in other members, readiness to agree, unity over division, spirit, trust, regular interaction, communication, sense of belonging, emotional attachment, passion, sharing, interactivity, relationships developed over time, sense of security, cohesion, effectiveness, common expectations, help, shared values and goals, relationships, overlapping histories, language, self-regulation, and maintained boundaries.

Scholars have discussed the fact that the term community means something unique to different groups and individuals, emphasizing that there is no one, universally accepted, scholarly definition. Some scholars state that the term is an approximation, a word that has assumed and expanded meanings. “Community” is used loosely in vernacular speech and scholarly conversation, but needs its understood meaning to be made explicit whenever used by a new scholar. On the Common Craft blog, Lee

Lefever states that “the problem with the word community is that it’s a word that describes a reality that cannot be shared by everyone. Community means something different to nearly every person and changes based on context.”

Yi-Fu Tuan, a geographer, states that “at its simplest and most basic, it is the

22 nuclear family of parents and children...the extended family is the prototype of all communities” (Tuan 2002:309-310). In bluegrass, this extended family metaphor is especially relevant. Many bluegrass fans consider themselves part of the “bluegrass family,” attending festivals (“family reunions”) and participating in other family-like rituals, such as sharing food or caring for ill members.

Raymond Plant asserts that scholars “seem to base their notions of community on the model of the English village, a form of social organization that was beginning to vanish by the end of the eighteenth century” (Plant 1974:27). The bluegrass festival, though temporary, is similar to the English village, but the overall bluegrass community is much too dispersed and fluid to fit that definition. A related definition from the 1998

Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition, states that a community is “a relatively small, isolated center with a stable population, in which all economic and social services necessary to life can be maintained...one of the oldest forms of human social organizations” (Connor 2002).

The Encyclopedia Americana’s definition describes community as similar to a small town, a rare type of existence to achieve in the twenty-first century American reality. The bluegrass community is relatively small (though larger than the historical

English village). The population is somewhat stable – many, perhaps most, fans are lifelong, though some fans’ interest is short lived. All services necessary to life are not contained within the bluegrass community, though it could be argued that they are present at larger bluegrass festivals. The bluegrass community in some ways seeks to recreate the idea or feel of a small town, through the interactions between fans as well as through the lyrics of the genre’s songs.

Many smaller bluegrass communities, as well as the overall bluegrass community, would be considered relational communities. Communities are developed and maintained through relationships between the members, as discussed in chapter four of

23 this work. In this type of relational community, the level of the person to person ties determines the strength of the community, rather than geographical happenstance.

Sociologist Victor Azarya discusses the two previously discussed types of community, “community as a type of collective or social unit, and community as a type of social relationship or sentiment” (Connor 2002),

community, in the sense of type of collectivity, usually refers to (1) a group sharing a defined physical space or geographical area such as neighborhood, city, village or hamlet; (2) a group sharing common traits, a sense of belonging and/or maintaining social ties and interactions which shape it into a distinctive social entity, such as an ethnic, religious, academic or professional community (Connor 2002).

Both types of communities appear within bluegrass. This project most often refers to the overall bluegrass community as one of a sense of belonging, but also addresses the community as sharing space – both physical, face-to-face space at festivals and other

“real world” gatherings and virtual space in inboxes, forums, and websites.

Business blogger Jake McKee defines community on his Community Guy blog as

“a group of people who form relationships over time by interacting regularly around shared experiences, which are of interest to all of them for varying individual reasons.”

This definition could apply directly to the overall bluegrass community, as well as smaller communities of bluegrass fans, such as the online bluegrass community. Similarly, cultural studies scholar Marjorie Kibby describes community as “a group of people who share social interaction and some common ties between themselves and other members of the group, and who share a defined place or area for at least some of the time” (Kibby

2000:96). In the bluegrass community, this defined place could be Rosine, Kentucky, an annual festival, or the BGRASS-L listserv.

Sociologist Zigmunt Bauman defines community as “a collection of people, who are not clearly defined or circumscribed, but who agree to something that other people reject and bestow an authority upon those beliefs” (Bauman 2001:43). He goes on to

24 say that ‘togetherness’ “is a spiritual unity that is foremost in its characterization.

Without this in place, there is no community” (Bauman 2001:43). Bluegrass fans maintain this “spiritual unity,” even occasionally going so far as to refer to themselves as

“bluegrass believers,” people who are so deeply embedded in bluegrass music culture that they consider it a sort of religious devotion.6 Providing a related understanding of the term, Steven Brint defines community as ‘aggregates of people who share common activities and/or beliefs and who are bound together principally by relations of affect, loyalty, common values and/or personal concern. Motives for interaction are thus centrally important in this definition” (Brint 2001:8). Chapter four of this text will outline some of the motives for interaction within the overall and online bluegrass community.

Addressing the early, and still commonly held, definition of community, René

Lysloff responds “perhaps communities are based less on material and embodied proximity (humans sharing physical space) than on a collective sense of identity – a feeling that one belongs and is committed to a particular group. A community coheres through common interests, ideals, and goals of its membership” (Lysloff 2003:256). I am tempted to argue that both shared space or place and shared identity are necessary for a real community, though the shared space need not be in the real world and it need not be shared among all community members all the time. The overall community may encompass many smaller communities. However, throughout the history of bluegrass, especially the 1960s onward, the community has largely been considered a statistical or imagined community, connected by a shared interest (and sometimes passion) rather than shared space or place.

In his Twitter-based discussion of community and further discussion on his blog

Web Strategy by Jeremiah, industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang found that many people

6 See Robert Cantwell’s article “Bluegrass Believers” in Thomas Goldsmith’s The Bluegrass Reader.

25 agreed that community requires a group of people, commonalities, and affinities, but disagreed on the type of relationships (from deep to none), time (from long to short), interaction (exchanging ideas to just observation), and level of agreement on ideas.

These varied definitions likely spring from the twenty-first century realities of community.

For many people in the industrial world, every moment is so filled with activity that there is little time to devote to community activity. For these people, brief relationships that would have not in earlier years been considered community-building interaction have now become markers and activities of community. For lack of deeper, longer-lasting relationships, this feeling of community may become community itself.

Church refers to Cohen’s (1985, 1980) assertion that community is

something which people do thinking with and make meaning with, often less in terms of integration than in terms of aggregation. But this is because the monologic thinking – community as experienced – is preceded by the dialogic doing – community as lived – textually in social structure (Volosinov 1986). In other words, community has a material reality, a lived textuality, as a production (Church 1990:37).

Bluegrass community is made up of an aggregate of individuals who live their community, if not day to day, then for parts of each day or week, or even, in the case of annual festivals, year to year. For some scholars this part time living within the bluegrass world would nullify its status as a community. But for those who consider themselves members, the bluegrass community is one of multiple groups of individuals through which these members find personal and collective meaning and connection.

Despite its non-traditional nature, the bluegrass community is very much a lived reality for those who are a part of it.

Shoupe writes that

sociality is chosen; and this freedom of choice in creating social ties is an important feature of voluntary activities in a complex modern society. It is in this regard that we can identify community formation in another of its aspects: these are voluntary associations…groups who self-consciously come together to pursue a common interest and, in the process, create ties among one another that are essential for an experience of social connection or cohesion. Community emerges

in voluntary associations as individuals connect and create ties of interest and affection between and among themselves (Shoupe 2001:134).

The voluntary nature of the association of bluegrass fans strengthens the community through the willingness, and even eagerness of community members first to choose to enjoy bluegrass and then to connect with others who share in the same musical interest or passion.

It is worth mentioning that one aspect of studying community in the present day is that many people belong to multiple overlapping communities. According to Samuel

Wilson and Leighton Peterson, “community is a difficult focus for study, generally because it seems to imply a false circumscription and coherence. Individuals belong to many communities, bounded to different extents and in varying ways” (Wilson and

Peterson 2002:455). As opposed to the days of the village, twenty-first century individuals may belong to multiple communities of interest and practice (discussed later in this chapter) as well as a geographic community. Additionally, people may be a part of multiple geographic communities over a lifetime, sometimes keeping in touch with former neighbors long after leaving the physical community. Community boundaries are nebulous in today’s world, adding to the difficulty of developing a precise definition of community. Due to the imprecise and varied definitions of community, some scholars have chosen to avoid the term entirely and use others, such as group or network.

Community, Group, and Network

Writers and scholars have employed other terms when referring to what I and many bluegrass fans choose to call “community.” However, like community, these terms have a multiplicity of meanings, and are similarly difficult to pin down. In her chapter,

“Group,” in Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture, Dorothy Noyes examines the term “group” as it is understood in folklore, interrogating both the term and the power

27 behind it. Mainly speaking of the folk group, Noyes refers to Ernst Klusen’s belief that

group is more objective a conception than ‘community’ like ‘folk,’ an idealization of a more complex reality. Instead group ‘defines an exact unity of people who interact’ (1986[1967] 1860). It can be ad hoc or short-lived, and need not be grounded in a historical identity. ‘It must be guaranteed that they all know each other and that they can interact directly, ie from two to a few dozen people. It is necessary that every group have at least one dominant element in its makeup and function, what folklorists have called the ‘creative thought’ (Noyes 1995:453).

In Klusen’s perspective, group is a quantifiable collection of people, as differentiated from the more abstract “community.” Klusen’s belief that a group must be small and contained enough for all members to know each other and interact is by no means universal, as demonstrated by geographer Tuan’s explanation that

the words ‘community’ and ‘group’ differ in emotional tone – the one warm and particularistic, the other cool and abstract. Whereas a group can be any size, a community usually evokes something small, made up of people living in close proximity, as in a neighborhood, village or town. Community becomes society when it has grown large and complex (Tuan 2002:311).

By Tuan’s definition, the bluegrass music community might more accurately be described as a society, while smaller bluegrass related groupings could be termed communities. The emotional tone of warmth associated with community leads many within the collection of bluegrass fans, as well as those researching it to use the term

“community.” By Klusen’s definition, the collection of bluegrass fans would not be eligible for the term “group,” and by Tuan’s definition, “group” is too impersonal for most bluegrass collectives. Though the term “group” is used commonly in scholarly studies, particularly in folklore, I agree with Tuan’s comment that the word is too cold and impersonal to describe the interaction of bluegrass fans.

The Internet is the primary medium and form of communication in online community research, and is a format made up of networks – of equipment, systems, and people. Noyes states that “the community exists as the project of a network or of some of its members (Noyes 2003: 33), while Derek Foster makes the related statement that any network “is a connected platform for the collection of diverse communities, but only

28 a loose heterogeneous community itself” (Progress & Freedom Foundation 1994 in

Foster 1996:31). While the overall bluegrass community is loosely bounded, the smaller communities within are often closely integrated.

When speaking of networks as they relate to community, we are mainly referring to social networks – those based around personal, communicative relationships, as opposed to business networks or family networks. Smith refers to Putnam’s Bowling

Alone as “a powerful argument for the cultivation of social networks and the norms of reciprocity, trustworthiness and truthfulness they entail. It also draws attention to some of the downsides of such networks – they can be oppressive and narrowing. It is therefore important to work for tolerance and acceptance, if not celebration of difference”

(Smith 2001:9). Smith sees the ideal form of social networks as an improving force – culturally, societally, and personally beneficial. He also acknowledges the negative possibilities of networks - narrow-mindedness, limited focus, exclusion, and intolerance.

In relation to community, Brint sees social networks as impersonal associations with the motivation of personal gain or benefit rather than human connectiveness. Brint states that

community as a more stable long-term structure has been increasingly absorbed into the framework of social network structures whose emotional climate typically involves some affect but whose major interest sociologically tends to be in the practical, material benefits conferred to members rather than the emotional and ideational commitments and the mechanisms of social support and social regulation that were at the heart of Toennies’s formulation. [Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft] The social network concept has steadfastly rejected any distinctions between work and non-work life because networks cut across these domains (Brint 2001:7).

With increased communication options, many bluegrass fans stay involved with the

Internet community at home, at work, on vacation, in the coffee shop, and in the library.

The community remains online while the participant changes locations.

Smith states that “the nature of the networks within a particular place or grouping is…of fundamental importance when making judgments about ‘communities’ – and the

29 extent to which people can flourish within them. Humans are social animals.

Connection and interaction both widen and deepen what we can achieve, and makes possible our individual character” (Smith 2001:5). We depend on these connections, but we ourselves must create and maintain them. They are not everlasting, not innate.

Bluegrass fans may feel a kinship with other bluegrass fans, but they must actually communicate with those other fans to be a part of the network. Noyes states that

“network ties, being defined by interaction, disappear with disuse: they are not like the apparently eternal ties of shared identity” (Noyes 1995:459). These networks are storehouses of social capital. Social capital is also a perceived benefit of community.

Robert Putnam states that “social capital refers to connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them…civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a sense network of reciprocal social relations” (Putnam 2000:19).

According to Noyes, Ulf Hannerz suggests

the network metaphor as the most suitable way of understanding the ‘global ecumene,’ a world interconnected by migrations, marketplaces, and media…we need not think of all ties as face to face, as some are made through the mass media and many more are made through limited-circulation media. The postmodern world, then, is not a collection of bounded nation-states but a ‘network of networks’ (Hannerz 1992 in Noyes 1995:459).

In understanding the variety of connections and relationships in the early twenty-first century, Noyes describes a “network model, with individuals and geographic communities as nexuses in a variety of relationships and social ties, some intimate and long-lasting, others temporary but influential” (Noyes 1995:456). While “network” may be a useful term to scholars familiar with its use, the term is less commonly used in the bluegrass world. There are networks and groups of individuals within the bluegrass community, but the community feeling and performance of community are most relevant to this study.

Community of Practice: Community, Interaction, and Participation

Both the offline and online bluegrass communities can be understood as communities of practice. The offline community is based primarily around the practice of professional and amateur music-making and listening. Fans listen to and play the music. The secondary aspect of bluegrass community, encountered both on and offline, also includes a “practice” – talking about the music and musicians. Ritual discussion, sometimes debate, centers the community in repeated activity - ritual music making and ritual sharing and discussion. Etienne Wenger defines community of practice as

groups that cohere around activities that produce structure and meaning for their members. These groups are characterized by three related qualities. 1. The mutual engagement of individuals, 2. Their negotiation of a joint enterprise, 3. The development of a shared repertoire of activities, symbols and artifacts that provide resources for the continued production of meaning (Thomas 2001:173).

In offline bluegrass communities, these practices include jam sessions, festivals, concerts and fan meet-ups as well as fan magazines, and radio and television programs.

Online, community practices include regular email list reading and posting, blog reading and writing, and regular social networking such as reading and responding to other fans’ status updates on Facebook.

Bluegrass fans regularly participate in communal activity, whether that activity be playing, talking, or typing. Thomas states that “in a community of practice individuals acquire and internalize knowledge as they learn to be competent, fully participating members. The negotiation of meaning, according to Wenger, “takes place through the convergence of a pair of processes: participation and reification” (Thomas 2001:173).

Thomas goes on to say that “the past, reified as tradition, is utilized as a resource for, and interpreted in the context of, practical engagement in a present community.” In addition, as Wenger notes, “a community of practice develops and interprets its own history over time, reinforcing a sense of connection between present practice and past”

(Thomas 2001:174). This self-mythologizing of community history is not universally true in all communities (such as many scientific communities), but is certainly common practice in bluegrass communities.

Noyes mentions “the idea that the group is a product of interaction rather than its precondition” (Noyes 1995:453). The community is bolstered by the interaction at, for example, the annual Bean Blossom Festival in Indiana. By this definition, if participants did not interact, there would be no community. Where does this leave geographic communities if the residents do not interact? Where does it leave regular blog readers or posters? Wellman states that “when community is viewed as what people do together, rather than where or through what means they do them, community becomes separated from geography, physical neighborhoods and campuses (Wellman 1999)”

(Rovai 2002:4). Community, I believe, can be found in the text-based conversations of various email lists, and regular interactive blog posting, as much as in in-person jam sessions, regular music making, and festival attendance.

Community of/and Interest

As opposed to the idea of “community of practice” in which members cohere around a shared activity or ritual, a “community of interest” gathers around a passion, belief, or idea. Bluegrass community members discuss and debate their subject of interest, attend gatherings (performances, festivals, jam sessions), and gather together to share information, news, and history. Communities of interest are almost entirely communities of choice, though some bluegrass fans, such as James Monroe (the son of bluegrass founder Bill Monroe) become so through family connections or locality.

David McMillan and David Chavis report Émile Durkheim’s (1964) observation that

“modern society develops community around interests and skills more than around locality” (McMillan and Chavis 1986:3). People cohere around different interests,

32 developing and maintaining overlapping communities. Members of bluegrass affinity communities may be members of different political or religious affinity communities, or communities of interest for other hobbies or athletic team fan clubs. What each community has in common is the common interest.

Online communities are more often than not based around common interest. The bluegrass community is, of course, focused around an interest in bluegrass. In twenty- first century western society, individuals may often choose whether or not to surround themselves with a community of biologically related family members or with a chosen

“family.” People have greater control over their geographic location and residence, so in many cases, even geographic communities are elected. People also choose affinity groups – communities of interest.

Howard Rheingold reports that in 1968, ARPA, led by Licklider and Taylor predicted that future community would not be based on common location, but on common interest (Rheingold 1993:24). In the twenty-first century in developed countries, this statement is often true. People’s “communities” are often based around common experience – same or similar education and goals, similar socio-economic category, similar demographics – part of this ability to choose one’s community is based on happenstance of birth as well as self-selection. In the past, communities were predominantly not elective, but in the present, many people may choose their own community/ies.

Brint divulges that “studies of elective communities have shown that these communities of choice can provide a focus of interest and support unavailable to many people in communities defined purely by physical propinquity” (Brint 2001:6). Because people may choose communities based on interest rather than proximity, the chances of finding like-minded individuals to commune with is much higher. Of course, being a member of a community surrounding a single interest, such as bluegrass, does not

33 guarantee the presence of other similar interests or values. Bluegrass fans are generally supportive of each other, as “family feeling” is the ethos surrounding the music.

Lysloff states that the “idea of community is predicated on a collective sense of common interests and purpose. Members of a community are bound together through comradeship and a desire to seek one another out” (Lysloff 2003:243). The interest in bluegrass alone may forge the initial relationship bond, as it separates bluegrass fans from the general population. However, Rheingold states that people who talk about a shared interest, even a deep one, “do not often disclose enough about themselves as whole individuals online to inspire real trust in others” (Rheingold 1993:19).

Lysloff claims that “when people have common interests in a particular genre of popular culture, they may also share language style values, political perspectives, and so forth and these common interests may override or obscure race, gender, or other categories of difference” (Lysloff 2003:240). Opinions vary on the homogeneity of bluegrass fans. Simmons market research data from 2008 indicates that among people who listen to and purchase bluegrass music, liberals and conservatives are approximately 50/50; and there are slightly (about 6%) more men than women.

However, among people who consider themselves part of the bluegrass community, men outnumber women significantly. Some values are strongly shared among bluegrass fans according to Simmons, such as the idea that family is more important than work and satisfaction in work is more important than making money.

On his blog, The Viral Garden, Tim Jackson states that “a strong community will be built around shared experience or interest and passion will be at the heart of it – for a healthy community to survive.” The interest is the center of the community and the supports are built around it – relationships, regular interaction, and community activity.

On his Community Guy blog, Jake McKee states that “what makes community more than a simple group of people is that they are drawn together around some object. This

34 object can be physical, virtual, theoretical, or philosophical; a political ideal, a celebrity, a musical genre, a hobby, a type of car, a neighborhood, a sport.”

Some scholars have cautioned against overuse and intense focus within communities of interest. Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman worry that “we see less and less opportunity for shared experience as we each pigeon-hole ourselves into separate worlds of interests” (Hampton and Wellman 2003:283). If we commune only with those who share our already-established interest, we limit the growth and expansion of our taste and knowledge. Robert Putnam warns of cyberbalkanization, that “powerful specialization is one of the medium’s great attractions, but also one of its subtler threats to bridging social capital” (Putnam 2000:177-8). If we stay in our small circle of preferences, our social circle is limited, as is our ability to think about and discuss other topics. Putnam agrees that “serendipitous connections become less likely as increased communication narrows our tastes and interests – knowing and caring more and more about less and less. This tendency may increase productivity in a narrow sense, while decreasing social cohesion” (Putnam 2000:178). Bluegrass fans enjoy the opportunity to interact with those who share their musical preference, particularly in those areas where bluegrass is an unusual musical passion.

Sense of Community

One of the commonly stated requirements for community is a sense of community.

In general, sense of community is a psychological feeling of community membership focusing on the experience of community membership. McMillan and Chavis, whose writing on psychological sense of community provides a central source for community researchers, define sense of community as “a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (McMillan and

Chavis 1986:4). Psychologist Anita Blanchard adds identity, attachment, and influence to that list. Sense of community is often measured in terms of the individual’s relation with the group: how members fit in with each other, connect, and feel included and valued. The bluegrass community has a strong sense of community, and many members are deeply embedded within it.

S.B. Sarason defines psychological sense of community as “the perception of similarity to others, an acknowledged interdependence with others, a willingness to maintain this interdependence by giving to or doing for others what one expects from them, and the feeling that one is part of a larger dependable and stable structure”

(Sarason 1974:157). The community, according to the concept of sense of community, depends upon the members themselves – whether or not a community succeeds or lasts beyond its initial conception depends on the strength of members’ sense of community.

Some online bluegrass communities, such as BGRASS-L, have lasted over the years due to the personal investment of many core members as well as active engagement of enough participants to maintain sense of community.

McMillan and Chavis indicate that “personal investment is an important contributor to a person’s feeling of group membership and to his or her sense of community”

(McMillan and Chavis 1986:5). A member is not simply a part of a community by default, in order to feel a connection with the community, she or he must actively engage with others within the community and invest time and effort. Through those interactions, the community develops its own unique sense of community (Blanchard 2009:10). Also needed for a sense of community, per McMillan and Chavis, is a common symbol system such as group norms, which “serves several important functions in creating and maintaining sense of community, one of which is to maintain group boundaries.

Understanding common symbol systems is prerequisite to understanding community”

(McMillan and Chavis 1986:16). The norms of the online bluegrass community will be

discussed in a later chapter.

Blanchard states that “sense of community is desired in a community because it

leads to satisfaction with and commitment to the community and is associated with

involvement in community activities and problem-focused coping behavior” (Blanchard

2008:2108), going on to elaborate that the positive results of a sense of community

include “exchange of support between members [and] member involvement with and

tenure within the community being examined” (Blanchard 2008:2109). There must be

some incentive for bluegrass community members to invest the time and energy needed

to develop sense of community. As members of BGRASS-L or Facebook invest time in

one another, they receive mutual benefit and the reward of connection.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have presented and assessed some scholarly views of the term

“community,” relating these views to the collection of individuals who consider themselves part of a bluegrass community. There are multiple reasons why I consider the bluegrass world a “community” rather than a group, folk group, network, or aggregation, but the most decisive reason is that the people (bluegrass fans) themselves use the term, perhaps because of the warmth and family feeling associated with it.

Bluegrass fans are heavily invested in the music and the people who play and listen to it, and are proud of the interpersonal connections maintained within. The term

“community,” better than any other designation, reflects the small town, family-like

environment of bluegrass fandom, and so I choose this term to explore the “bluegrass

community.”

Having identified the online bluegrass community as the chief subject of this

study, and having discussed the differing nature of ideas relating to communities, it will

be useful to consider the bluegrass music-culture, past and present, to see what

37 bluegrass brings to the idea and practice of community – that is, how a community centered on and produced by or enacted by people involved in bluegrass takes on its particularity from bluegrass as a cultural expression.

CHAPTER THREE

Bluegrass Past and Present

To better understand the bluegrass community, in this chapter I provide an

overview of bluegrass history, with an introduction to the bluegrass-related Internet arenas referred to, discussed and examined in the remainder of the work. This introduction to the bluegrass world serves to center the reader in the bluegrass community at this point in time and space – historically, culturally, and geographically.

Readers who wish a more in-depth treatment of bluegrass history should consult Neil

Rosenberg’s Bluegrass: A History (2005); those who want a detailed, but non-technical

treatment of bluegrass musical style and how it developed should consult Robert

Cantwell’s Bluegrass Breakdown (2003).

The creation of bluegrass music is often attributed to the musical ingenuity of one

man, Bill Monroe, frequently called the “father of bluegrass.” Bill Monroe was born in

1911 in Rosine, Kentucky, and began playing music as a young child.7 His early influences included his mother Malissa, his uncle, hoedown fiddler Pendleton Vandiver, and an African-American hoedown fiddler and blues guitarist named Arnold Shultz. Both of Monroe’s parents died by the time he was a teenager, and after living with his Uncle

Pen briefly, in 1929 Bill moved from Kentucky to East Chicago, Indiana to join his

7 Monroe was not born in the Appalachian mountain section of Kentucky, though bluegrass is often affiliated with Appalachian music. Monroe was exposed to both “hillbilly” music and a great deal of African American musics in his youth, and the fusion of music styles that resulted in bluegrass demonstrates that African American influence. This fact is particularly notable in light of the current general view of bluegrass as a predominantly “white” music form.

brothers Birch and Charlie to work in an oil refinery, eventually forming a band called the

Monroe Brothers. In the move from Kentucky to Indiana, the brothers had followed a

path many southerners had taken or would take in the early to mid twentieth century,

providing an interesting parallel to the northern migration of many African-American

Mississippians to industrial cities such as Chicago. Many of these displaced

southerners, such as Bill Monroe and McKinley Morganfield (Muddy Waters) combined

the musical influences of their old and new homes to create new styles of music while

using their varied musical experiences to obtain earn a living outside of the manual labor in which many of their peers toiled.

After the disbanding of the Monroe Brothers in 1938, Charlie formed the

Kentucky Pardners, a band that included musicians, such as Lester Flatt, who would

later find fame in bluegrass music. Bill formed a short-lived band named the

Kentuckians in Arkansas in 1938, but after a month formed a new band called Bill

Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. The name “Blue Grass” referred to Monroe’s

childhood home of Kentucky, the Blue Grass state. In 1939, Monroe and His Blue Grass

Boys auditioned successfully for the Saturday night radio show, the Grand Ole Opry, run

by George Hay and broadcast from Nashville, Tennessee. The group auditioned with

their rendition of Jimmie Rodgers tune, “Mule Skinner Blues.” Bill Monroe and his Blue

Grass Boys joined the show’s line-up of already established performers, such as

vaudeville banjoist and singer Uncle Dave Macon and country singer Roy Acuff. Monroe

rehearsed his band to a high standard of musicianship and cohesion, and avoided the

“country bumpkin” or “mountain rube” stereotype common with bands of the Grand Ole

Opry style by creating a uniform for his band of a white shirt and tie, jodhpurs, riding

boots, and a Stetson hat, what Cantwell calls the “traditional costume of the Kentucky

planter” (Cantwell 2003:81), that is, the horse country aristocracy.

Bluegrass combines influences from Old-Time music, (also called “hillbilly” music), blues, jazz, swing, ragtime, and minstrel music, while borrowing from earlier traditions such as Scots-Irish and English songs and musical techniques. Bluegrass has been described as a “true American” music - the music was formed in the United States

and includes musical traditions from many of the cultures that make up the nation,

including strong influences from the British Isles and Africa. Between 1939 and 1945,

Monroe experimented with the use of different instrumental combinations, trying out

clawhammer banjo, accordion, and harmonica in the band before settling on a consistent

sound of lead mandolin and fiddle, string bass, and, in 1945 and 1946 when Lester Flatt

and Earl Scruggs joined the band, flat- picked guitar and five-string banjo. Earl Scruggs’

banjo style quickly became one of the defining characteristics of what is now called

“bluegrass”, with Scruggs becoming a celebrity in his own right, leading young and old

alike to try to play the banjo in “Scruggs style,” using a syncopated three fingered pattern

with the right hand. Earl Scruggs was not the first banjoist to play in this style, but he

refined and popularized the style, while introducing the idea of the banjo player as

serious musician rather than comedian. The sound created by the 1946-1948 Blue

Grass Boys came to define the genre and is considered the “classic” bluegrass sound.

Robert Cantwell lyrically describes the sound as “a rangy, treasonous, brilliant sound,

and a sound full of the South” (Cantwell 2003:101). Others have described the sound as

“hard-driving.” Scruggs’ banjo style gave the music a note filled texture and a forward

momentum still essential to bluegrass today.

Many musicians who later went on to successful careers in bluegrass cycled

through the Blue Grass Boys over the years, including Jimmy Martin, who joined the

band in 1949 and whose vocal style led to the description of the music as a “high

lonesome” sound. Some young musicians got their start with Monroe, including a

fourteen year old Sonny Osborne (later of the Osborne Brothers). Other bands, many of

them made up of former members of Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, began imitating the

sound and instrumental combinations of Monroe’s band. Both Flatt and Scruggs left the

Blue Grass Boys in 1948, forming their own group, the Foggy Mountain Boys. Flatt and

Scruggs had a sound similar to Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, but with a greater

emphasis on banjo and less on mandolin. Two other notable early groups were Reno

and Smiley and the Stanley Brothers. Listeners began requesting these “Blue Grass”

style songs on radio shows, and around the early 1950s, through the frequent use of this

name, reflecting Monroe’s original band and home state, this music became the genre commonly known as bluegrass. Neil Rosenberg has identified the first recording of another group imitating the “Blue Grass” sound (the Stanley Brothers with “Molly and

Tenbrooks”) as the start of the genre known as bluegrass. The basic sound of the genre remained as it was in the 1940s, and the 1946-1948 period is still considered the essential sound of bluegrass. In 1955, Burkett “Uncle Josh” Graves joined Flatt and

Scruggs on resophonic guitar (Dobro), adding that instrument to the accepted line up of bluegrass instruments.8

In the 1940s, bluegrass music was considered a part of or outgrowth of country music, but in 1957, the same year the Country Music Association was formed, bluegrass began its separation from country music. Country music was moving toward the polished pop-styled genre it is today and away from the rural, down home aesthetic of the Blue Grass Boys. In the late 1950s, some bluegrass groups were, perhaps out of necessity, moving toward the folk audience and aesthetic. Though bluegrass was moving farther away from country music, it was drawing closer to old time, with shared interest from fiddler’s conventions and the folk revival. Interest in bluegrass had

8 Some fans still do not consider the Dobro a bluegrass instrument, as it was a later addition to the genre, and its use began with Flatt and Scruggs rather than Bill Monroe.

somewhat faded in the in the original audience by the late 1950’s, but Bill Monroe and

other bands (particularly Flatt and Scruggs) continued to garner new audiences.

The music spread through radio and recordings, live performances at festivals,

country music parks, and clubs, and the evangelizing of a rabid fan base. Some fans,

such as those in Maine, became involved through an interest in country music,

strengthening an interest in bluegrass and older country music when country music took

a new path in the 1950s. Others were introduced through the folk revival, perhaps

hearing the Weavers or the Kingston Trio and coming across bluegrass in a search for

something rougher. Still others became bluegrass fans after hearing the music, not

through the gateway of related genres, but in an unexpected introduction through

friends, family members, or happenstance. Bluegrass became known outside of the

United States in many of the same ways, with an emphasis on radio. In Japan, following

World War Two, budding bluegrass fans became interested in the music after hearing it

broadcast on stations such as the Far East Network. In Ireland, as in other locations in

Western Europe, the American Forces Network spread the music, as did face-to-face interaction with American troops. Irish bluegrass musician Niall Toner tells how he became interested in the music as a child:

Some of the first music I came across was just popular music on the radio. And I heard Elvis Presley singing “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” And the sound really excited me, so I tried to imitate that. Then I came across a school friend that was interested in music. And I told him about hearing Elvis Presley doing this song, and he said to me “Wait’ll you hear the original.” And I said, “What do you mean, what does original mean?” And he said “Somebody else wrote the song many years beforehand and recorded it.” So I went to his house and he played me this remarkable Bill Monroe music, Bill Monroe singin’ Blue Moon of Kentucky, and I think that I was pretty hooked from that. The seed was sown. So as you can imagine though, in the atmosphere of the mid fifties, mid- to late- fifties, early sixties, it wasn’t easy to acquire that sort of music here, especially being so far from the USA. It just wasn’t common in the shops. I remember going to a record shop very early on with my pocket money and asking for recordings by Bill Monroe and they didn’t know what I was talking about. So it took a while to begin to access the music. Borrowing records, that kind of thing. And Bill Monroe opened up for me the avenue of even what came before him, I just had this great sense of curiosity, so I found that he had learned from people like Jimmie

Rodgers and the Carter Family. And, I pursued all of that. Then I, then parallel to that, I came across the music of Hank Williams, Hank Snow, the Grand Ole Opry. A radio station in Germany, called AFN, which was the American Forces Network, which had been established there during World War Two, broadcast from Germany right up through the sixties and seventies. So with a bit of careful tuning on the radio, you could tune in, and they rebroadcast the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights. So I got to hear all that music, and that’s really where it came from, in the first instance. (Toner: 12/03)

In the early 1960s, college students whose interest had been sparked by the folk music boom began to turn to bluegrass as a fresh and interesting form of music.

Bluegrass also became popular among urban college students in the Northeast, who met in Greenwich Village and elsewhere to share an interest in bluegrass and folk music styles. In 1962, promoter Ralph Rinzler began working with Bill Monroe, inviting him and his Blue Grass Boys to play at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival9 and later working as his manager. Around this time, Monroe began developing and propagating a narrative of a history of bluegrass, with himself at the center. The rising popularity in Northeastern cities spurred on bluegrass music’s transition from rural, southern music to a music that anyone could enjoy, regardless of home and environment. Through its connection with the folk revival, bluegrass artists and festivals were highlighted in well-known publications such as TIME Magazine and the New York Times.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, bluegrass spread to California, Ohio,

Pennsylvania, and New England, drawing in musicians such as Del McCoury, Larry

Sparks, and Vic Jordan (Goldsmith 2004:12), some of whom, such as Del McCoury, were transplanted southerners. The Country Gentlemen, considered by many to be the first progressive bluegrass band, formed in 1957 in Washington D.C., a region which housed an active bluegrass scene at the time. Brothers Roland and Clarence White formed the Kentucky Colonels in California, reflecting the new interest in bluegrass on the west coast (Goldsmith 2004:15). Joe Val (Joseph Valiante) and Bill “Brad” Keith

9 Earl Scruggs performed at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival.

44 from Massachusetts made significant contributions to bluegrass music, appealing to

New England residents and bluegrass fans worldwide.

Though the history of bluegrass is often told as a narrative of well known “stars” of the genre, what Philip Nusbaum calls the “experiential domain” of Bluegrass is equally vital to the story of bluegrass. Only a small group of those in the bluegrass world, perhaps less than twenty-five percent, make a living solely through bluegrass music, and only a handful of those are known to people outside of the main fan base. Most members of the bluegrass community are fans, amateur pickers, and others who should be considered part of the history of bluegrass.

As its popularity grew among new audiences (even as it waned in the original audience), bluegrass enthusiasts began to create outlets for bluegrass where none existed before. In September of 1965, Carlton Haney presented the first weekend long bluegrass festival, in Fincastle, Virginia. A segment of the festival was titled “The Story of Blue Grass Music,” and focused on Bill Monroe’s central presence in bluegrass and the many bands which formed under his influence. Performing acts were presented as chapters in a story, with Haney providing background details on the bands and musicians in the program. In the years following, bluegrass festivals expanded nationally and internationally, finding larger audiences both young and old, “longhairs” and “rednecks,” of all political backgrounds, though leaning toward the conservative.

Festivals were usually a three day event, involving camping, bands performing all day and into the night, parking lot picking sessions where amateurs got together to play with and for each other, sometimes with well known artists, and jam sessions involving professional performers playing together in a relaxed atmosphere. In 1967, after encouragement from Carlton Haney, Bill Monroe himself held a Blue Grass Celebration at Brown County Jamboree Barn in Bean Blossom, Indiana, a festival that continues to this day as the Bill Monroe Memorial Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival. Robert Cantwell

45 wrote about his own experience at this festival in a 1972 Atlantic Monthly article

“Believing in Bluegrass”:

In the park the commerce of guitars, banjos, fiddles, mandolins and tenor voices could be heard from six o’clock one morning until three the next. Bluegrass bands are as exciting to watch as hockey games, and cannot be fully appreciated except in person…walking from one end of the camp to the other, perhaps from the phone booth out on the highway or from the grocery store back through the main gate, across the flat plain of the parking area, down the hill and into the woods, then onto the mud road leading back to a second, recently bulldozed clearing, one could hear, in fluid sequence, bluegrass bands, first one, then a hint of the next, then a new band several yards ahead, one band never interfering with another. Occasionally, one would stop to hear some exceptionally good fiddler or banjo-picker or to catch the last verse or two of a favorite song (Cantwell 2004:202-204).

While new audiences were being introduced to the bluegrass tradition, innovations were occurring within the genre. The Osborne Brothers and the Country

Gentlemen both notably played around with bluegrass sounds and instrumentation in the

1950s, and the late 1960s saw even more experimentation with the sound of the music, sometimes causing tension in the ranks of bluegrass fans. Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs split in 1969, with Flatt staying with a more traditional sound and Scruggs joining with his sons in experimenting with new sounds. Scruggs shared the stage with artists such as

Joan Baez, melding styles and introducing his music to young audiences. The

Bluegrass Alliance, which later became New Grass Revival, formed in 1972 and was headed by Sam Bush. The group combined bluegrass instruments and styles with rock and jazz influences. The group became known for their appearance (long hair, youthful clothing) as much as their music in some bluegrass circles. The band further stepped out of bluegrass tradition by touring with rocker Leon Russell. Other groups, such as

J.D. Crowe, Tony Rice, the Seldom Scene, and Country Gazette, became known for their innovations (Goldsmith 2004:20). At the same time, Bill Monroe continued performing, sometimes accepting innovation with positive remarks (such as that of former Blue Grass Boys Peter Rowan and Vassar Clements) and sometimes expressing

46 distaste with the sound and culture of progressive bluegrass as demonstrated by his infamous statement “that ain’t no part of nothing.”

Bluegrass Today

Almost seventy years after the genre’s “classic” period, bluegrass music continues to hold the interest and passion of its fans. Over the years the music has waxed and waned in popularity, but it has continued to maintain a consistent fan base, enough to keep the genre alive and evolving. 2001 marked a peak in interest in the genre, due to the success of the bluegrass-influenced soundtrack to the George Clooney film, O Brother Where Art Thou. According to Simmons Research, around eighteen million adults in the United States alone like bluegrass music. The audience is similar in size to genres such as gospel and Christian Contemporary. Interest in the music has continued to spread; the International Bluegrass Music Association now has members in fifty states and thirty countries.

Bluegrass today is a much more diverse community than it was in the mid- twentieth century. The music sits at the edge of a commercial music form (through its early and continuing connection with radio, recordings, product placement – such as

Martha White flour, and its role as a full time job for the top names of the genre) and a

"folk" or "traditional" music form (through its many fans who participate in casual music making, such as front porch or parking lot picking, and low-key festivals and gatherings).

Many people today, particularly young people, view bluegrass as a folksy, rural, predominantly white, roots music form. "Bluegrass" is the common term used to describe any kind of banjo-centric music, un-amplified string band group, or simply

"country" sounding ensemble. “Bluegrass” has become a catch-all term in popular culture for acoustic string band music or even anything featuring a banjo. Long-time bluegrass fans would, of course, argue with this generalized view of the music, and this

47 distinction between bluegrass and related genres separates the true fans from the dabblers.

Some fans see themselves as protectors or guardians of the music, focusing on the "tradition" and leaning toward the most conservative interpretation of the music, eschewing the pre-1946 sounds played by Bill Monroe as well as those sounds outside of the music created by Bill Monroe’s classic 1946 band.10 Other fans view the music as a spectrum, from conservative to progressive, all falling under the bluegrass umbrella.

When I speak of bluegrass music in this study, I generally lean toward a broad definition of the music, including both the roots and branches of the genre. In an interview with

Nancy Cardwell, Lance Leroy, a founder of the IBMA and an agent with forty-two years of experience working with bluegrass musicians explains the stricter view of bluegrass.

“The one thing I’m most concerned about,” he adds, “is that it’ll always be bluegrass, and not some ‘way out yonder thing’ that people say is bluegrass.” LeRoy is not in favor of stifling anyone’s creativity or musical development and experimentation, but he says these kinds of bands are playing “bluegrass influenced” music. “I will put up with a little bit,” he allows. “I like people who venture out and do something original. I think one of the best contemporary bands is Dailey & Vincent. They are hotter than a depot stove now, you know? But a lot of what they’re doing is what the Bluegrass Cardinals did 25 or 30 years before,” with a cappella singing. “The Cardinals were the only band that I would put in the same breath as Flatt & Scruggs,” LeRoy says, “and Larry Stephenson has had good bands over the years, and Ronnie Reno – he’s carried on the tradition of his dad. So there are three bands right there carrying on the tradition of bluegrass. There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” he smiles. “I’d like to go on record as saying one other thing,” LeRoy says, putting on his journalist and linguist hats. “I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as ‘traditional bluegrass’ or ‘contemporary bluegrass.’ It’s progressive or contemporary acoustic music. It ceases being bluegrass when you’re no longer doing it the way Flatt & Scruggs did it, or Bill Monroe or Jim & Jesse. It ceases to be bluegrass when they deviate from that style.” And to say “traditional bluegrass” is redundant, he adds. (Cardwell 2010)

Bluegrass today is played in jam sessions (both impromptu and scheduled), festivals, concerts, and workshops. Some festivals and performance venues have closed over the years, but others have opened. There still seems to be sizable public

10 such as newgrass or other acoustic string band music falling under the "Americana" category

48 interest in bluegrass. Countless bluegrass bands form every year throughout the world, established bands shift members and less frequently, go on hiatus or retire. A small percentage, perhaps twenty-five percent of professional bluegrass musicians, make a living through performing bluegrass music alone, while many others hold down other jobs to make ends meet.

Bluegrass fans range from college professors to auto mechanics, small farmers to doctors. Fans of the music are found worldwide, with the largest fan base in

America, and other sizable fan groups in Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Few radio stations play bluegrass, though Sirius/XM satellite radio has one bluegrass station and other stations (usually smaller stations or public radio stations) broadcast bluegrass programs once or twice a week, and a few all-bluegrass broadcasting stations do exist.

A number of web-based bluegrass stations stream over the Internet, and bluegrass podcasts can also be found.

Increasingly, the Internet is becoming the most useful place to go to find bluegrass people and bluegrass music. Not only can fans access web-based radio programs, but they also can listen to "local" radio streams from around the world. NPR interviews with bluegrass musicians can be accessed, as well as live performances.

Viewers may access YouTube videos of bluegrass performers on stage, in the studio, or simply making music informally with friends and family. Fans may connect with each other on social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace, subscribe to a bluegrass-focused electronic mailing list, exchange individual emails with fellow fans, chat in "real time" with friends, and even chat "face-to-face" using a webcam.

Bluegrass Tradition

Bluegrass history often takes the form of a narrative. Cantwell affirms that

the significance of bluegrass can perhaps be understood with relation to…three audiences. For its parochial native audience, bluegrass symbolically preserved familiar traditions; for its wider audience it represented its own tradition in an assertive way calculated to instruct and to arouse appropriate associations, by releasing certain signifying sounds and images; finally it articulated each of its elements in turn with a definiteness that both displayed the powers of individual musicians and defined the auditory space three-dimensionally (Cantwell 2003:76).

Bluegrass fans and musicians emphasize the tradition, the connection with the past, as well as the innovation in bluegrass music. These values are reflected in the music “itself” - the song structure, improvisation, text, standards, as well as in the artists’ stage presence – attire, dialogue, presentation of self. In performance, the most

“traditional” artists often use one “omnidirectional” microphone as bluegrass bands did in the early days, dress formally (in matching suits, often complemented with hats), and add jokes (many old fashioned) to their stage banter. Dailey and Vincent for example, dress formally in matching suits, sing tight harmonies, use standard instrumentation and sing songs with lyrics that reflect “traditional,” conservative values such as home,

Christian, and patriotic themes.

Figure 1: Dailey and Vincent Photo by Scott Simontacchi

The idea of tradition in bluegrass music is made more complex and interesting by allowing worldwide access to conversations on defining bluegrass (referred to online as

“WIBA” - What is Bluegrass Anyway), allowing people around the globe to discuss, debate, and define what “tradition” is: what is traditional and what is innovative (and in which cases is innovation traditional?) Cantwell declares that “the electronic age having turned us all into authors and opened to all the world the sounds of roots musics everywhere, ‘traditional’ bluegrass has become itself an ‘old-time’ music” (Cantwell

2003:xiii). The discussion of tradition has itself become part of the tradition. Bluegrass fans are not shy about expressing their often strong opinions. Sometimes historical fact can be muddied by loudness, repetition, or simply lack of information.

Why do listeners of varying backgrounds maintain an interest in bluegrass? Part of the appeal may be the folk roots, the driving beat, the instrumental virtuosity, or the vocal harmonies. Some may like the perception of a time or place outside of their own experience. Others may see bluegrass as part of their own experience, particularly those with family involved in the music. Still others may see bluegrass as a way of reminding them of their own past or the environment in which they grew up.

Bluegrass and Media

Bluegrass music has had a relationship with the media throughout its existence.

Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys were members of the Grand Ole Opry, starting in

1939 and running through Bill Monroe’s death in 1996. Other bluegrass groups in the early days were members of radio shows and marketers for sponsors, such as Martha

White Flour and Crazy Water Crystals. Bluegrass was played on the radio and in touring

“shows” alongside other genres. Groups touted albums and merchandise, encouraging the personal touch of an artist’s autograph as well as a shake and howdy – at the

merchandise tent. This tradition continues at festivals and other performances today.

Fred Bartenstein, a long time bluegrass fan, writer, and promoter, notes this about

bluegrass music and the media in the early days:

Bluegrass listeners were widely dispersed, and more likely to live in rural and small town locations than fans of other genres. Although they were exposed to occasional live performances, they were more likely to hear the music (that became known as bluegrass in the mid '50s) on the radio and TV. Artists performing on those media encouraged listeners to write in with their requests, comments, and support. Many artists advertised songbooks, phonographs, and recordings for mail-order sale through these media. Record shops such as Randy's (Nashville), Ernest Tubb (Nashville), and Jimmie Skinner's (Cincinnati) advertised on clear channel AM radio, reaching a wide audience of mail-order customers. The artists established relationships with far-flung fans, and often introduced those fans to each other at live shows -- and inadvertently as people heard the same names and hometowns announced repeatedly in radio and TV requests. Listeners felt as if they knew the artists and fellow fans through media experiences that were presented and experienced as an intimate relationship between artists and fans. (Note for example Josh Graves acknowledgment of correspondents on the videos of Flatt & Scruggs syndicated TV shows.) Starting in the late 1950s, informal acquaintances became more formal as many groups (especially the Stanley Brothers and Jim & Jesse) established fan clubs and even tape clubs (in which reel-to-reel tapes of live shows were exchanged and sent from member to member). Fans contributed news, not only about the artists, but about themselves. The process reached its apogee as Disc Collector ('50s?), Bluegrass Unlimited (1966), Muleskinner News (1969), Pickin' (early '70s), Banjo Newsletter (early '70s), and Mugwumps Instrument Herald (early '70s) entered the market as regular periodicals, in which subscribers commonly contributed material and experienced a sense of community. (p.c.)

This type of engagement with the music “from afar” was and is also true for fans of other genres, such as country music.

Magazines

In addition to radio, records, and merchandise sales, bluegrass also has a long standing relationship with written media. In the early years, newspapers served as a primary source for artist information – concert announcements, interviews, etc. Around the same time as the revival movement of the 1960s, magazines and newsletters for bluegrass fans were created and became popular. This was a way for fans to learn about artists, even from afar, and for fans to share their own opinions with each other and with any artists who might read the magazine/newsletter. Printed publications (both

current and defunct) include Bluegrass Unlimited, Bluegrass Now, Bluegrass Music

Profiles, Muleskinner News, County Sales Newsletter, and the Bluegrass Bulletin.

The Bluegrass Bulletin was a newsletter style publication, printed between 1965 and 1967, edited by Peter A. Richardson. The newsletter had about 200 subscribers, and according to Rosenberg, readers and correspondents of the Bluegrass Bulletin

“described their musical experiences as participants or spectators” (Rosenberg

2005:218). Rosenberg goes on to report that

the Bluegrass Bulletin reflected the ebullience of a group of people who, finding their voice in the media, had discovered interests which others shared. Tired of being manipulated as consumers of the music they liked, they wanted to learn, and they were ready to tell one another about their likes and dislikes…they represent a combining of fan and critic as an intense love of the music was joined with a desire to know more about it and to understand why some performances were better than others (Rosenberg 2005:219).

Bluegrass Unlimited, the longest-running strictly bluegrass magazine still in publication, was established by Richard Spottswood and Pete Kuykendall. Beginning publication in 1966, the magazine is still in publication and in 2006 published a 40th anniversary issue which included a reproduction of the first issue. Many subscribers over the years expressed their opinions about current bluegrass events by writing letters to the editor. Rosenberg asserts that

“in the early years of Bluegrass Unlimited, the guest articles, record reviews, and letters to the editor were written by representatives of virtually every viewpoint, including deejays, fans, musicians, and record company executives. From these believers in bluegrass came an outpouring of pent-up feelings about the music. A variety of ideas was expressed, but all agreed that their goal was to get more people listening to bluegrass (Rosenberg 2005:250).

Figure 2: Bluegrass Unlimited Cover, February 2010

Other print media included bluegrass-related writings. Rosenberg states that

in July 1971 Playboy magazine sent staff reporter David Standish to Carlton Haney’s fifth Berryville Festival at Watermelon Park…Most of what Standish described had been reported in the Bluegrass Unlimited festival reviews of previous years – the cultural mixture, the parking-lot jam sessions, the ‘bluegrass widows,’ and the importance of personal interaction as old friends met and talked in a relaxed setting (Rosenberg 2005:293).

Bluegrass magazines may have felt threatened by others joining in on writing about “their” niche music or simply put off by a magazine such as Playboy presenting

reviews of their beloved bluegrass. Bluegrass Unlimited responded to Standish’s

Playboy article “in an editorial calling it ‘uninformed,’ ‘cute’ and ‘vivid’: the magazine was

not amused” (Rosenberg 2005:293). Other well-known print media sources such as the

New Yorker and the New York Times have profiled bluegrass musicians and published

articles relating to the genre.

Rosenberg states that “running through the literature of the bluegrass

consumer/fan movement which began in the mid-sixties are dialogues concerning the

best way to promote the music, to bring it to more people” (Rosenberg 2005:275). Fans

54 of evangelism versus fans of traditionalism have sometimes stood in opposition in the bluegrass world. Magazines, particularly Bluegrass Unlimited, became a primary source of information for bluegrass fans and musicians in widespread geographic areas.

Rosenberg reports that

informational features that would remain an important part of Bluegrass Unlimited – listings of bluegrass shows at local parks, bands playing in clubs, bluegrass radio shows, fan clubs, and publications…the various well organized listings created a format which the consumers of the music could turn to with confidence, and in future issues the listings would become more national in scope as the magazine’s readership expanded” (Rosenberg 2005:226).

These magazines continue to be primary sources of information for those bluegrass fans without Internet access and a supplementary source for those who do.

Rosenberg states that “as publishers of later bluegrass magazines were to discover, enthusiastic and committed fans did not always agree about what was good or right about the music they loved” (Rosenberg 2005:218-9). Rosenberg reports that

Richardson, the editor of the Bluegrass Bulletin, indicated that they would not print

“argumentative or quarrelsome letters…I receive a lot of this type of mail” (Rosenberg

2005:218). At times, Bluegrass Unlimited’s letters to the editor became so incessant and so heated, that the editor requested that correspondents cease sending them.

Rosenberg stated that an editorial “which appeared in the first issue of Bluegrass

Unlimited edited by Pete Kuykendall…reported that the magazine was now receiving many letters concerning festivals and was no longer able to deal with them all. ‘We cannot function as a soapbox for personal grievances,’ the editorial said, advising readers to complain instead to those involved” (Rosenberg 2005:295).

Bluegrass and the Internet

In the twenty-first century (as before), many bluegrass fans are separated from each other, by time, geography, even age and gender. Perhaps in response to this separation, many fans laud the sense of community, of family, that bluegrass community

represents. Many feel welcome among people of all walks of life whom they have

known for years, even lifetimes. Some of these people may never have met face to

face, but have only communicated with each other via listservs and forum postings.

Each “group” (forum, list, etc) has its own regulars and of those, resident experts,

greeters, jesters, “windbags,” and silent “lurkers.” Bluegrass fans meet up at weekly

jams, yearly festivals, and daily online discussions. They communicate via newsletter,

magazine letter to the editor, phone call, email message, forum posting, or listserv

message. What are they seeking? What do they get out of these regular (or irregular)

communications? They want to stay in touch, feel connected, share their knowledge

and learn from the experience of others.

Rosenberg states that “the advent of the Internet has suited bluegrass music

well. This is a music whose community Fred Bartenstein characterized as ‘statistical

rather than geographic.’ Bartenstein’s ‘statistical’ translates easily into ‘virtual’”

(Rosenberg 2005:xii-xiii). Bartenstein elaborates

I was exposed to the concept of ‘statistical community’ while studying the social sciences as a Harvard undergraduate…the notion is that human beings can share qualities of a community despite geographic separation through their mutual interests and transactions. Examples would be Francophiles, stamp collectors, civil rights activists, sports car enthusiasts, etc. Bluegrass devotees appear to be spread rather thinly even in places where bluegrass is most popular. They tend to meet at concerts, through periodicals, or through friends of friends of friends more than they do in casual encounters in neighborhoods, in school, or in the workplace. (p.c.)

Bartenstein’s article was published in 1973, before bluegrass fans had access to the

Internet. Bluegrass fans were considered a community even then without the regular face-to-face interaction and geographic proximity often associated with community.

As the statistical community associated with bluegrass spread and expanded around the world, the Internet has provided a way for far-flung fans to stay in touch with or meet one another. The music itself has also spread through availability on the

Internet as people share the music with new friends and acquaintances. People traveling to other countries may use the Internet as a way to seek out festivals and jam sessions at their intended destination. People also use the web to find events and fans near their homes. When I moved to Ireland, I found the Irish bluegrass website right away – learning where and when bluegrass festivals would occur, how to subscribe to the online newsletter, and what musicians were prominent in the Irish bluegrass scene. I sought out local bluegrass events and people in a similar fashion when moving to Rhode

Island.

While many authors present the positive side of the Internet, Cantwell bemoans the breakdown of barriers of isolation, assimilation, and the death of a way of life.

Cantwell suspects

that many of Bill Monroe’s people are suffering a subtle death they can’t detect, a gradual impoverishment different from the kind which, over the generations, they have learned to live with. As technology penetrates their isolation, and American prosperity, however hollow it may be, their poverty, the way of life which created the music and which continued to cultivate an imagination receptive to it eventually dissolves and disappears. They are dying as a people as they become assimilated into the great mass of middle-class Americans who crowd the roads and parks in the summertime and who have discovered that one way to relieve some of the pang of existence is to diminish the intensity of life. And as the scope and depth of their lives shrink, so will the music seem more distant: too emotional, too rigid, too…well, hillbilly. The ecstasy of which the music is often capable will be gone too (Cantwell 2004:209).

Mailing Lists/Listservs

Frank Godbey founded the first large scale bluegrass discussion list, BGRASS-L, in 1991, with the first messages being posted on November 22, 1991. At present, there are approximately 800 subscribers, though the list hit its peak of around 2000 in the late

1990s. According to Frank Godbey, the list was formed

“to have an easier way than via individual emails to communicate with others interested in bluegrass music. Before BGRASS-L there were Usenet newsgroups that included bluegrass as a part of their conversation, and some of us emailed back and forth privately. At the IBMA convention in the Fall of 1991 I put out a sign-up sheet asking if there was anyone interested in email—there were 7 or 8 responses. We picked up some others in the next few weeks, and it quickly became evident that a better way to manage the traffic and addresses was to set up a Listserv ™ function, then available at UKY, where I worked [and retired from in 2004]. The University has been a gracious host; they still utilize Listserv ™ software, but lists were moved from mainframe computers to dedicated servers in, I think 1996.” (p.c.)

According to Rosenberg, “today, along with other lists and many Web sites, [the

BGRASS-L is] a forum for news, opinions, and economic activities” (Rosenberg

2005:xiii). In his description of BGRASS-L, Goldsmith tells that

word of stars’ involvement, new acts, and festivals competed for space with historical disputes, personal mud-slinging, and a mind boggling array of other topics on BGRASS-L, the on-line discussion forum that created a bluegrass e- community during the 1990s…the ‘L’ served as the community bulletin board and radio talk show equivalent for far-flung fans from several continents. Tidbits such as ‘Jammandments’ (rules for taking part in bluegrass picking sessions) turned up, along with age-old disputes over who started what style when, or whether a specific act was really (you guessed it) bluegrass at all (Goldsmith 2004:31).

Figure 3: BGRASS-L Archives

Frank Godbey reports that

the biggest recurring and unanswerable question/issue on BGRASS-L is ‘WIBA’ or What Is Bluegrass Anyway. There appear to be as many notions as there are subscribers. Other subjects include discussions about individual bands, musicians, instruments and events. There is some discussion of business- related issues, but most of that now occurs on IBMA-L. (p.c.)

Like other similar mailing lists, there remain a few core members who regularly post and keep the dialogue lively with a rotating cast of other participants. Godbey guesses that less than 10-15% of subscribers actually participate in the discussion, while the majority of subscribers are lurkers. Godbey attributes the decrease in L subscribers and participation among subscribers to the fact that there are so many other “venues for

Internet-based communication, but now there are hundreds of sites where folks can read or talk about bluegrass music.” (p.c.)

IBMA-L was created in 1996 as “an informal, online forum for IBMA members to communicate about industry-related or IBMA-related topics.” (p.c.) Andy Owens, the

IBMA Board Chair at the time, requested that Frank Godbey create a listserv specifically for IBMA members, separate from BGRASS-L. The decision to create an email list specifically for IBMA members may have been spurred on by heavy discussion on

BGRASS-L regarding changes made at the International Bluegrass Music Museum.

IBMA-L is similar in form and function to BGRASS-L with the most obvious difference being membership in IBMA as a requirement to subscribe. BGRASS-L discussion tends to be more casual and often more heated, while IBMA-L discussion leans toward music industry concerns.

The Bluegrass Blog

Brance Gillihan and John Lawless were inspired to create the Bluegrass Blog during the 2004 US presidential elections. Around that time, blogs became better known and some became household names. The two joked that they should have their own

59 blog and, as John Lawless states, “those jokes gradually turned into more serious discussions.” (p.c.) They researched and developed the Blog as a revenue producing business. The Blog began in the summer of 2005. Between 2006 and 2009, daily visits to the site increased from approximately 1000 to 2500.

Ralph Berrier of the Roanoke Times describes the Bluegrass Blog as “a compendium of news, notes and interviews about contemporary bluegrass music”

(Berrier 2006). This definition is succinct and accurate, but it does not include the multimedia aspect: video, audio, photographs, and polls that are regularly included in

Blog posts. In 2006, the Blog also included the Grasscast – podcast based artist interviews (Berrier 2006). These podcasts are also available on iTunes, but new episodes have not been posted since December of 2006. The Bluegrass Blog also offers links to other bluegrass-related sites, with both click-through advertisements and hyperlinked text.

Information posted on the Blog comes from a variety of sources. Most of the material comes from Brance and John, who are subscribed to various mailing lists and are active in the bluegrass world. John Lawless plays the banjo with a part time bluegrass band, Acoustic Endeavors, and owns AcuTab Publishing – a sheet music and instructional DVD distributor based in Roanoke, Virginia (Berrier 2006). Brance Gillihan is a guitarist and owner of a video/audio studio, Clear Blue Productions, in Pulaski,

Virginia. The blog also regularly includes posts from Guest Contributors, including

British writer Richard Thompson and American banjo player Casey Henry, daughter of writer/picker Murphy Henry.

The Blog offers any reader the opportunity to send news or notes to Brance or

John to be posted. The Blog owners make the final call on whether or not to include the information in a post. The hosted Blog affirms the accuracy of information, but also adds a level of distance between reader and post. Per John, they “hear from readers on a

60 sporadic basis. There is a contact form on our site, and we get 6-10 messages each day from there. Some are news tips, and some are just more general comments.” (p.c.)

“New recordings and stories about band life on the road are especially popular,” (p.c.)

John continues.

Figure 4: The Bluegrass Blog

Social Networking

Social networking is yet another way that bluegrass fans interact with one another online. Prior to 2010, many bluegrass bands of all sizes used MySpace as a place to post tour news, share music and videos, and reach out to potential fans. Once the main social networking site, MySpace has since been overshadowed by Facebook.

Facebook does not have the same tools for sharing and selling artists' songs and merchandise, but its format is friendlier for striking up conversations and getting to know other fans (and musicians) on a personal level. Beginning in late 2009, Facebook’s format has become increasingly accessible for audio and video sharing. Users of both sites can search for fellow bluegrass fans or for specific musicians, and interact virtually through private messaging or public posts on others' profile pages.

Figure 5: MySpace

Facebook also has what were once called groups or fan pages, and now simply

"liked" categories, which individuals may join. People may indicate that they like bluegrass, a particular festival, or a particular band, and connect with the organizations and other individuals who like the same things. My own Facebook profile indicates that I like bluegrass music, and I've received multiple "friend" requests from fellow bluegrass fans, many of whom I've never met in person. I am able to gather bluegrass news from posts made and shared by these fellow bluegrass fans, and from the organizations or artists themselves.

Figure 6: Facebook

Facebook first began in 2004 at Harvard University, and later spread across the

Ivy League to other schools, eventually becoming available to all. MySpace began in

2003 and has been available to anyone signing up since its inception. Other social networking sites exist, and some, like Friendster, have had brief moments of popularity.

Other, smaller sites tailored more specifically to bluegrass or acoustic musicians have also opened, such as GrassSpace. In this dissertation, when I speak of social networking, I mainly refer to the two most-used sites of MySpace and Facebook. As social networking sites are constantly changing, at least compared to the electronic mailing lists which have been around since 1991, I focus on these only slightly. When I began intensive research for this study in 2007, MySpace was the predominant social networking venue for music-related interaction. Now MySpace has fallen out of favor and Facebook has become the central location for online social networking. The presence of Facebook in particular in many people's musical lives and community interactions, particularly those under 30, is worth an in depth study of its own.

Conclusion

Bluegrass has remained a niche genre since its early days in the mid twentieth century. However, the audience has expanded, and bluegrass fans may be found worldwide, across barriers of geography, ethnicity, gender, and age. The bluegrass community has been somewhat of a felt reality, with many community members never meeting each other, yet feeling connected by a shared interest in bluegrass. The

Internet allows both widely dispersed and geographically near community members to develop real relationships through online communication. The following chapters will provide an in depth exploration of concepts of bluegrass community on the Internet.

CHAPTER FOUR

A Community Built on Relationships

After finding a parking space among rows of RVs, I walked into the Sheraton Music

City in Nashville. Music was everywhere. My colleague and I waded through the clusters of instrumental jams to a corner suite on the ground floor. Walking into the suite, we were greeted with (temporary) musical silence and a vast supply of snack food.

I went straight for the canister of pretzels while my colleague chatted with the owner of the hotel suite, an old friend. The suite was rented by a group of four friends who attend the SPBGMA (Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America) Bluegrass

Music Awards and Convention each year, staying in this same suite each time. The owner of the room mentioned that he was not sure if the same group would be able to continue their annual trek in future years, so this may be their last year in the suite.

As we sat in the room chatting and eating, a steady stream of people stopped in to say hello – some of whom I’d met at previous events and some I met for the first time.

After catching up with the room owner and a few of his friends who stopped by, we began to perambulate through the different floors of the hotel. We ran into two regular

World of Bluegrass volunteers, and as I was the volunteer coordinator at the time, they let me know that they would not be able to attend this year due to another volunteer obligation at an overlapping festival. We chatted with other fans, acquaintances new and old, as we walked through the building, surrounded at every turn by music.

Figure 7: SPBGMA jam session Photo from bluegrasscountry.org

Figure 8: SPBGMA jam session Photo from bluegrasscountry.org

Bluegrass music is a genre that heavily emphasizes people and the relationships between them. Fans of the genre hold in high regard performers past and present, with special attention given to early well-known figures such as Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs,

Lester Flatt, Ralph Stanley, and Jimmy Martin. In addition to revering bluegrass founders and current performers, fans of the genre are drawn to the social activities surrounding the music for the personal relationships that lead toward a feeling of community and even family among fans.

Plenty of people listen to and enjoy bluegrass music without being a part of any community surrounding it. As a “fringe” music genre not easily found in mainstream sources, bluegrass fans often invest a great deal of time and energy in seeking out, listening to, and performing the music. As mentioned in chapter three, few radio stations play bluegrass, and very rarely is bluegrass heard on mainstream media sources. The search for bluegrass music often brings fellow fans together. People tend to reach out to other fans to find out about ways to hear and participate in the music – jam sessions, festivals, and associations – and in this reaching out relationships develop. In addition to the practical reasons for fan connection, the music (lyrics and performance atmosphere) perpetuates an idea of community, sharing, and family. The music is often heard and played at festivals and jam sessions, settings that both create a sense of community. At a festival, people temporarily live as neighbors. In a jam session, musicians interact musically and conversationally – sociability is as much a goal as musicality. This musical neighborliness is not exclusive to bluegrass, but it is not found across all genres. In my earlier years as a classical flute player, it would have been unheard of at the annual convention or a local flute festival to walk into another flutist’s hotel room or practice room and join in the music making. At bluegrass events, this type of behavior is not only acceptable, it is expected. Many festival-goers have been attending the same events from a young age, but newcomers must quickly become

67 acculturated to the atmosphere of musical sharing and “visiting.”

Historically, relationships were developed face-to-face, but with the widespread availability and use of the Internet, relationships may be created and maintained

“virtually.” How do people develop and maintain relationships online? How are online relationships similar and different to offline relationships? This chapter focuses on the overlap between on and offline relationships – with the goal of better understanding music community in the twenty-first century. Each member of the online bluegrass community has his or her own reasons for joining and participating. Members may yearn for the camaraderie of sharing a common interest, seek support, hope to increase their knowledge about the subject, or simply enjoy the interaction with other human beings.

In my electronic survey of participants in bluegrass online culture, online bluegrass community members most frequently mentioned “relationships” as the strongest marker of community. Respondents suggested regular participation, interaction, belonging, supporting, sharing, serving, helping, and friendship as other markers of both online and offline community. Many feel part of a community because other participants were familiar to them based on the frequency and substance of posts. Respondents stated that they recognized names and could recognize personalities based on regular communication(s) over time. Respondents also mentioned knowledge of others’ views as a connecting (and one might assume separating) force of community. Perhaps the comfort to express views and the familiarity with others who retain and value those views are both markers of community.

Bluegrass Family

“Bluegrass music does not have a large following. As such, its fans make up a ‘family’ feeling, a feeling of belonging/supporting something in common simply for the fun/enjoyment/satisfaction of this small part of music” -Anonymous survey respondent

As stated previously, people are attracted to bluegrass not only for the music, but for the family feeling brought about by and surrounding the music. People are looking for connection, for relationships. Musicians establish themselves in a kind of kinship according to whom they have played with, gaining more respect (and more gigs) if they have performed with one of the greats. Fans connect at festivals, with many attending the same event(s) year after year. Fans and musicians are seen as individuals and as members of a larger group, connected by their shared interest and passion for bluegrass music. Fans of bluegrass develop relationships amongst each other. Some relationships are close enough to be described as family-like, the most essential form of community. Time after time, fans describe these relationships as the essential, defining element of community.

Foster states that “the term ‘community’ is broadly used to refer to an ideal type of social relations known as Gemeinschaft, the embryo of which is found in the relations of kindred individuals (Toennies 1957: 37). Succinctly stated, the term embodies a set of voluntary, social, and reciprocal relations that are bound together by an immutable ‘we- feeling’” (Foster 1996:25). The root of Toennies’ Gemeinschaft is relationship between family members – ties of kinship. This “kinship” relationship is reflected in the many references among bluegrass fans to the bluegrass “family.” Family ties are not chosen and are permanent. These ties are the essence of all relationships. Many bluegrass fans and musicians are indeed connected by kinship ties. The association of bluegrass community with bluegrass family illustrates the identity of bluegrass fans as more than an affinity group, more than a community, but a set of unconditional relations, despite

69 the fact that many may have nothing more in common than a passion for the same genre of music.

Understanding the way bluegrass fans interact with each other is primary to understanding the music. The cultural norms surrounding bluegrass music mirror the norms of Southern society. Fans are outwardly friendly to each other, welcoming new members into the group. Many people from outside bluegrass music’s original demographic are drawn to the image the music represents and reflects. The idea of imagined home, a rural idyll surrounded by family, friends, and neighbors, appeals to many bluegrass fans today. Ideas of “simpler times” or of familial closeness draw fans to bluegrass music as well as early country music, and many folk and traditional music forms. Festivals often strive for an image of a family reunion. The same attendees see each other at these events perhaps once a year. Large groups of people share campsites or hotel rooms and suites. Some people are seen as central hubs in the festival social structure/scene and lead the way in making connections. Others, newcomers perhaps, stop by these central figures’ campsites or rooms and these places quickly become centers of activity – people meeting each other, sharing a musical lick over a hamburger. This reunion ethos may draw from the association of bluegrass music and southern Protestant religious practice, influenced by the annual church homecoming event.

Bluegrass music maintains the communal, family-centered spirit of pre-twentieth- century music making, when families gathered to play, listen to, or dance to music together. In bluegrass and many “traditional” pre-twentieth-century music forms, the music is often played within family groups, instruments, tunes, and status are passed down generation to generation, and family bands and brother duets dominate the music scene. Shared love of and familiarity with the music gains one admittance to the family of bluegrass fandom. Ledgin states that “this love of the music lends itself to a sense of

70 bluegrass community. Once you are hooked on bluegrass, you are part of the family, no matter where you land to hear it” (Ledgin 2004:2).

As with actual family units, the bluegrass “family” sometimes has disagreement within. In his description of the Dayton, Ohio bluegrass community, Teepen states that

“as in any family, there were rivalries, sulks, even anger now and again. But when we felt challenged by outsiders, we pulled together for one another” (Teepen 2004:143). In my experience with the bluegrass community, heated issues may divide the community of fans, but rarely are ties severed. When bluegrass music or musicians are threatened by outside forces, such as someone discounting the genre or one of its leaders, the bluegrass community draws together, despite internal squabbling.

The family metaphor is used to describe the at large bluegrass community as well as the smaller, temporary communities of bluegrass festivals, such as World of

Bluegrass and Bean Blossom, at which the same people gather year after year. Ledgin states that “the camaraderie that develops at festivals, concerts, and other get-togethers is an important aspect of bluegrass music. Bluegrass is very much a community of like- minded individuals, a ‘family’” (Ledgin 2004:103). Goldsmith describes how “the society in Bill Monroe’s Jamboree Park shifted and settled, each newcomer orienting himself to the somewhat elusive water supplies, to the geography of the park and to the IGA store a quarter of a mile down Indiana 135” (Cantwell in Goldsmith 2004:204).

Figure 9: Fort Christmas Bluegrass Festival, Florida (from nbbd.com)

Figure 10: Soggy Mountain Bluegrass Festival, Arizona (from lasr.net)

Bluegrass festivals are a good representation of the family aspect of bluegrass music, where individuals join or rejoin the larger group. Cantwell states that bluegrass

“is a genuinely spontaneous, collective, and participatory music, a ‘traditional’ music, which the bluegrass festival has done much to enrich and consolidate” (Cantwell

2003:147). Festivals become temporary communities with all essentials in one place – with communal activity occurring continuously. These temporary communities of festivals are enclosed in the larger overall bluegrass community in the same way that nuclear family units are absorbed into extended families. As in large families, the bluegrass community (or society) can also be broken down into smaller units: the DC,

Irish, or California bluegrass communities, or even the BGRASS-L community.

The Individual and the Group

Bluegrass music is often called the “high lonesome sound” in reference to both the vocal timbre, emphasizing the male falsetto, and the music’s historical affiliation with the isolated hills of Kentucky. “Lonesome” is an adjective commonly associated with bluegrass – with lyrics speaking to isolation, independence, and self-reliance. Yet bluegrass is not a solo art form. The music and the community surrounding it emphasize individuality alongside group cohesion. While individual virtuosic skill is lauded, traditional bluegrass is always played in a group – whether in a jam session or performance.

Bluegrass music (and the community surrounding it) reveres both individualism and group cohesion. The music is a combination of instrumental virtuosity and crisp vocal harmonies. The music encourages individual talent, but in the setting of a group.

The individual must follow the rules and customs of the jam session or performance, a solo must fill the appropriate amount of time, then the soloist must drop back into the

73 group. An individual’s voice must fit in with the established and accepted harmonies.11

Unlike most of the other musical forms found in the rural upland South, where it had its first and most lasting popularity, bluegrass is an ensemble form with performance conventions which demand a high degree of integration. Appalachian (and adjacent upland South) culture is often said to place high value on individuality. In contrast, bluegrass performance conventions are indeed restrictive and binding; they limit musical individuality (Rosenberg 2005:9).

As opposed to related genres such as old-time, bluegrass musicians are permitted to take solo breaks on stage and in the jam session. These solo sections are part of the established musical tradition, with specific norms regarding length, content, and order of individual solos. Some musicians avoid the limitations of traditional bluegrass performance practice by branching out into more progressive (and often more individualistic and innovative) genres, such as Americana or alt-country.

Bluegrass music is a constant dialogue or compromise between individual and group. Instrumentalists play (potentially virtuosic) solos for an appropriate amount of time, then step back (musically and often physically) to let the group take over. Some groups (usually those of the “traditional” persuasion) perform using a single microphone, as shown in the photograph opposite.12 Band members arrange themselves in what could be considered a choreographed dance around the microphone, leaning in when taking a solo and leaning or stepping back when the solo ends. The single microphone requires the players to stand near one another, and the different players are linked both by sound and visual movements. In this way, skilled performance is much like skilled conversation, with individuals knowing when to speak up and when to simply be part of the group.

11 Refer to Alan Lomax’s work on cantometrics for a more thorough discussion of this type of musico-social behavior. 12 For detailed information on microphone placement in bluegrass, refer to Kevin Jacobson’s article on the Cave Music blog: http://cavemusic.ca/.

Figure 11: The SteelDrivers, MerleFest 2009

Mayne Smith states that the “the overall impression produced by a bluegrass performance is one of multiple parts in continual interaction” (M. Smith in Goldsmith

2004:80). The instruments and vocal harmonies all blend together, constantly adjusting, making room for others, or taking a turn in the lead – coming forward, falling back, keeping a steady beat. Cantwell states that “any bluegrass musician – excluding guitarist-lead singers – will tell you that his music does not go well by itself” (Cantwell

2003:74). Bluegrass music is not a solo art form. It is made by and for groups and ensembles.

Bluegrass is an interactive, participatory genre, and many fans are also musicians themselves. Ledgin asserts that “a key element of the community or family of bluegrass is the extraordinary number of fans who are also pickers, be they amateur, semipro/part- time, closet pickers, or even ‘air banjo’ pickers” (Ledgin 2004:109). It is indeed true that many, perhaps most bluegrass fans play an instrument themselves, or at least know the words to enough tunes to feel comfortable singing them. The prevalence of jam

75 sessions serves as a good illustration of the participatory nature of bluegrass music.

Cantwell states that “the formulaic and conventional character of back-porch bluegrass invites participation, and it is participation in one form or another which rewards the individual, admitting him into the community in a way that embodies its transpersonal nature in deep personal experience” (Cantwell 2003:152-153). Emphasizing the importance of group cohesion, Pete Wernick’s jam camps teach pickers how to play in groups – a different pedagogical idea than the usual music camp technique of everyone playing the same piece at the same time. These jam camps cover commonly heard tunes, jam etiquette, and general bluegrass musicianship.

At Bean Blossom perfect strangers could form bands and moments later be making fine music together. Even though a bluegrass musician develops himself largely in solitary, he cannot fully display or even realize his musical abilities until he participates with other individuals in a band. Thus he is not fully an individual, musically at least, until he is swept up in the operations of that tiny but very real community (Cantwell 2004:203).

…the community is at the festivals and jams -Anonymous survey respondent

Many bluegrass fans attend festivals for the jam sessions. These amateur pickers spend most of their time at an event in the parking lot or at a campsite with the hottest jam. I have spoken with more than a few festival attendees who do not attend any of the performances, but simply show up for the jamming. As most of these festival jams are irregular and semi-spontaneous, (expected but unplanned), pickers are familiar with playing in an ensemble with strangers. Pickers know standard tunes and quickly learn new ones, they know (or quickly learn), jamming etiquette, and they play and drop back at the appropriate times. If someone extends a solo break far past her time or plays when she is not supposed to, she quickly becomes the least popular person at the jam session. The perfect jam involves a mix of individual and group harmony. Individualism should never occur at the expense of the group. Rosenberg asserts that in jam sessions, “emphasis is upon egalitarian music making: younger musicians who are just

76 learning are encouraged to attend and participate” (Rosenberg 2005:366). Some individuals never fully adhere to jam etiquette, just as some people never adhere to social norms.

“Being Known”: Online Communication and Identity

Savvy communicators, whether online or offline, know when to speak up and when to listen. Offline, communication involves interplay between speaking and listening.

Online, communicators post messages in lieu of speaking and read messages in lieu of listening. Online, it is acceptable to only read (or “listen”) to messages the listener is interested in. Offline, this selective hearing would be considered rude. Online communication consists primarily of posting a message to many and waiting for a response. Replies are not always immediate. Some posts do not even receive a reply.

Online, group/individual interplay is not always subtle. The individual communicates with the group and individuals from the group respond. No one officially speaks for “the group.” Each listserv has a moderator who could be considered the group spokesperson, and social networking groups have hosts. Blog posts are moderated by blog owners and managers. The Internet medium allows for “talking” at the same time. Members may “listen” (read) simultaneous posts one at a time at their leisure. Group/individual interplay is somewhat altered in online communication, as physical cues are absent. Participants in the conversation often struggle with determining when to speak up and when to listen. There is less group interplay online, as conversation is one person to many. Multiple people may send a message at the same time, but messages can only be read one at a time.

The online community is understood as an extension of, an opposition to, or a piece of the self. The community is a place for the self to become a part of something.

Members identify themselves with signature lines, blatant identity statements (such as

“I’m a moldy fig”) within the group and as members of the group when outside of it – through Facebook fan pages, or bumper stickers or t-shirts. An example of a signature line used to both demonstrate identity and make a (non-bluegrass) point would be Mike

Marceau’s regularly updated signature lines.

Mike Marceau - Bass Guy in Maryland "More than one in three soldiers and Marines who served in Iraq sought help for mental health problems....Iraq veterans are far more likely to have witnessed people getting wounded or killed, to have experienced combat, and to have had aggressive or suicidal thoughts...." or: Mike Marceau - Standup Bassist - Silver Spring, Maryland "During a private two- hour meeting on Jan. 31, 2003, he [Bush] made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second [UN] resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons...."

Our understanding of ourselves and our communities is conceived in relation to others. We develop our identities as part of a community and express our identities to others through performance. Bluegrass fans often state that other bluegrass fans are part of the genre’s allure and sometimes the turn off. The community makes us who we are and is the space/place where we express (at least a part of) our identities. Taylor asserts that “the importance of our relations to others for the assertion of one’s own self- identity never wavers, such that ‘self-consciousness presupposes the re-cognition of self in other” (Taylor 1991:18). We define ourselves in relation to others. We are not x we are y – and we are part of z.

A community is made up of individuals who “commune” by interacting in some way. In bluegrass music making, this interaction takes place through jam sessions and performance. In online bluegrass community, individual members participate in discussion as a regular interaction – reading of others’ posts, news sources, event reviews, and so forth. Online interaction is necessarily more indirect than offline – it is mediated by technology. In general, all people must find their place within the larger society. Most individuals must have a space in the world at large – a space which may

78 be constantly reevaluated and reestablished. Interactions in the online bluegrass community include text-based conversation, sharing of music and videos, and listening to or reading the same text or event mostly simultaneously.

Public communication, specifically the exchange of information, is a major way of interacting with and enacting community online (and offline). All interactions on

BGRASS-L and IBMA-L and other online groups are of a public nature. Community members develop relationships by becoming known to the group as a whole, as well as by demonstrating that they know other members. For example, an IBMA-L poster might begin a message debating another member with “Love ya, ya big ol galoot.” This playful banter indicates to the rest of the subscribers (particularly the newer members) that the two members are friendly with one another rather than antagonistic. Private interactions also occur within communities, but the public element solidifies the collection of individuals into a community. Individual recognition by others in the community is also an important aspect of (online) community.

Being recognized as an individual, known by name within the community is an end toward which many participants strive. However, emergence of particular individuals as established within a community brings with it the potential for tension with those who are less known. Some may argue they are being excluded by a tight-knit clique whose dominance squelched dissenting voices (Baym 1993:170).

Survey participants referenced both recognition as an individual and a concern with cliques within the online bluegrass community. Several respondents reported that knowing their fellows’ personalities, names, and identities established and maintained the online bluegrass scene as a community. “Knowing others’ personalities” was mentioned repeatedly as a marker of community. Some respondents indicated that they did not know enough about fellow members to consider themselves part of a community.

These people do not receive enough identity cues in the online format to have developed community relationships. Many of these people may require face-to-face interaction to feel community inclusion. Some participants indicated a feeling of

79 exclusion due to the perception that they were separated from most other members by geography. Most members live on the east coast, one respondent stated, while the respondent resides on the west coast. This lack of community feeling in the online world due to geographical separation in the offline world goes against the (prevailing/popular) concept of the virtual world as a world without boundaries – geographical or other (race, socio-economic status, etc).

One of the ways we express ourselves and our identities is through participation in a group. The ritual of participation occurs in music-making (jam sessions), festival attendance, and conversation. This participation takes us outside of ourselves and allows us to become a part of something larger. We interact online by reading and posting messages, perusing blogs, and sharing audio and video. Community participation also occurs through sharing conversations about music and sharing electronic files – audio, video, or photo. Our identity is established, formed, and transformed through our interactions with community. We accept or reject the community and the community (or its members) accepts or rejects us. We find the place/space of our existence through our interaction with and participation in community.

A community is the combination of our individual selves with the other “selves” of the group – a melding, a throwing together of different personalities and backgrounds.

Familiarity comes through regular participation in the community – those who regularly comment on topics and who offer personal thoughts and opinions become known individuals in the online community. Many posters portray personality through email signatures, language and words used, what discussion topics they choose to participate in, and how they participate in discussion- if their manner is informative, instructive, complaining, hopeful, jolly, or cynical. The primarily text-based mode of communication has limitations in accurately reflecting personality. Chapter six includes a detailed discussion of text based communication as it relates to online bluegrass

80 community.

Each of us must find our own space/place in the world, in society, in the community. Some communities we do not choose (family, ethnic group, place of birth), but the online bluegrass community is by choice. Some members of the bluegrass community were born into it – as second or third (or possibly fourth) generation bluegrass musicians and fans. Many bluegrass fans elect to join the community – by their “choice” to prefer the music and to seek out involvement and participation.

Members of the online bluegrass community actively choose to come together with the group; gatherings are not merely happenstance or accidents of birth.

Relationships: Sharing

I logged on to my email service, clicking on the folder to which I automatically have my BGRASS-L messages filtered – twenty four new messages. It must have been a busy day on the listserv. Skimming the subject headings, I clicked on the first message that caught my eye – Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver has a new vocalist. A few messages listed playlists for upcoming bluegrass radio shows, while others briefly reviewed recent performances including some bands with new member lineups. One message referenced a mainstream music magazine’s mention of bluegrass, while another shared some historical bluegrass trivia.

How do all of these seemingly unrelated messages generate relationships?

Relationships are determined by the responses and the interaction. When someone publically responds to another’s post, we (the subscribers) learn something about that person –an opinion, preference, or area of expertise. Just knowing facts about someone does not create a relationship, but the regular engagement does. Bob may respond to my message; I may respond to his. Once this back and forth happens repeatedly over time – we begin to develop a relationship. Why are these relationships important?

Many people consider relationships and social interaction to be a vital part of life – a way to connect with and engage in the world.

Nessim Watson states that “we should begin thinking of community as a product not of shared space, but of shared relationships among people” (Watson 1999:120).

The shared interest in bluegrass does not make a community, but the relationships that are developed based on this shared interest build the community. From these relationships, a community develops. Relationships are both the key reason for and determining factor of community. People often seek out community in order to have personal interaction and engagement. Relationships developed over time are also one of the key elements in determining if a group is or is not a community. A collection of people who have not developed relationships are usually defined as a group or network, but not a community. Bluegrass fans may develop relationships online and then meet offline. They may have an already established offline friendship and use the Internet to keep in touch between face-to-face meetings. They may have met in person, but not really gotten to know one another until interacting online.

In a reference to the book Habits of the Heart, A.P. Rovai states that

A community is a group of people who are socially interdependent, who participate together in discussion and decision making, and who share certain practices that both define the community and are nurtured by it. Such a community is not quickly formed. It almost always has a history and so is also a community of memory, defined in part by its past and its memory of the past (Rovai 2002:3-4).

Sharing and discussion make these online communities what they are. The listservs

BGRASS-L and IBMA-L are my best examples, and they have been around since the early ‘nineties, 1991 and 1996 respectively. Many bluegrass fans would argue that communities do spring up overnight – at festivals and perhaps at jam sessions. Many people who consider these events “mini-communities” come every year, interacting with the same attendees year after year. The use of the phrase family reunion in describing some bluegrass festivals indicates that the members have met before and are simply

82 reuniting.

Bluegrass relationships are based on familiarity with others’ views, values, personalities, and personal information. Relationships may be deep and intense or shallow and surface level. Many members know each other’s names (and perhaps faces), but may not know anything about each other’s families or backgrounds. Online bluegrass fans are more likely to be familiar with each other’s views on traditional and progressive bluegrass than they are each other’s place of residence or number of children. Political and religious views are generally avoided, though some members choose to express these views and opinions. Community members, particularly on

BGRASS-L and IBMA-L, might chastise people who post such divisive and heated comments.

Brint states that “relations among members of a community need not be exclusive or even extremely frequent…my definition requires only that these relations be based primarily on affect, loyalty, shared values, or personal involvement with the lives of others” (Brint 2001:9). Whether or not online bluegrass community falls under Brint’s description depends on how this personal involvement in the lives of others takes place.

The primary value participants share is a love of and appreciation for bluegrass. Other values relating to politics, religion, family, and belief system are not necessarily shared.

The differing value system is evidenced by discussions regarding the sexuality of a bluegrass musician or a dialogue about the World of Bluegrass events coinciding with the Jewish High Holy Days.

Relationships must be based on something shared in order to last – such as a shared interest in bluegrass. An interest in bluegrass leads people to listen to the music, but an interest or need for community and communication leads people to regularly

“meet up” online or off to discuss the music, people, and history surrounding it. There are plenty of people who listen to bluegrass who do not feel the need to be a member of

83 a community surrounding the genre. Bluegrass fans do not necessarily require the same values in order to develop relationships. They do need shared respect, tolerance, and willingness to agree to disagree.

Relationships: Support

Although learning the identity of other members is an important by product of interacting in virtual communities, it is not the main function of member participation. Indeed, the exchange of support is a very important reason for the existence of many virtual communities. Support may be exchanged publicly in posts for the entire group to read or may occur privately through emails exchanged behind the scenes (Blanchard 2006:2111).

The exchange of support offered by being part of a community is a key reason for wanting to belong. Knowing that one is being looked out for by fellow community members provides comfort and security. In the bluegrass community, this support is most visibly reflected through sharing and responding to illness/injury or death. During my membership on various Internet bluegrass sites and mailing lists, I found the illness and eventual death of mandolin player and teacher Butch Baldassari to be the most profound in terms of community support. Bluegrass fans and musicians shared their support for Butch and his family through posts, sharing of history, humorous anecdotes, and expressions of concern and support for his family. This online expression of support occurred alongside in-person support such as fundraising performances, bracelets, and buttons. Butch received a great deal of support from friends and fans around the world through the medium of the Internet. A January 2009 post from “The B,” the user generated blog affiliated with the Bluegrass Blog, demonstrates the type of tributes honoring Butch.

20+ years ago I was playing guitar in a lounge band in Vegas and working a day job too. I struck up a conversation with the guy who used to come into my office building to fill up the pop machines…his name was Butch and he was a mandolin player, and we got along famously as soon as he found out I was a Grisman fan. He came out and saw my band play a couple times in a casino, and told me he was moving to Nashville. In 2000 I ended up in Nashville too, and we crossed

paths a few times, and he was always the coolest guy - genuine and seemingly sincerely happy to be living his dream of doing nothing but playing the mandolin, much more interested in the music than he was in Music Row. In his own way he inspired my own playing and songwriting, as he showed me that you can love music and even make a living at it without desiring all the other crap that comes with it. Today my day job is at Vanderbilt, where people in my department who know nothing about playing music still know who Butch was and that he passed away. Thanks, Butch, for your music and your example.

The ways in which support is demonstrated online differs from that of offline community. In physical (offline) community, support may come in the form of a pat on the back, a benefit performance, or simple co-presence. Online support is often expressed in words – encouragement, condolences, or shared memories. Online support may express itself in calls for offline support – financial, physical, or otherwise.

The two worlds of online and offline often overlap when it comes to support. Despite the differences in its manifestation, mutual support is an important part of online community.

Tuan states that “everyone, socially privileged or not, wants the reassurance of sustained relationships such that one is not only cared for in an emergency but can count on receiving solace and chicken soup from one’s familiars even in unexceptional times” (Tuan 2002:314). People count on that support from their community, and the benefits of relationships is one of the key motivating factors for community participation.

Even short-lived relationships are perceived as a benefit of online community, though lasting relationships are often the goal.

Sometimes on the BList when someone asks for help in finding out something – or – if someone experiences a tragedy, folks respond in a friendly, ‘community’ way. -Anonymous Survey Respondent

People do not generally stay in voluntary communities if they perceive that they receive no benefit from them. The community must have some kind of perceived reward as well as a sense of obligation. In addition to perceived rewards and support,

Blanchard explains that

social exchange theory is based on the near universal norm of reciprocity…if the exchange is dyadic, the attachment remains between the two social exchange

partners, but if the exchange occurs indirectly within a group or organization, the attachment is to the group or the organization (Blanchard 2006:2112).

In the aforementioned expressions of support for Butch Baldassari, these statements were rewarding to both the recipient and the giver. The recipient receives the emotional psychological support and the giver is rewarded by the sense of personal agency and connection.

Members support each other in times of need by soliciting cards and donations for fellow members and by exchanging public support of each other’s music. Bluegrass musicians often host benefits for ailing fellow musicians or general world need. These benefits (so far) take place in the real world, but are advertised and discussed in the virtual realm. An IBMA-L example of these online advertisements for offline events follows.

OK, summer is right around the corner. You are probably needing a vacation, and Nashville, TN during the last week of June might be just the thing for you. You can go to a great benefit show on Tuesday & Wednesday nights, visit the new Country Music Hall of Fame, catch a bluegrass show on Thursday at the Ryman Auditorium with Ricky Skaggs & Friends, see Uncle Phil & Wildfire on Friday night at the Station Inn, go to the huge flea market Saturday at the fairgrounds, and top off your week with a trip to the Opry on Saturday night!! (I'm sure there are many more possibilities for things to do while in Nashville and this is just a good "starter set").

Tuesday & Wednesday, June 26 & 27, there will be a Benefit Show & Silent Auction at the Gallatin Civic Center, in Gallatin, Tennessee, beginning at 6:00 p.m. nightly, with all the proceeds going to help Terry Eldredge & Bobby Nicholas with expenses incurred since their motor vehicle accident on April 25. Advance tickets are available now at the Station Inn or at the Gallatin Civic Center Box Office (615-451-5911) Advance tickets are $20.00 per night ($25.00 at the door). $10.00 per night for children, 12 and under.

The line-up is still being confirmed and is subject to minor changes, but as of now, here it is:

Tuesday-June 26 Mac Wiseman, Jimmy Martin, Nashville Bluegrass Band, The Sidemen, Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time, James Monroe & the Midnight Ramblers, Gail Davies, Larry Stephenson Band, Gary Brewer & the Kentucky Ramblers, Dale Ann Bradley & Coon Creek, David Parmley, The 1946 Band, Jolena Foster, and Bryan Sutton-Aubrey Haynie-Dennis Crouch-David Talbot.

Wednesday-June 27 Lonesome River Band, Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys, Jimmy Martin, Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time, The Sidemen, Eddie & Martha Adcock, Reno Brothers w/Mitch & Bill Harrell, Roland White Band, Josh Graves & Kenny Baker, The Time Jumpers, James King Band, and Ryan Holladay.

If you can't attend the benefit and would still like to help, you can send a donation to: Terry Eldredge Benefit Trust Fund [Address Redacted]

A silent auction will also be held during the benefit and if you have any items or memorabilia you would like to donate, please contact, Pat Jackson. She will also help answer any questions you may have about the benefit show or silent auction.

Updates will be posted to: http://www.brewgrass.com/benefit.html This line-up is already great, but there are more possibilities to be added, once they are confirmed. Stay tuned!!!

Concepts of familiarity, support, personality, and group contribution were all mentioned by bluegrass fans as what makes an online bluegrass gathering a community. Members may express support by encouraging a fellow musician – applauding an album publically, by requesting thoughts and prayers for an ill member of the community, or by offering their agreement with a statement made by another.

Members and Membership

One must have a conception of him or herself as a member (or non-member) of the community in order to really conceive of a collection of individuals as a community or to feel a part of the community. One’s experience of the community affects how one defines and understands community. For example, someone who does not feel a part of the community may deny the existence of community altogether, but someone who feels included in the community may insist on its existence. Is community in the eye (or experience) of the beholder?

Members of the bluegrass community – online and offline – are far flung and loosely bounded. Online members are spread out around the world – Europe, South

America, North America, Australia, Asia (and perhaps Africa).13 The mailing lists are limited by subscribers (only subscribers receive messages in their inbox every day), but anyone with an Internet connection can view the archived messages. But is anyone who views the messages part of the community? Or does membership require some sort of participation? How much participation is enough to make one a part of the community?

People may leave and join the mailing lists or social network without a breakdown of community. Over the years, even some of the most vocal members have drifted away, some returning, some not. Other members step up to continue the conversation - either long-time members enjoying the newly available opportunity to take the spotlight or newer members stepping in to express their opinions. Members may be relatives, friends, coworkers, neighbors, or simply strangers who like bluegrass. This membership structure would be characteristic of memberships in many offline groups, but online community activity offers a different format and the ability to regularly communicate over long distances.

Belonging to a community is one way of transcending the self. However, the bluegrass community is not always easy to belong to. People are publicly welcomed – by means of general etiquette. But actually belonging to and being a recognized member of the community requires investment. General historical knowledge, proved by acknowledgement of certain facts in general conversation is one way of “fitting in,” as is awareness of major musicians and events, song titles, and instruments. If someone posted to the listserv that she or he was a huge bluegrass fan, and she or he loved bluegrass-influenced bands not usually accepted as “bluegrass” bands, such as O Death or Old Crow Medicine Show, the individual probably would not be enthusiastically welcomed. The listserv does not skew exclusively traditional, but generally a member

13 At the time of writing, The IBMA-L has members on five continents: North and South America, Australia, Asia, and Europe.

88 must display his or her traditional “chops” or “bona fides” before breaking off into a progressive or tangential path.

There are generally three types of members in online communities – lurkers, general participants, and core members/leaders. Core members keep the community going through extensive regular participation and through enforcement of norms.

General participants are the other “voices” heard. Lurkers are subscribers of varying passion who do not contribute to discussions – they simply read others’ posts. Some lurkers may feel highly invested in the community and may have subscribed for many years. These members may feel that they know the other members based on their posts. The lurker feels connected to other members, while those members may have no idea that the lurker even exists. Members know nothing of the lurker’s personality or passions, aside from bluegrass. Interestingly, many lurkers completed my survey related to online bluegrass community. They shared many thoughts and opinions in this one-sided optionally anonymous format that they perhaps did not feel comfortable sharing with the larger group.

How do individuals become community members? Who decides on membership and who is included in the membership? Is membership an internal group decision, voted on, assumed, verbally agreed, or decided on by some kind of unspoken agreement? In the cases of both BGRASS-L and IBMA-L, membership requires a request to be added to the mailing list. IBMA-L subscribers must also be IBMA members, who are, in general, professionals in the bluegrass industry (explained on the

IBMA webpage as “defined by your activity or professional interest. It is not defined by income or hours spent in the activity.”) A BGRASS-L subscription requires no additional memberships.

What about the broader “online bluegrass community?” How does one become a member of this community? Is the community too broad if there is no simple explanation

89 or demarcation of membership? Internet based community is theoretically open to anyone with an Internet connection and an interest in bluegrass. Membership is open to all, but people must do something to be considered members. Even within the community, there appear to be smaller, more specific groups. Some people read and post on particular topics but not others; some people do not actively participate at all.

The core participants appear to have developed close relationships with each other, as evidenced by their public, online dialogue.

Newcomers must constantly join communities to make up for lost members.

Communities grow and shrink over time, but a critical mass must be maintained. How are newcomers welcomed (or not)? On listservs, newcomers may be referred to FAQ

(frequently asked questions) – though these are not always easy to find. Most gather their bearings through lurking or trial and error. On social networks, new members are often made aware of connections by the services themselves – through friends of friends, group members, and “fans of” pages. Newcomers may provide a fresh perspective on ideas and concerns. In the earlier days of BGRASS-L, new members would introduce themselves as they joined. Now, more often than not, new members lurk for a while before speaking up. At the present time, listservs are losing many potential new members (though not as many current members) to social networking sites.

Communities, particularly online communities, have a consistent flow of new members who replace leaving members. As some participants lose interest or pass away, new members gradually take up their places in the group. There is often an unspoken hierarchy in which older members have higher social standing than newer members. Newcomers are, by default, not as well versed in community norms, etiquette, and personality quirks and are thus easy targets for abuse when speaking up, so many become silent participants by “lurking.”

Bennett and Peterson state that “the longtime members on average post more messages than all the others, spend more hours a week on [the listserv], and contact more members off-list…this core of most active participants tends disproportionately to be longtime members” (Bennett and Peterson 2004:199). The core majority may often have a great influence over the members’ norms, expectations, and the direction of discussions. In the case of IBMA-L, only a small percentage of the organization’s membership belongs to the mailing list and an even smaller percentage of the subscribers participate in discussion. Despite the fact that the representation is so small, online participants often express feelings of frustration if their comments are not immediately taken into account by the organization. Many of the core online members are also core offline members, though most of those with organizational leadership

(IBMA staff and board) lurk, but do not regularly participate in discussion. When I was a staff member with the IBMA, I skimmed or read the two ‘L’s and the Bluegrass Blog daily, but never posted my own messages. As a staff member, I was (informally) expected to be aware of discussions, but not actively engage in them.

Core members generally are the most influential, though not usually as the squeakiest wheel or the loudest voice. McMillan and Chavis report that “people who acknowledge that others’ needs, values, and opinions matter to them are often the most influential group members while those who always push to influence, try to dominate others, and ignore the wishes and opinions of others are often the least powerful members” (McMillan and Chavis 1986:6). Negative and gossip-based posts often garner many replies, while positive posts generally receive few responses. Perhaps this difference is due to the fact that negative posts provoke more defense and discussion in general. The most influential are also the most often heard, not necessarily due to pushy mannerisms, but simply due to frequency of communication. These members play an important role in choosing which topics are discussed and which member’s

91 views are validated.

Within each community, such as BGRASS-L and IBMA-L, there is a hierarchy of status – a stratified social system. Baym states that “a small group of people does most of the performing” and that “those who are the most prolific…tend to maintain that position over time, which means that these heavy posters play powerful roles in shaping group tradition. They generate most of the discourse and carry the highest name recognition” (Baym 1993:148). Those at the core of the group are most often those who have been posting the longest and the most regularly. Core members tend to be at the top of the social hierarchy. They set the boundaries and norms either implicitly (by not responding to “unacceptable” posts) or explicitly (by confronting other members privately or publicly about their behavior). Core members also most actively engage in community – by supporting and encouraging other members. They instigate and engage in discussions and are often more willing than other members to express a divergent viewpoint because of their secure social status. An example of a member stepping up to calm a potentially heated situation is below:

As a subscriber to many other listservs and newsgroups over the 10 years I have been online, I have seen too many good groups left for dead when the riff-raff drop in. The Emmylou Harris Usenet newsgroup's primary creator was a British fan who worked long and hard that others might benefit. rec.music.artists.emmylou-harris has largely become a playground for those who post merely to complain, vent or insult Ms. Harris. As an artist or genre stirs up the water, as The Bluegrass Music has done recently, we have to expect some scum to rise to the top. The only solution that seems to work is to skim it off and go on as if it were never there.

Ignore hateful posts, or if you have the capability, filter them out by e-mail addresses. Replying only encourages these people, even if it is just to say "Please stop." Just delete the offending posts and realize that this person is aggravating, but too small and ignorant to warrant a response. Often the offender tires of being ignored and goes somewhere else.

BGRASS-L is a good and valuable resource to young and old(er) bluegrassers. BGRASS-L should not be abandoned by serious members, just because some low-lifes are too bored, too childish or too bitter to do anything but harass those of us seeking information and enlightenment. Use your delete key and filters as needed, and we can make BGRASS-L a model "community" again.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled fiasco.

Noyes states that “the drawers of boundaries are those whose strength comes from their centrality…central members, often senior men, both bear the responsibility for and benefit from the reproduction of existing assumptions and structures” (Noyes

1995:463-464). In the case of Internet communities this gender stratification may be questioned. In an interview, Neil Rosenberg stated that originally, many of the participants in online bluegrass mailing lists were women. Presently women’s voices are heard, but the core community members are middle-age to senior men. Young voices of any gender are rarely heard (or, rather, seen) on mailing lists, though younger fans are certainly a part of the larger, offline community. From casual discussion with college- aged fans, I know that a few are members of listservs, but few (if any) participate in discussion. In general, younger bluegrass fans congregate on social networks rather than listservs. Those younger fans who do subscribe to the listservs are not core, but peripheral members. In general, the genre of bluegrass reveres age and experience.

While young people are encouraged as potential fans and future carriers of the tradition, older community members hold the authority.

Blanchard asks “is there something special about those who choose to comment and those who do not?” (Blanchard 2009:4). What leads some people to participate while most sit in the background? From my observation, it appears that more bluegrass fans in the face-to-face community participate in amateur music making than participate in online conversations. It is near impossible to “invisibly” lurk in face-to-face communities. One’s presence is generally always observed. Online communities allow for a semi-invisible presence. Some members may post under pseudonyms, though this type of behavior is rare in the bluegrass world.

Those people who participate are seen as more invested in the group, as opposed

93 to those who only “lurk.” The more one posts, the more he or she contributes. On the other hand, not all posts are viewed as contributions to the group. Some may detract from group cohesiveness. Posts about religion and politics for example, often unite and divide in equal measure. Posts that acknowledge or salute American military victories, for example, sometimes result in grumbling from those outside of the United States (or, more often, those in the United States concerned with offending international participants) or those who disagree with military activity. Generally responses from both viewpoints become heated and combative very quickly.

Belonging

Feeling a part of something is a fundamental part of being human. For bluegrass fans, feeling a part of a group of people who share a “fringe” passion is a main reason for joining and maintaining community, whether online or offline. Asks Slate Magazine, in a March 2010 article about Steve Martin (a serious and accomplished banjo player as well as a successful comedian) “What's more quaint, and out-of-time, and culturally beside-the-point than bluegrass?”14 Fans of this “beside the point” music can band together for support. To the outside world, bluegrass is peripheral, but to many bluegrass fans it is an essential part of daily life. Bluegrass fans are unique individuals in the external world, but for members in the bluegrass community their shared interest brings these outcasts together to share an emotional, if not physical or geographic connection.

What draws community members together? What makes individuals feel like part of a group? People must want to belong more than they want to be apart. That wanting is what creates and strengthens community and why it is so important to those in the community (and sometimes those outside it). The growth of technology has occurred

14 This quote was mentioned on IBMA-L with great displeasure.

94 alongside a growing isolation. People have a variety of means to connect with each other, but also increased distractions and ways to avoid connection. Many view the increased isolation and weakening of traditional communities with gathering spaces such as the public house and community center with concern and attempt to revive and rediscover community. Perhaps the perception of the weakening of communities has actually strengthened them through revival.

One of the ways people express belonging in a community is by investment in the community. People invest themselves in the group as a way to feel like they and others belong. Belonging comes through feeling and being welcoming. According to McMillan and Chavis, “the sense of belonging and identification involves the feeling, belief, and expectation that one fits in the group and has a place there, a feeling of acceptance by the group, and a willingness to sacrifice for the group” (McMillan and Chavis 1986:5).

How do people actively engage in feelings of belonging for themselves and others?

Pre-Internet (and pre-telephone), belonging was based on geographic location. One belonged to a community by virtue of physically living in that community. With an expanded view of community, one might choose to join an interest or practice-based community, such as that surrounding bluegrass music. The bluegrass fan may or may not feel a sense of belonging right away. Sometimes that sense of belonging comes with established relationships and a definite place and role within the community. In the bluegrass community, a primary way of belonging is built on being “known” by others in the community. To be known is to have others know one’s name and something about one’s personality. Belonging also comes from a “we feeling” – a sense of togetherness and shared lives and experiences. At its essence, belonging is based on relationship(s).

Community Boundaries: Inclusion/Exclusion

One way to strengthen a sense of belonging is to define boundaries. Those within

95 the community are secure in the feeling that they are included, they belong, and, necessarily, that others do not. According to Smith,

Cohen argues that community involves two related suggestions that the members of a group have something in common with each other; and the thing held in common distinguishes them in a significant way from the members of other possible groups (Cohen 1985: 12). Community thus implies both similarity and difference. It is a relational idea: ‘the opposition of one community to others or to other social entities’ (Cohen 1985:12). This leads us to the question of boundary - what marks the beginning and end of a community? (Smith 2001:3).

Cohen states that the boundaries of community may be thought of as “existing in the minds of the beholders” (Cohen 1985:12). As such, Smith states, “they may be seen in very different ways, not only by people on either side, but also by people on the same side. This is the symbolic aspect of community (or communion) boundary and is fundamental to gaining an appreciation of how people experience communities (and communion)” (Smith 2001:3).

Some boundaries – such as that of BGRASS-L and IBMA-L – are defined by membership. Subscribers are members and non-subscribers are not. But boundaries are not always that simple. Are all subscribers to BGRASS-L part of the community or only those who participate in discussion? Are lurkers included or excluded in community boundaries? Perhaps they straddle the bounds. Some lurkers feel included by knowing other members – even if the other members do not know them. Lurkers also feel a sense of inclusion with the ritual act of regularly reading through posts by “known” participants.

Bluegrass music also has what Oermann and Bufwack describe as a “strong us- against-them attitude toward the rest of the music world, with rigid musical definitions, an almost vicious internal gossip network, and a highly self-critical nature. Change was threatening and innovation was difficult” (Oermann and Bufwack 2004:286). Community members may heighten their sense of inclusion by excluding others and by envisioning themselves in opposition to other groups – country and old time for example. Though

96 many resist the discussion, bluegrass fans often debate what is not bluegrass – as evidenced by the discussion surrounding a 2009 online article in Rolling Stone. The article listed a few bands, such as the Avett Brothers and O Death, who are in the bluegrass extended family (presumably by use of a banjo), but would not fall under the standard definition of bluegrass. Members of both IBMA-L and BGRASS-L discussed the article at length, referring to the ignorance of the writer, the bands themselves, and suggesting bands that should have been mentioned instead.15 Other members mentioned that perhaps these bands and the article will encourage younger fans to discover “real” bluegrass. Noticeably, no younger fans joined in the discussion.

Bluegrass can also be seen as a twentieth and twenty-first century response to change, migration, urbanization and globalization. The music takes a piece of a traditional culture, combines it with some contemporary elements – three finger roll, syncopation – and becomes a reminder of the “good ol’ days” with a fresh flavor.

Rosenberg asserts that “bluegrass seems symbolic of responses to outside pressure for social change through group solidarity. This helps to explain its popularity with

Appalachian migrants in northern urban areas, since these people are frequently subjected to such pressure” (Rosenberg 2005:9). As opposed to much country music today, bluegrass has maintained its connection with its past and many new bands are reminiscent of Bill Monroe’s classic band.

Conclusion

Fundamental to political action is the strengthening of the ‘we’ so that it can stand up to the ‘they,’ to the Other. To position oneself advantageously with respect to the social Other, a group needs strength not only in numbers but also in cohesion. Using the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ frequently in verbal exchange is perhaps the most efficient way of ensuring cohesion (Tuan 2002:310-211).

15 Interestingly, Del McCoury and Sam Bush – musicians knowledgeable of bluegrass traditions - both contributed to the article.

Strong communities provide members with a sense of belonging, mutual support, and a group identity. A group needs a feeling of togetherness, of common purpose to become a community. Alongside the group identity, community members need to have a sense that other community members have similar experiences and feelings. A perceived similar mindedness leads to community feeling. Community feeling may also lead to similar mindedness.

Some authors have expressed the theory that the Internet may lead to the breaking of social ties, loneliness, isolation, and Balkanization of interest. The online bluegrass community enables people to commune “exclusively” with people who share their musical interest but not necessarily their other interests. It gives people a social outlet they may not otherwise have, particularly if they live in an area with few bluegrass fans (Brazil, for example). Additionally, the bluegrass community is often just one of the many overlapping communities participants are involved in.

Relationships online and offline differ in a few key ways. Offline bluegrass- based relationships are often focused on music playing and listening – a community of practice. These offline relationships depend on physical co-presence. Online relationships primarily center around discussion of bluegrass music and musicians through sharing of information and support. Some web-based conversation centers, such as YouTube and Facebook, allow for both conversation and sharing of music.

Online relationships also require regular participation over time, but not physical or temporal co-presence.

Shoupe states that “those who conceptualize community as constituted by social and emotional networks of relationships emphasize the process of community formation

– community re-creates itself through performance. Community emerges as a concomitant of communication” (Shoupe 2001:127). In this definition, community recreates and defines itself in a fluid, ever changing manner. Each time members

98 participate in community, each time members leave and others join, the community redefines itself. It is not static, but always in motion – hierarchy realigns, spaces change, subscribers switch from individual messages to digest form, new dialogues emerge, old familiar topics are re-discussed and recalculated. Online communities change and shift as physical communities do – yet in different ways. Once viewed as separate spheres, these “virtual” communities are increasingly becoming part of the

“real” world.

CHAPTER FIVE

The “Virtual” and the “Real”

The Local and the Virtual: On/Offline Community Overlap

This chapter will examine how the online (“virtual”) bluegrass community relates to (or overlaps with) the offline (“real”) bluegrass community. How are they similar, and in what important ways do they differ? Bluegrass has been what Fred Bartenstein calls a

“statistical” community for many years, and this concept of “virtual” community might be familiar to many fans and scholars of bluegrass. Bluegrass is a particularly interesting area for this exploration as fans are spread out geographically and the overall community has been imagined or felt, but not necessarily experienced by all fans for many years. Depending on where the fans live, some may regularly participate in person in community activity, while others may make face to face contact with other community members rarely or never. The growth in availability of the Internet has increased the world of contacts for distantly dispersed fans of bluegrass. These fans interact virtually, but their communications are real. Scholars in other fields have contested ideas of reality and virtuality, as they relate to Internet communication. This chapter explores these ideas as they directly concern bluegrass community on the

Internet. What makes it virtual? What makes it real? How do reality and virtuality overlap in on and offline bluegrass community?

Rheingold states that “people in virtual communities do just about everything people do in real life, but we leave our bodies behind” (Rheingold 1993:3). He wonders

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about “the ways virtual communities are likely to change our experience of the real world

as individuals and communities” (Rheingold 1993:4). Bluegrass fans whose

communities span online and offline, virtual and real worlds are likely to have a very

different perception and experience of life and the world than those whose communities

are limited to the “real” world – with its additional boundaries and restrictions of

geography, and social norms and expectations. Lysloff considers

if Internet communication is based on what some might consider the illusion of presence and others call ‘telepresence’ can it nevertheless support ongoing social collectivity? If so are such ‘virtual’ communities any different from those arising from embodied face to face encounters? Are they extensions of, substitutions for, or alternatives to, offline communities? How do the technical realities of online communications change the way we think about individual and group identity? (Lysloff 2003:238).

This chapter will address some of these questions as they relate to on and offline bluegrass community activity.

A lot of people are staying in touch regularly online, often in much the same way you’d stay in touch with your festival buddies who you see only at specific events, sharing events of the moment and moving on. The BG business is working actively to shift to the ‘dialog’ construct of social media sites (in contrast to the one way communication of performance, newsletters and broadcasting. My sense is that this is all still built on the existing offline BG community. A shift is beginning, though, where community beyond what has happened historically is being created online. -Anonymous survey respondent

The online bluegrass community is enmeshed with the offline world, where the

music is made, and the offline community, where many events discussed online occur.

The online community could be considered simply an additional layer to the texture of

twenty-first century bluegrass community. However, these online networks and

communities share traditions, relationships, and a social structure unique each online

format. Each segment of the online bluegrass community has its own expectations,

norms, hierarchy, and social codes.

Online communities are as ‘real’ (or imagined) as those offline. The realization that communities are based on a shared sense of belonging that is not necessarily dependent on physical proximity is not in itself new (see Anderson 1983). What is

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of interest is how the Internet as a technology makes possible communities and new social practices that may have been unimaginable before (Lysloff 2003:236).

How does the Internet facilitate these interactions? Or rather, how do people facilitate interactions through the medium of the Internet? What began as a small music interest group among those few individuals with Internet access became available to the world at large (though of course, still only those with enough time and money to have a computer and Internet connection and the know-how to use it), first through public/work or home computing, then portable laptops and now through such extremely portable means as phone services. In the present day, community members truly can be involved with the community from anywhere – as long as there is an Internet connection. One may interact with on and offline bluegrass community simultaneously, calling into question earlier understandings of concepts of real and virtual community.

Place/Space

Ray Oldenburg presents the idea of three essential places – the place we live, the place we work, and the place we gather for conviviality (Rheingold 1993:25). Many people and groups have been able to maintain a gathering space, whether it is a local pub, a café, a YMCA, a gym, or a religious establishment. One of the arguments against virtual community is the lack of a central, physical, gathering place at which participants may regularly meet face-to-face, Oldenberg’s place we gather for conviviality. There are places with particular meaning to bluegrass fans, such as Rosine, Kentucky or Nashville,

Tennessee, and bluegrass fans meet up for annual festival gatherings.

The overall bluegrass community is too geographically dispersed (and has always been so) to have a defined physical gathering place. What if we expanded our concept of “place” so that the Internet were the place – or more specifically, an address on the

World Wide Web, where participants might commune and experience community?

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Internet spaces serve, for some bluegrass fans, as both the place we work and the place we gather for conviviality. Most listserv activity occurs in participants’ in and outboxes, though in actuality, all messages are stored and sent through a list server (lsoft at the

University of Kentucky). Social networking space and place is located on the site itself, such as www.facebook.com, and in particular each member’s home and profile page.

Blog and forum activity takes place on the blog or forum itself and on the comment pages.

Rheingold muses that “perhaps cyberspace is one of the informal public places where people can rebuild the aspects of community that were lost when the malt shop became a mall” (Rheingold 1993:26). These informal public places, such as the pot- bellied stove at the general store or the front porch, have been gradually disappearing from life even before the malt shop came into existence. Built around a shared interest, online communities often interact in a shared place – an address on the World Wide

Web. If the Internet connection is available, the place is always there, even more so than the pub or diner – cyberspace never closes. With the worldwide reach of the

Internet there is a chance that someone, somewhere, will always be awake and ready to communicate. “Virtual” communities accommodate the hectic pace and isolation common in twenty-first century life. Virtual community members may join in community activity from anywhere with an Internet connection.

In the technologically equipped global society, does place still play a part in community? People continue to live in geographic communities. Builders and city planners are creating intentional “towns” that include residential and communal spaces, central squares, farmers’ markets, and community events and activities. Place still plays a direct role in the location of community. Internet community also has a “place” – cyberspace. Place is generally located on “the Internet” or “the web” and specifically located on the websites, servers, and email boxes of the participants. Lysloff states that

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“although the Internet is made up of IP – Internet Protocol – addresses that are unlocalizable in observable space, it is nonetheless all about place. It is an imaginary universe filled with a multitude of places” (Lysloff 2003:244). Participants’ messages to each other do not float around unconnectedly – they are tethered to an address – to an email server or to a webpage/site. Online community members “gather” around a certain web address or message list. This congregation could take place on an email list, social networking site, blog, or video host (among other locations). These “sites” take the place of or supplement the café and the community center.

…many BGRASS-L users operate from the assumption that you’re marginal if you don’t live within a day’s drive of the D.C. area. I live in California, beyond the boonies for these folks. -Anonymous survey respondent

…most live on the East side of the country. It always irked me that I didn’t move to Kentucky or Tennessee when I was younger. BG is more popular there than in CA. -Anonymous survey respondent

Despite the idea of the Internet’s egalitarian possibilities, people may still prefer to interact with others in their physical, geographic community, even if that interaction takes place in the virtual world. Many IBMA-L participants are located in Nashville. These members keep up a spirited online dialogue, despite their geographic proximity to one another. Though members may be near geographically, they are still limited or constrained by work and family schedules. Internet communication with fellow fans allows them to maintain regular, seemingly unlimited contact. Likewise, many local bluegrass associations maintain online mailing lists with geographically close members, combining on and offline community activity.

The Internet allows people in an already established community (or communities) to maintain bonds, much like the telephone has done. It also allows people to forge bonds – in extreme cases it enables invalids, shut-ins, and ill members to keep up with the community despite physical limitations. In the case of bluegrass community, the

104 largest population remains in the southern Appalachian region of Kentucky and

Tennessee. Other geographic centers, such as Boston and San Diego, also house a critical mass of bluegrass fans. But some fans are indeed isolated by geography – many non-American fans find the Internet to be a way to connect to the bluegrass core – the mother ship of bluegrass fandom. For these people, the Internet/virtual community may be their only bluegrass community interaction(s). Most bluegrass fans combine face-to- face and online participation. Members are part of the bluegrass community at large, a local bluegrass association or community, and the online bluegrass community (or communities).

Time

The online community is somewhat outside of, but not fully divorced from space and time. Messages may be read out of the time in which they were penned, but may not hold the same value and meaning when taken out of context. One perception of the online community is that of an untethered, unbounded mass of people flowing in and out of the “community” (framework or idea). Hampton and Wellman assert that “email does not require both parties to be connected and communicating simultaneously. Not only does this afford communication across the continent in different time zones, it affords communication across the street despite different schedules” (Hampton and Wellman

2003:286). Online communication does not require communicators to be co-present or even conversational at the same time. Email messages sent on listservs often have replies over several days or even weeks. Conversations are extended based on whenever the reader chooses to or is able to reply. More popular topics tend to extend for a lengthy period of time – a period of weeks. Social networks are also time-disjunct.

Messages do not have to be exchanged immediately, but whenever each communicator is available and interested in initiating or joining in a dialogue.

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Many find the time delayed nature of Internet communication to be comforting – with more time to compose text replies and no sense of absolute urgency. However, communications (messages and information) generally move faster in cyberspace than in face-to-face communication, particularly across large geographic areas. The Internet is available at all hours every day and people are only limited by their individual restrictions and schedules. Information may be shared immediately, rather than waiting for the next face-to-face encounter. Without the niceties and small talk usually present in face-to-face communication, discussions on the Internet move along quickly. The

International Bluegrass Music Awards of 2006 (discussed later in this chapter) and the

International Bluegrass Music Museum Board upheaval of 1996 both demonstrated the speed at which information (accurate and inaccurate, classified or public, relevant and extraneous) spreads around the virtual bluegrass world. Even non-Internet users were updated and informed faster than in years past due to communication with friends with online access.

Local Bluegrass Scenes

Shared bluegrass interest has been a local point of connection since its earliest days. Traveling performances served as gathering events, where families might be entertained with music and meet up with their neighbors. For a time while touring, Bill

Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys would play baseball against local men from each area, joining in a local activity and connecting face to face with fans. Today and in the early days of bluegrass, conversation and interactions occurred between audience members before, during, and after performances. In addition to concert attendance, bluegrass community activities included volunteering at, performing in, and attending festivals, reading and writing letters to magazines, buying and sharing recordings, and playing in or listening to jam sessions.

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Once bluegrass music spread and expanded in popularity, locally based fan clubs began popping up, creating a central, regional source for bluegrass discussion and activity. Bluegrass clubs and associations continue today, combining face to face interaction with “virtual” dispersing of news via e-newsletters and online forums.

Associations and clubs may serve multiple purposes. They primarily serve as an outlet and a central psychological space for bluegrass fans to gather and share their interest.

They also are a source of information – what is happening when or where to hear the music locally. They also may serve as event producers by putting on and advertising local concerts and events, as well as hosting regular jam sessions. Associations may also distribute newsletters or magazines – either in print or electronic form. This overlap of association activity on and offline is a good example of the overlap of the real and the virtual within the bluegrass community as a whole.

Rosenberg states that “the kind of interest needed to sustain clubs is most often encountered in the peripheral areas, in locales where there has been some exposure to bluegrass over a long period but which are not saturated with festivals and bands”

(Rosenberg 2005:365). Nashville has no official local bluegrass club, for example,

(though the city does house the IBMA), despite the fact that many bluegrass musicians and fans reside in that city. Rather than joining an official club, Nashville-based bluegrass fans may simply go to the Station Inn any night of the week to hear or play bluegrass music and commune with individuals with similar musical interests. Locations with smaller and more spread out bluegrass communities, such as Ireland, have bluegrass associations which serve as a central hub of information and community activity.

In areas with fewer bluegrass fans, fans of bluegrass may join up with fans of related music forms to “combine forces” and expand the community. MBOTMA (the

Minnesota Bluegrass and Old Time Music Association), for example, represents

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Minnesota fans of both bluegrass and old-time music, sponsoring/promoting local events

for both genres.16 Traditionally bluegrass and old-time fans carry on a friendly (or not so

friendly) rivalry stemming from differences in playing style, but perhaps in Minnesota,

land of the polka, bluegrass and old time fans need to stick together for strength in

numbers.

One of the primary forms of community participation and interaction in the

bluegrass world is the jam session, as discussed in chapter four. Rosenberg states that

“the kernel of this [jam session] tradition is a regular meeting – weekly or monthly – at

which all musicians are encouraged to participate. The session may be held in a private

home, a garage, a barn, a closed gas station or barbershop, a school, or a hall”

(Rosenberg 2005:365). Unlike studio recording sessions, jam sessions requires

physical co-presence of the members, allowing musicians and non-musicians alike to

interact with one another musically and socially. Jam sessions are often planned and

advertised through online and offline communication, so though the event takes place

solely in the real world, the virtual world maintains a role as well.

Local Bluegrass Scenes: Nashville, Boston, and Ireland

Rosenberg reports that “between the mid-seventies and early eighties bluegrass

area committees, clubs, and similar organizations existed in at least twenty-seven states

and three Canadian provinces” (Rosenberg 2005:365). Approximately 164 associations

currently exist worldwide. Smaller regional associations generally involve more regular

person-to-person interaction than the larger organizations such as IBMA or EBMA

(European Bluegrass Music Association).

The Nashville bluegrass scene is an unusual local scene, in that the city has a significantly higher percentage of music industry professionals than other locations.

16Old time is a related genre which predates bluegrass.

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Usually bluegrass scenes are fan driven, but Nashville leans toward the professional.

Regardless, there are places in town where bluegrass fans (and professionals) go to join together in their shared interest. The Station Inn might be the most well known of these locations. The bar is located in the Gulch, which was once a fairly run down area of town near the railroad tracks, and is now a revitalized and fashionable area for young professionals. The Gulch hosts multiple newly built loft condominium projects alongside trendy restaurants and nightclubs. Right in the middle of this area stands the Station

Inn, on any given night bursting with a very different clientele of musicians and fans than the surrounding merchants. Bluegrass fans can show up any night of the week to commune with fellow fans and hear bluegrass (or bluegrass related) music. On Sunday, professional and amateur musicians bring their instruments and join in a jam session.

The local bluegrass community knows that the Station Inn is the place to hear and see their favorite musicians playing for fun on a night off, new groups, non-local acts coming through town for a short visit, or regular acts, such as the Mashville Brigade, a supergroup of notably talented bluegrass musicians, similar to The Sidemen.

Nashville bluegrass fans meet up at the Station Inn for the music and the atmosphere. The space is small and casual. The staff members are well known to the bluegrass community, as many of them work at “the Station” as a second or third job.

Two of the four IBMA staff members regularly work behind the bar, and many other familiar faces of the bluegrass industry have spent time “slinging beer” and making pizzas and popcorn at the Station Inn. When a long line forms for food and drinks, nearby fans or musicians are often recruited to help serve. Though the Station Inn is technically a bar, it has a family atmosphere, similar to that of the pubs of Ireland or the

United Kingdom. Unlike most bars, people under the age of twenty-one are admitted with a parent or responsible adult. The Station Inn’s website provides a calendar listing upcoming performances, photo galleries, directions, and a welcome from the owner, J.T.

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Gray. The Station Inn provides a stationary, accessible space for bluegrass fans in

Nashville, as well as those traveling through Nashville, to meet up, hear some good music, and share space and time with other bluegrass fans.

The Boston Bluegrass Union (BBU) serves as the central hub for bluegrass in

New England. The organization serves bluegrass fans in areas loosely described as

“the Boston area,” with members from Rhode Island to Maine. The organization hosts regular events, with the central event being the Joe Val Bluegrass Festival, held each

February in Boston suburb Framingham, Massachusetts. Other events throughout the year include regular concerts, jam sessions, and workshops for children and adults.

Founder and President Stan Zdonik is currently the Chairperson/President of the

International Bluegrass Music Association, and so the Boston bluegrass scene has a strong voice in international bluegrass affairs.

The Irish bluegrass scene is widely dispersed across the country of Ireland (total population approximately six million), with multiple community bases. Fans commune through a combination of regular sessions in set locations and online communication.

The Corner House on Coburg Street in Cork serves as a Monday night bluegrass and related genre gathering space, where The Lee Valley String Band has been playing for many years. The Monday night session is a casual musical and social event that welcomes outside musicians, including those who play old-time and Irish traditional music. The main source of overall information on the Irish bluegrass scene is the

Bluegrass Ireland Blog (BIB), maintained by historian and bluegrass fan Richard

Hawkins. The blog posts notices for concerts of local musicians, jam sessions, and tours of Ireland by well known bluegrass bands. The BIB does not serve as a space itself for community activity, but as a source of information for the community regarding activities spread out country wide. Richard Hawkins provides background information on the blog:

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The Irish Bluegrass Music Club Newsletter was founded in 1992 by Dick Gladney, bassist at that time with the Flint Hill Boys of Athy, Co. Kildare, and in recent years with the Niall Toner Band. I took over the editing in 1996; it was renamed Bluegrass Ireland in 1999. The aim was to provide news of bluegrass and old-time music events throughout Ireland; to report on CDs, books, hardware, gossip, and quotes; and to link those who love these forms of music with one another and with the worldwide bluegrass and old-time communities. It appeared six to eight times a year up to early 2007, since when it has been suspended under the pressure of other commitments.

But with the increasing flow of news that has developed, a hard-copy newsletter, sent by post, will always appear too early for some news items and too late for others. The Bluegrass Ireland Blog (BIB), first launched on 21 November 2005, aims to remedy that: bands, event organisers, and any members of the bluegrass/old-time community in this island can now have news made available here to anyone with internet access anywhere in the world, practically as soon as we receive it.

The BIB's model is the original Bluegrass Blog, established in the USA in 2005 by John Lawless and Brance Gillihan, whose example and encouragement are gratefully acknowledged.

Nashville, Boston, and Ireland are only three locally-based/regional subcommunities that combine on and offline community activity, but they serve as different examples of how the virtual and real worlds intersect.

Geography: The Local and the Virtual

How did such a place-oriented music genre as bluegrass end up with an active, flourishing online (and disembodied) community? Bluegrass is connected with the idea of home and family. The lyrics speak to these ideas, as does the setting of the music.

Many, myself included, have studied the role lyrics play in creating an imaginary home or imaginary rural ideal. Some bluegrass musicians and fans, particularly those in the first generation, may have actual memories of such a time and place. But for many others, this “Little Cabin Home on the Hill” is fictional and imagined. For the same reason many escape into the magical world of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, many others may escape into the land of close-knit families, warm and welcoming home places, and overall simpler times.

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The music is connected to place – the sometimes imagined place of the old homeland or rural idyll and the actual place of the festival site. Whether in Louisville,

Kentucky; San Diego, California; or Osaka, Japan; bluegrass musicians sing of the “Blue

Moon of Kentucky” – regardless of if they have ever set foot on Kentucky’s soil.

Bluegrass music is associated with a specific place or places – Kentucky and the High

Lonesome Hills of the Ohio River Valley. There are few bluegrass songs about the

rocky beaches of Maine (“I’m a Roving Gambler” is one) or California or the olive groves of Tuscany. Yet fans and musicians live in these places – and sing about Kentucky,

Georgia, and Tennessee. Bluegrass fans and musicians are familiar with the juxtaposition of the imagined and the experienced, the idyll and the day-to-day.

Bluegrass fans and musicians hail from all over the world. A great number live in the southeast, but many others live elsewhere. Though not a large percentage of overall bluegrass fans, quite a few bluegrass fans reside in the heavily populated states of New

York and California (according to Simmons research data). How do these fans connect to the music and to other fans? Local associations – such as the Boston Bluegrass

Union and the San Diego Bluegrass Society, provide central gathering posts around which to rally locally. Such local, physical connections allow for co-presence, whether by making or listening to music together, or by talking about the music or simply chatting with others with the same musical passion. Even if all conversations do not center around bluegrass, people often still enjoy getting to know others with a similar interest.

Bluegrass fans continue to hold memberships in local associations, participate in local jams, and attend local concerts and festivals. But now those with the ability and knowledge to use the Internet have a broader, expanded social network of fellow bluegrass fans. The Internet allows fans to communicate with people on the other side

of the street and on the other side of the globe. When the Internet became publically

accessible, these geographically disparate individuals were able to connect, initially

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through text-based conversation and later through multimedia, such as video, audio, and

still photography. Bluegrass fans may develop relationships with people they have

never met face-to-face, and they may use technology, specifically the Internet, to keep in

touch with people they already know. Both types of communication, face-to-face and virtual, serve to develop, strengthen, and enrich community. Either way, peoples’ networks are altered by the availability of friends, or “friends,” in constant contact from the other side of the globe.

Some scholars argue that regular physical co-presence is a requirement for community – that online communities are only imitations of the “real” thing. Geographic communities have a number of benefits only available to co-present individuals – food sources (from the farm to the grocery store), medical facilities, basic housing, and utilities. No matter how dedicated one feels to one’s geographically dispersed online community, the members may not be able to bring chicken soup during times of illness or pick one up if one’s car stalls.

Roberts reports the purpose of geographic communities is “making the lives of their residents easier. As such they support such processes as the generation and transportation of goods and services, communication, mutual support, self-regulation, and protection against outsiders” (Roberts 1998:361). Of course, it could be argued that geographic communities may make members lives more difficult - if, for example, the member has a noisy, smelly, or even dangerous neighbor. But in general, people shop for groceries, obtain health care, work, and socialize in their local communities. Physical care must take place face-to-face. Hampton and Wellman assert that “people need corporeal physical connections as well as ethereal, electronic connections” (Hampton and Wellman 2003:306).

Geographic communities may make lives easier in ways that online communities cannot. However, online community provides substantial, constant, emotional support,

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which people may not receive from their geographic communities. Many people may

also not know of others who share their interests in their local community. While

bluegrass music has fans all over the world, most fans still live in the southeast.

Bluegrass fans in Brazil may struggle to find fellow fans and may consequently depend

on the Internet to participate in bluegrass community. Many bluegrass fans may also

use the Internet to seek out and connect with a local community.

But is physical presence required for true community? The bluegrass

community, despite the music’s lyrical connection with place, has long been a virtual or

statistical community, with members spread out geographically – connected by their

strong belief in and passion for bluegrass. Does the bluegrass community meet the

requirements for community – even if it is not geographically bounded? Can one ignore geography when speaking of community? With bluegrass community, geography may not be necessary. Even if a bluegrass fan feels isolated in Idaho, she may regularly participate in virtual chats, follow the news and event reports (perhaps even more attentively than the local news), view recent (or old) concerts on YouTube, and connect virtually with others who share her interests.

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The Real Influence of the Virtual Community:

The 2006 International Bluegrass Music Awards Show

In the days and weeks following the 2006 International Bluegrass Music Awards

Show, both IBMA-L and BGRASS-L erupted into animated, often heated, cacophony, over the content of the Awards Show. Three separate performances within the show led to this excitement. The Bluegrass Blog provides a summary of the Awards Show after the event:

In a nutshell, what happened is this:

The producers of the show had included two numbers with what was described in an official press release about ten days prior as having a “patriotic theme.” This was to include a song by Rhonda Vincent, and a performance by the US Navy bluegrass band, Country Current. A number of non-US members of IBMA felt that this was adding an inappropriately political tone to the show, and that a salute to the US military was a slight to the notion that IBMA was an international organization. Several US members shared this assessment.

These concerns were conveyed to the IBMA Board, who met with non-US members just days before the show, and amongst themselves to address these concerns. A decision was reached by the Board that the Navy band would be asked to change the song which they had originally been asked to perform – a medley of US military service anthems – and instead perform one of Chief Wayne Taylor’s original songs.

Rhonda’s performance was to go on as planned, with a tribute offered to US service men and women. Several representatives of the various military branches were to join her on stage, standing silently stage left and right, to be spotlighted for recognition during the song.

At the show, Country Current performed the newly-inserted song as per their new agreement with IBMA, but then launched into the service themes as per their original agreement. There is dispute among the principals – chiefly Wayne Taylor and former IBMA President David Crow – over the conversation that followed this performance, and whether the Navy Band had been authorized to include the second song. Crow resigned immediately following the performance.

In a letter to the IBMA membership, he indicated that his resignation should be seen as his assumption of responsibility for having “lied” to the membership in saying that the military anthems medley would be removed, but a subsequent letter suggested that a desire to dedicate more time to his family and legal practice – both rapidly growing – also played a large part in his decision.

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Figure 12: Rhonda Vincent surrounded by Military Personnel, Awards 2006 (from byronhillmusic.com)

Figure 13: U.S. Navy Band Country Current, Awards 2006 (from kimandmikeontheroad.com)

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In addition, nominees 3 Fox Drive started the Awards Show with the Star Spangled

Banner, following in the footsteps of the 2005 show, which began with The Isaacs’ rendition of the same tune.

To outsiders, this American political display at a bluegrass event might not seem unusual. But to insiders, it was a fighting point. Rumblings began on BGRASS-L and

IBMA-L when the flyer for the show came out two weeks before the event. As stated in the Bluegrass Blog, the primary concern was the message sent by the “International”

Bluegrass Music Association putting on a show focusing on the U.S. military. On one

hand, the music had formed in the United States (though with strong influences from a

variety of other countries and continents, from Ireland to Africa), and is still seen as

“American” today. In my interviews with bluegrass musicians and fans in Ireland,

America was referred to as the “mother country.” Those opposed to the show’s theme

pointed out the focus on American military rather than American culture as a whole.

The event took on new life on the Internet. Many of the people conversing

heatedly on BGRASS-L and IBMA-L had not actually been in attendance, and many

received the story of the events from the listservs themselves. A great deal of creative

license was used in the retelling of the event, the most common version of the event

combining the three separate performances, 3 Fox Drive, Rhonda Vincent and the Rage,

and Country Current into one single display involving the Star Spangled Banner, service

men and women, and the American flag. A great deal of text was generated regarding

who was at fault – the IBMA staff, the producers, or the performers. Conspiracy theories

abounded. Other discussions debated the appropriateness of the original idea of a

patriotic theme, delving into personal political beliefs and histories. As most members of

the listservs avoid political discussion, this type of conversation was highly unusual.

People made heated statements they might not make in a face-to-face conversation;

views were expressed harshly, individuals were called out by name, and feelings were

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hurt. In one particularly noteworthy occurrence, a listserv member anonymously sent a letter (through the U.S. Postal Service) to the supervisor of another member stating that the individual was spending time “on the clock” communicating on the listserv.

The conversations in the “virtual” world had a big impact on the “real” world.

Following the fallout of the 2006 Awards Show, a task force was created to clarify the show guidelines. The President of the IBMA stepped down, and a new President stepped in. New producers were appointed for the 2007 Awards Show. Relationships were damaged between performers and fans.

The “Virtual” Community and the “Real” World

Baudrillard “sees electronic communication as part of the whole web of hyper-

realistic illusion we’ve turned to, in our technologically simulated flight from the

breakdown of human communities” (Rheingold 1993: 225) (Foster 1996:31). I am not

convinced that we have turned to virtual communities as a response to the “breakdown”

of geographic communities, but rather as an extension of our geographic communities.

Are people more involved with online communities if not part of a “real-world”

community, or do they participate equally with those who maintain strong offline ties?

On BGRASS-L and IBMA-L, the heaviest communicators are also heavily involved in

bluegrass community in the real-world, and the virtual world appears to be an extension

of, rather than a replacement for, offline inclusion.

Lysloff argues that

although these new media technologies have altered our relationship with the world around us so radically that the real and the simulated seem to be indistinguishable, they are rarely seen as being part of culture. It is too easy to forget that the realm of science and technology is, to use Geertz’s phrase, as much of a cultural system as the realms of art or religion (Lysloff 2003:237).

For those who participate in them, these Internet communities and networks may

become part of their culture – either in small or large part. The virtual and “real” world

118 overlap constantly – one may sit in the living room with a partner and child, email back and forth with a fellow bluegrass fan across the country (or world), and speak on the phone with a work colleague. Communities overlap in other ways. A bluegrass fan may first communicate with a group of other fans on the BGRASS-L, meet up with some of them face-to-face at Bean Blossom, and then report back in a post to the BGRASS-L about the face-to-face meeting. Or a bluegrass fan may regularly attend a local jam session and then sign up for a regional online mailing and discussion list. This same person may be a part of multiple subcommunities as a member of the overall bluegrass community.

Internet community may be an extension of the central offline community or it may even be considered one and the same. The overall on/offline bluegrass community may be perceived in such a way. The IBMA-L is an example of this on/offline overlap – the mailing list is a subcommunity of the overall IBMA community, not separate and not an extension (connected yet not wholly intertwining). It is mostly or completely absorbed in the overall IBMA community. No one is on IBMA-L who is not a member of IBMA; lapsed subscribers are reminded to renew their membership and eventually removed from the list.

Other online bluegrass communities may be understood as subcommunities or extensions of the broader offline community. BGRASS-L includes many subscribers who are also offline participants, but who would not necessarily know each other without the BGRASS-L; even less would maintain constant contact with one another if they did not interact on the Internet. There is not an offline counterpart to BGRASS-L as there is with IBMA-L, through most members of BGRASS-L are members of an offline (real world) bluegrass community. The mailing list is a “gathering space” for various subgroups, communities, and individual bluegrass fans. Presumably, a few BGRASS-L subscribers are only active online.

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As BGRASS-L demonstrates, the borders of Internet community are not set – they are flexible and constantly changing. There are no specific locations to which the online bluegrass community is limited, but a variety of online spaces for interaction – accessible via desktops, laptops, and mobile phones. Similarly, membership in online community is not demarcated clearly either. Members come and go and participate in overlapping worlds at different levels of engagement. Members interact with some people and not others and participate in some spheres but “lurk” (read messages without participating in discussion) in others. Is the community space housed on the computer?

No – it is stored on a variety of mysterious locations on the “web.” The computer is the portal to the space where community interactions/activity take(s) place.

Putnam states that “face-to-face networks tend to be dense and bounded, whereas computer-mediated communication networks tend to be sparse and unbounded” (Putnam 2000:177). Online bluegrass communities are relatively unbounded by space, place, and time (within limits) and also by membership – most members may flow in and out without notice, though the absence of core members would be more notable. Offline community has physical boundaries – people must interact face-to-face – by nature of its definition. The Boston Bluegrass Union (BBU) is limited to people in the vicinity of Boston, the Irish Bluegrass Association to those in

Ireland, and so on. These boundaries are not precisely determined, (BBU members extend into Rhode Island and beyond), but they are more limiting than the online world.

Offline community is limited to actual physical space, whereas online community space is nebulous.

Putnam refers to Barry Wellman’s statement that “although the Internet helps scholars to maintain ties over great distances, physical proximity still matters. Those scholars who see each other more often or work nearer to each other email each other more often. Frequent contact on the Internet is a complement to frequent face-to-face

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contact, not a substitute for it” (Putnam 2000:179). Often Internet community and

geographic community are linked – Eastern Canadian email lists for instance, or local

online associations. Many IBMA-L members reside in Nashville, or at least visit there

regularly, though plenty reside elsewhere and use the online hub as a way to keep in

touch. Many IBMA-L members do interact face-to-face at least occasionally, using the

listserv as a supplement to in-person interaction.

The overall bluegrass community is not bounded by space or time. In people’s

minds it encompasses all bluegrass lovers, regardless of location. Bob in Alabama and

Ken in Japan may be part of the overall bluegrass community, even if they have never

met one another. Who is excluded from the bluegrass community? People who do not

like bluegrass for whatever reason. Are others excluded from the bluegrass community?

Do demographic identifiers play a part in exclusion? Does Internet interaction reduce

the effect of demographic markers?17

Hampton and Wellman state that “just as the borders of neighborhoods have

been shown not to encompass community, focusing on cyberspace and ignoring the

network of social relations that extends to other social settings fails to consider the many

ways and the many places in which people interact” (Hampton and Wellman 2003:282).

Adding the Internet to the telephone and in-person communication somewhat neglects

their differences. Hampton and Wellman also present the view that “the Internet provides an additional opportunity to communicate by adding onto, and sometimes replacing face to face and telephone contact” (Hampton and Wellman 2003:282). The

Internet is just another way to be in touch – not instead of, but in addition to other forms

of communication.

Putnam reports that “both the history of the telephone and the early evidence on

Internet usage strongly suggest that computer-mediated communication will turn out to

17 See M. Miyake’s dissertation on race in bluegrass for a more thorough discussion of this topic.

121 complement not replace face-to-face communities” (Putnam 2000:179). Sometimes these communication methods overlap, sometimes they do not. The telephone is a one dimensional means of communication – voice-to-voice, predominantly one-to-one, though occasionally one-to-many in the case of conference calling. As opposed to both phone and face-to-face communication, the Internet allows the communicator to do many things at once, with partial concentration. A conversant may be engaged in multiple one-to-one or one-to-many conversations, mixing work and home life. These conversations can take place anywhere with an Internet connection.

The Internet itself is both a space for and a tool used for community. As a tool, the Internet provides the space and interactive means necessary for people to join together and communicate. Like the computer, the telephone is also a tool for communication, but with different interactive capabilities. The telephone may be used from any location to any location (with reception) – but relies primarily on voice-to-voice communication, though text based communication is becoming increasingly common.

The computer allows primarily text communication, but audio and visual communications are becoming more widely available and utilized, particularly in social networking settings such as Facebook. Today, the computer and telephone may be housed within the same device, with multiple, overlapping forms of communication, once again changing the way people experience community, with face-to-face and virtual community activity occurring simultaneously.

Some communities, particularly those surrounding electronic music, are based entirely online, with influence from ideas and concepts developed offline. The online bluegrass community overlaps the offline bluegrass community, serving an extension of the “real world” bluegrass community. Rheingold speaks of the virtual community as

“staying in touch between face to face communing” (Rheingold 1993:143). Hampton and Wellman state that a “set of scholars has contended that the Internet has neither

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weakened nor transformed community – rather it has enhanced existing

relationships…most online contacts are with the same friends, kin, workmates and even

neighbors that had been in contact before the coming of the wired world” (Hampton and

Wellman 2003:282). So, following Rheingold and Hampton and Wellman here, the online bluegrass community would have added to, enhanced, grown, and developed relationships already established in the external world. Regarding BGRASS-L and

IBMA-L, I would agree that this is mostly true, though the relationships are mostly

overlapping smaller groups – some people know some others in the face-to-face way –

there are overlapping “networks” of “known” individuals, but everyone does not know

everyone. It is highly unlikely that anyone knows everyone, though the bluegrass

community is relatively small – small enough for fans of a music genre to consider

themselves a community. California members may only interact with other California-

based members, but may long to interact with members in the East, particularly in

Kentucky or Nashville. On social networks, I would argue that fewer members know

each other offline than on listservs. Many of my Facebook and MySpace “friends” have

requested my “friendship” (and vice versa) due to a shared interest in bluegrass, though

we have never interacted face-to-face. Of course, many of my “accepted” friend

requests come from people I already know. The bluegrass world is a fairly small one, so

people often only have one or two degrees of separation.

Lee and Peterson state that on a listserv “where people usually know each

other’s real names and identities, not surprisingly, many want to meet” (Lee and

Peterson 2004:196). A prime example of this is the yearly BGRASS-L breakfast at the

World of Bluegrass every fall. Depending on the tone of the interactions, some

participants may not want to meet, though I suspect this desire not to meet is rare.

People who develop face-to-face relationships may keep in touch with regular Internet

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communication. People who meet online – as members of a listserv, for example, often

want to meet in person at some point.

Wilson and Atkinson speak to the “need to consider the way that the Internet is

part of everyday life, and not necessarily abstracted from it” (Wilson and Atkinson

2005:283). The virtual world is part of the real world. People participate in virtual

community and virtual interaction while still living in the real (non-virtual) world. For

many people, the Internet is simply a way to connect with others known in the real world,

like a telephone (or telegraph, or letter – but more dimensional and timely). Foster

states that “virtual communities offer a means by which individuals can seek a new form

of community, rather than shun a currently useful one” (Foster 1996:31). People do not

(generally) participate in virtual community to the exclusion of real world community.

Usually the two communities overlap and supplement each other. In fact, for some,

joining a virtual community may lead to joining a physical, face-to-face community.

Virtual community may be a new-fashioned way of obtaining an entrée, an introduction.

Or, as Sherry Turkle reports in Alone Together, mediated communication, such as email and social networking may be replacing face-to-face communication, especially among the younger generation.

Hampton and Wellman report that “when people can use the Internet to communicate at very low cost, neighboring can flourish online…spatial, temporal, and social barriers to community organizing were overcome through the use of the

Internet...contact led to contact through the interplay of online and offline encounters”

(Hampton and Wellman 2003:305). Hampton and Wellman’s study focused on Internet

use among a geographic neighborhood. Though neighbors lived within casual walking

distance of one another, it was the virtual connections they made that led to the

perception of community. However, the group would likely not have connected virtually

without the link of living in the same neighborhood. Similarly, bluegrass fans of the

124 online world would likely not interact without the common interest of bluegrass, as many vary widely in their demographic details and other interests. Sharing space on the

Internet and regular communal activity does seem to bolster the bluegrass community, adding to the overall feeling of what Hampton and Wellman call “neighboring” through the online setting.

Community dynamics of online and offline community differ. Heavy participants in the online community are not necessarily the most prominent in the offline world. In the “small-group” of online community, certain members may be seen as core members, while these same members may be peripheral to the offline community – or central to a local community. The online setting may provide a more secure, familiar space for communication or a sense of power or agency for these members. The online world may also be a more welcoming (or less hindering) space for these people to air their grievances or discuss certain topics than the offline world.

Hampton and Wellman report that “commentators [have] asserted that community life on the Internet could never be meaningful or complete because it would lead people away from the full range of in-person contact” (Hampton and Wellman

2003:280). Per some theorists, physical presence is required for “true” community and is required for finding meaning in communing. The interactions of some community members dispute this view. Some people are able to find real meaning and community through virtual interaction. Relationships on bluegrass listservs and blogs are reinforced by face-to-face interaction, though with different members at different times in different places. Many or perhaps most members also participate in the offline bluegrass world.

Though some, due to geographical isolation, may only participate virtually.

Blanchard states that “social groups who interact face-to-face (FtF) may also use virtual communities to keep members informed and connected between their meetings”

(Blanchard 2008:1). This is the case with many associations and local groups in

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addition to larger organizations, such as the IBMA. Blanchard states that “ironically, one

of the more successful modes for developing trust is when virtual community members

meet face-to-face” (Blanchard 2008:4). BGRASS-L holds an annual breakfast at the

World of Bluegrass so that members may connect (or re-connect) face-to-face.

BGRASS-L members often meet and greet at events and festivals other than the World of Bluegrass. Particularly at World of Bluegrass, those people with an active Internet presence often clearly identify themselves to meet their online friends and colleagues in person.

Exclusively Virtual Community

For reasons of geographic isolation or temporal separation, ill health or shyness, or

simply by choice, some people may solely participate in online community. In these

cases, that individual’s community is centered online – even if the overall community is

both on and offline. Can that individual actually feel a part of community if he or she only

participates in one part of it? Truly, each person really only participates in a portion of

any community. Is someone who participates only offline really a part of the community,

even if they miss out on the full range of online participatory options? Most people –

scholars included – would answer yes. We still privilege face-to-face interaction over

any other kind. What about those individuals whose only chance at community is the

online setting? Is it fair to claim they are not part of the community because of their

limited options? May only people who live in geographic proximity to one another be

part of a community, even in the twenty-first century?

Many teenagers, college students, and even adults continue to view the virtual

world as somehow separate from the real world. This attitude is demonstrated by

posting of “blogs” about other students, parents, or teachers (JuicyCampus,

RateMyProfessor, etc), and by the high profile case of a parent harassing a child’s

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classmate in the virtual neighborhood (social network) of MySpace. Some still view the

Internet as an alternate reality or a non-real imaginary space with no or few “real world”

connections or consequences. In the online bluegrass community, this attitude of not-

quite-real is demonstrated by occasional harsh language against individuals, called

“flaming,” that would not occur in face-to-face communication.

Some online community members consider the online bluegrass community their

main community, while others see it as secondary. Often that depends on geography

and the ability (financial and physical) to travel. At different times, the same person may

view the online and offline bluegrass communities as primary and secondary depending

on which realm of interaction the individual is more involved in. Noyes asserts that “it may well be that the Internet is a more important realm of interaction than the neighborhood for many in at least the Western world” (Noyes 1995:473). Many who live in non-social, perhaps urban, locations may see the Internet as a way to connect.

People living in small towns may view the Internet a way to extend their limited social

circle and world experience. For some, it may be a way to keep in touch with old friends,

separated by time and distance, or a way to make new friends.

Brint states that “some choice-based communities engage in no face to face

interaction whatever” (Brint 2001:11). Some online bluegrass community members may

not communicate face-to-face at all – those separated by geographic, financial, or

physical limitations, for example. In the bluegrass world, it is more common for

members of virtual communities to also interact face-to-face. This dual on/offline

community is becoming increasingly familiar to bluegrass fans.

Virtual Interaction

Rheingold states that virtual community is a way of “both making contact with

and maintaining a distance from others” (Rheingold 1993:26). Some online community

127 members may prefer this distance in their interactions. They may have enough face-to- face contact in the real world (with family or friends) to not need as much familiarity and intense connection in the virtual world. They may feel excluded (perhaps by shyness, race, gender, or occupation) in the real world and so wish to remain distant in the virtual world so as not to display those characteristics to the online community. But must one share his or her true self in order to be part of a community? Does that distance, made possible by virtuality, preclude the possibility of true community? I would argue that members of traditional (geographic) communities do not necessarily “know” one another deeply. Visually apparent demographic markers are on display, but beliefs and interests are not necessarily shared with other community members. Members of the online bluegrass community all at least share one common interest (bluegrass music), and members come to know one another with varying degrees of familiarity, much like a geographic community.

Lee and Peterson state that “local scenes typically grow gradually at first as people drawn to a particular interest gradually come together around a hospitable local site and build a distinct scene identity. In sharp contrast, virtual scenes are created in a day” (Lee and Peterson 2004:198). One may open up a website in a day, but it takes much longer than that for a regular community of visitors and participants to grow. What about comment posts or forums on particular topics that are heavily used for one day (or so)? Without the time element – including repeated or continuous involvement – this comment space may be a “scene,” but not a “community.” Lee and Peterson go on to say that “local scenes generally involve intense interaction for a few hours a week, but as with other virtual scenes, active [listserv] members interact intensively for several hours each day” (Lee and Peterson 2004:192). The most active listserv members may sometimes interact for hours a day – when the rare “hot” topic arises – such as the 2006

IBMA Awards. Most participate for less than an hour per day, perhaps fifteen to thirty

128 minutes. Often, members will skim through messages and comment only on those they feel compelled (or competent) to discuss.

How are Virtual and Real Different?

Miller and Slater question whether the Internet constitutes a “virtual world that stands against and defines or supersedes something else called the real” (Miller and

Slater 2000:193). The two options Miller and Slater present express the virtual world again as something separate from the “real” world rather than part of it. In their view, the virtual world is either opposed to or above and separate from the “real” world. According to Lysloff, “as they become increasingly important in our lived experience, the computer and media technologies are changing the way we think about the ‘real’ and representatives of the real” (Lysloff 2003:236). As the Internet and related technologies become more deeply ingrained in our everyday lives and consciousness, perhaps society will begin to consider “virtual” as not opposed to but part of the “real.” Now that technology plays an increasingly prevalent role in many of our lives, we are forced to reevaluate what we consider “real.”

Putnam asks “how are ‘virtual’ communities likely to be different from the ‘real’ thing?” (Putnam 2000:171). What distinguishes a “virtual” bluegrass community from a

“real” one? The most obvious difference would be the format – face-to-face interaction versus screen to screen community, real time immediacy versus offset flexible time.

Primarily or exclusively text based communities versus 3D visual and aural cues. Both communities, real and virtual, take place in overlapping worlds. Other communities share the same space, whether geographic or cyber.

A virtual bluegrass community member may provide access to recorded (or streaming) audio and video to fellow bluegrass fans with Internet access. For example, a bluegrass fan may post historical footage of Bill Monroe performing “Uncle Pen” from

129 the mid-twentieth century on their Facebook profile. That video post would be displayed on the “home” page of that individual’s Facebook “friends,” enabling those people to view the video for themselves. This sharing of rare video or audio is a benefit of online community that may not be available to offline-only bluegrass fans.

On the other hand, online community members are not easily able to pull out their instruments and share in the face-to-face pleasure of a good jam session, as they would in the “real” world. Online community members often refer to this absence of jam sessions in a joking manner, as in the BGRASS-L post below from September 1997.

I want to go ahead and start organizing the anti IBMA luncheon for those of us unable to attend the actual IBMA luncheon. I was thinking we could open a private AOL chatroom called "NO LUNCH" and have cyber pimento cheese sandwiches together and afterwards even cyber jam a while ("and now I am oooh, plucking my e string, ahhh. it is getting sooooo taut and spriiiiiingyyyyyy") and then we could cyber belch and eat cyber rolaids and all go in a caravan to virtual rosine to visit the ghost cat that hops around Big Mons grave (a sighting!) and then maybe we could discuss having an actual anti IBMA luncheon next year instead of a cyber one, like we could eat churches fried chicken in Enterprise Alabama at the base of the boll weevil monument in the town square and then afterward jam boll weevil tunes (jes lookin fer a hoooooome) and close with a passing of a collection hat to raise money to one day actually go to the real IBMA deal. So. Are you in? I need to start taking orders for the cyber pimento cheese sandwiches now so dont jump in at the last minute expecting the world ok? And if you have any better ideas about what we should do at the anti-luncheon by all means let me, the anti-committee, know as soon as possible. After all, time is a wasting.

Work is the CURSE of the pickin class!

Foster states that “virtual communities fit into the hyper-real if one concedes that they offer the semblance of community but lack its fundamental characteristics” (Foster

1996:31). Responding to Baudrillard’s earlier use of the concept of hyper-real in discussing virtual communities, Foster broaches the idea of virtual as “not quite real” rather than a very real world alongside the non-electronic realm. Many do see the online community as an approximation or interpretation of the physical world. Another view may be of the virtual world as part of, not separate from the external world. Rather than hyper-real, the virtual world could just be an extension or expansion of the “real.” An

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October 1997 post to BGRASS-L complained about the IBMA Fan Fest’s food selection

following the move from Owensboro, Kentucky’s riverfront park to Louisville, Kentucky’s

Galt House:

What the FanFest *really* lacked: Corn Dogs Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches Pork Chop Sandwiches The Moonlight Barbecue Trailer down on the flats. Fried Dough Etc.

Referring to this idea of the virtual as an approximation or interpretation of the “real,”

(and the need for virtual participants to use their imaginations – and presumably, maintain a sense of humor), another poster responded:

See? Now at the VIRTUAL FanFest we had all of them things. Plus fried okra, biscuits & brown gravy, AND brains & scrambled eggs, with all the Tabasco you can load on. Double yum.

You reality freaks need to get a clue.

“Virtual” Influence on the “Real” World

Hampton and Wellman ask, “is interaction and participation at the

neighborhood level withering as a result of technological change?” (Hampton 2003:278).

Would individuals rather stay home and interact virtually rather than face-to-face? Some

people may feel they have more in common and a deeper connection with those they

choose to interact with virtually than those they see face-to-face due to basic geographic

location. Bluegrass fans in Japan may feel more connected with their fellow online

bluegrass fans in Canada than they do with non-bluegrass fans down the street. Others

may prefer the distance and time-flexibility of online encounters.

Lee and Peterson ask “if some local scenes have helped nurture new genres,

can virtual music scenes influence the music as well?” (Lee and Peterson 2004:201-2).

The online bluegrass community has had a substantial role in shaping many aspects of

131 the bluegrass scene. Many artists – traditional or progressive – use the Internet as a way to disseminate information and gauge fan response and reaction to concerts, albums, artist statements, etc. Online surveys (sometimes combined with printed paper surveys) allow participants to express their views and preferences – which are then taken into account by promoters, club/association/organizational leadership, and musicians. The virtual world may also hold influence on bluegrass music itself, as musicians and industry professionals gauge which music to play or musicians to promote by reading online opinions and reviews.

Lee and Peterson also refer to the commonly held understanding “that a music scene involves intense face-to-face interaction among music makers and fans with a shared enthusiasm for a particular music and its associated lifestyle…if this is true, how can there be a scene that is formed and thrives on the Internet?” (Lee and Peterson

2004:187). The Internet equivalent would be intense text-based (rather than face-to- face) interaction, as well as multimedia clips and pieces. Peterson and Bennett state that “the virtual scene involves direct Net-mediated person-to-person communication between fans, and the scene is therefore much more nearly in the control of fans”

(Peterson and Bennett 2004:11). The online “scene” (and community) includes fans and musicians, but is driven by the communications and contributions of fans. IBMA-L and

BGRASS-L were both set up and managed by fans – though IBMA-L is “housed” and administered through the IBMA – conversation is still fan-directed. Social networking interactions are driven both by fans and artists, and blogs are written by fans, artists, and other professionals - though blog comments are generally made by fans. Fans hold a great deal of agency and power in the administration and direction of the online bluegrass community.

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Conclusion

Rheingold states that “participants in virtual community must be forever questioning the reality of our online culture” (Rheingold 1993:299). Why must participants in virtual communities continually self-evaluate while offline community members may remain blissfully unaware of any threats to the existence of their community from scholarly definers? Why must online communities tolerate such scrutiny and hesitation, why can they not simply be a community and have done with it?

Turkle mentions one concern, that we are becoming “increasingly comfortable with substituting representations of reality for the real” (Turkle 1997: 23). This statement of course applies not only to community, but to all facets of early twenty-first century life –

“reality” television, processed food, sugar substitutes, and spray-on tans. Agreeing,

Lysloff asserts that “we live in a culture of simulation, in which the representation of reality seems to have triumphed over reality itself” (Lysloff 2003:246). IBMA marketing latched onto this idea in 2006, encouraging people to “discover what’s real, discover bluegrass.” Diverging from this view, Cantwell claims that bluegrass itself is a

“’representation’ of traditional Appalachian music in its social form: what Bill Monroe, the acknowledged ‘Father of Bluegrass Music,’ calls ‘the old southern sound’” (Cantwell

2003:xix).

Lysloff presents the view represented by scholars such as Joseph Lockard

(Lockard 1997: 224) that “some may believe that what happens on the Internet is not

really (or virtually) community but simply a desire for community” (Lysloff 2003:256).

What makes Internet community a desire rather than an actuality? According to some

scholars – lack of physical co-presence, lack of time together, superficial relationships,

lack of day-to-day/regular interaction, and communication limited to text. Barlow, et al

ask “where does the need come from to inhabit these alternate spaces? And the answer

I keep coming back to is: to escape the problems and issues of the real world” (Barlow et

133 al, 1995:43). Barlow describes the virtual world as an escape. I would argue that the virtual world is no longer an escape from the real world as both have intruded upon the other. One’s real world boss might be a fellow member of a hobby-focused listserv.

Anyone may view social networking profiles – many people are “friends” in the virtual world with people they interact with in the real world. For many people, the virtual world is no escape at all.

In one interpretation, the “virtual” nature of the online community refers to a

“pseudo” or “pretend” or “alternative” community. For some these descriptions ring true.

But for others, those who have developed long-term, close relationships with others online, the virtual community is the real thing. For still others, the virtual world is simply part of the overall “real world” community. For these people, the communities overlap and intertwine and are not really separated. Foster states that

one cannot simply reduce virtual communities to a dialectic between subjectively and objectively observed sociocultural reality. Unlike ‘real’ physical communities the ‘truthfulness’ of virtual communities is problematic; the ‘virtual’ in the term entails that one must internalize the definition of community; it cannot be externalized into a specific objective product (Foster 1996:35).

Whether the online or offline community is virtual or real depends on the perception(s) of the members. The community may be virtual to some, real to others, and both virtual and real to still others. The virtual and real online community requires communication to maintain. The following chapter provides an examination of how text and communication play a substantial role in online community.

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CHAPTER SIX

Text and Communication in Online Community

As Titon states in his article on “Text” in Feintuch’s Eight Words for the Study of

Expressive Culture, the word “text” in folklore (and ethnomusicology) has come to have many meanings, from the narrow and customary notion of “written word” as text, to the broad notion of a text as any object of interpretation. In this chapter, I use the word text to mean “written words.” As members of the online bluegrass community communicate predominantly through the written (or typed) word, this chapter evaluates the meanings and issues present in a text-based music community.

Online community members primarily use text and text alone to communicate with each other. Some communities, such as those based around YouTube or Facebook, have a variety of mediums of community, though discussion predominantly takes place via text, even if the conversation initially sparked through a video presentation. In online communities, communication is key – without communication, there is no community. In this chapter, I will focus on the use of text as a primary community builder in the online bluegrass community. I refer more often to the two text-based listservs, BGRASS-L and

IBMA-L, as other online community centers, such as YouTube and Facebook, include more complex multimedia communication tools outside of the scope of this chapter.

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Communication Norms and Cues

While basic visual cues are absent in text based communication, conversational cues are vital to the development of community. Putnam states that “computer- mediated communication, now and for the foreseeable future, masks the enormous amount of nonverbal communication that takes place during even the most casual face- to-face encounter” (Putnam 2000:175). In typical online discussion, no one can nod or say “mm-hmm” or give a knowing look or roll one’s eyes. The “speaker” often must clearly demarcate how the words are intended to be received with cues such as [insert sarcasm here] or “joking” or . An IBMA-L example from July 2007 follows.

I appreciate Jon doing that quick historical review, because it points directly at a topic I've been mulling for a while now. I'd be interested in having a conversation about how to handle "superstars" who would likely be deserving of awards year after year after year after year. Would it be helpful to have some honor for folks who are still contributing, and who have virtually cleaned up so often that they need to be honored in a different way, and allow other folks an opportunity to get the spotlight?

My own subjective impression is that this may happen informally already. Sometimes I have the impression that voters may pass over some of the top acts when they are making contributions which are certainly award-worthy. But since it is undocumented, it leaves open the possibility of disappointment and hurt feelings. Finding a way to make it structural would create a different flow within the award presentations.

Even if we look directly at the history Jon just outlined, regarding guitar player of the year, the issue is right out in the open. Does the rest of the guitar world need to wait until Bryan [Sutton] gets arthritis before anybody else gets a chance at the award ?? I feel like I can say this as a guitar player myself who understands that Bryan is totally in a league of his own, so this is not a negative comment on his playing, in any way.

Valauskas states that “on the Internet, there are no non-verbal or verbal cues.

Text is everything and text is nothing if it is devoid of content” (Valauskas 1996:3).

Participants must know that the textual symbol means grinning or grins in order to understand the intent of the author. In text based communication streams, such as email lists, there are no visual cues, though some Internet-based communications, like

Facebook and YouTube, include multimedia aspects that allow for visual cues. Smiley-

136 faces ;) and acronyms (IMHO – in my humble opinion) replace some verbal cues in electronic text, though either if used in daily life might seem ridiculous. There is no commonly known textual code for [sarcasm] or [eyeroll]. Those usually subtle tone cues must be written out in order to be understood.

Norms distinguish one community from another and solidify the membership of a group. Each community has its own behavioral norms – explicit or implicit expectations.

Norms establish mode and frequency of communication, language used, hierarchical privilege or lack thereof, and boundaries. Why are these norms integral and valuable to the community? Putnam opines that “if entry and exit are too easy, commitment, trustworthiness, and reciprocity will not develop” (Putnam 2000:177). Norms may be rigid and unchanging or they may evolve over time, as membership shifts and members’ views evolve.

Expected behavior differs between groups. In face to face interactions, small talk is expected, but on BGRASS-L and IBMA-L, it is shunned as off topic (or OT). On both

BGRASS-L and IBMA-L, members are expected to stay bluegrass-focused. Posts deemed “OT” or off-topic are tolerated in moderation, but only occasionally and only from some members. Posts should center on bluegrass or directly related topics, such as general music industry concerns. Posts should not be too long. One person should not dominate the conversation. Disagreement is acceptable (and common) but must be approached politely and carefully. Norms differ from listserv to listserv, with BGRASS-L maintaining a general bluegrass focus of conversation and IBMA-L focusing more on business aspects. IBMA-L posts are generally more formal, with less “flaming” or unkind comments directed at one individual.

Participants in the bluegrass community must also have some basic knowledge of the music and the music scene to understand the conversation and elements of interaction. Fans of bluegrass music tend to be careful with their words – people do not

137 often curse, use “socially unacceptable” language, or discuss “impolite” or

“inappropriate” topics. Members’ personal lives are rarely discussed, unless they relate to bluegrass in some way. The major exception to this “rule” is illness or death in the bluegrass community. Fans do not generally discuss love affairs, good books, or movies they have enjoyed - unless these things directly relate to bluegrass. Workplace experience, travels, and day-to-day minutiae are generally ignored. A non-community member might find this lack of small talk or conversation about everyday things strange, odd, or even unfriendly.

The language used sometimes demonstrates participants’ educational backgrounds, though many people (including myself) shift their language usage to fit in.

Some members purposely employ in-group folksy language like “ain’t” and “y’all” on forums such as BGRASS-L, though not all members appreciate this language usage. A discussion of the topic of the employment of “cutesy” dialect on BGRASS-L occurred in

April 1996. One member posted:

I take exception to the fondness of some listmembers who apparently think it's cute to "speak" in a special little southern country dialect. It's not. Try getting up to the mike, doing your part, then quickly backing off and letting the next person have their turn without tying up everyone's computer with your clever little pseudo- country accent. Those who genuinely speak in the southern/rural manner don't appreciate those who put on (and, by the way, I am originally from New York).

Maybe there's an amateur writers forum where you can practice your cun-tree accent.

Another poster responded in part to this series of messages, with:

People who don't speak Hillbilly as their native lingo, nor even as a second language, nevertheless undertake to adopt it when singing a lot of bluegrass songs. Not, I suspect, as a ploy to "make it sound more authentic", but simply because it sounds *righter* that way. Something about the songs that calls for rural cadences and pronunciations. Try to imagine a *serious* rendition sung, with "neutral" vowels, as:

Cahn't you year the rhythm of my big spike hammer Lord, it's bursting my side. or Sitting in the wild wood, down on a log,

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With my finger on the trigger and my eye on a hog or Old Awnt Peggy won't you fill them up again, I haven't had a drink since I don't know when or so on.

Another poster responded (in part):

Dang, ain't *no one* ever accused me a-bein' "cutesy" before...from here on,I'll make all my posts in my native Middalannic dialect. So, Yo!...whud is dis blooograss stuff anyways?? Izzit dat mewzik where ya godda have one a dem banjo 'tings??. I'll show ya a Blue Moon...

According to Blanchard,

as members perceive others’ individual characteristics as providing important cues as to the group’s characteristics of solidarity, they may perceive that their own identity cues could do the same. Therefore we hypothesize that both learning others’ and creating one’s own identity are potentially related to sovc [sense of virtual community] (Blanchard 2008:2111).

Not only must participants demonstrate skilled interactions, but they must also project an identity predominantly through text alone. The words one uses and the topics one comments on project an identity to other members. The topics one chooses not to comment upon also present an identity statement. Members may also need to know how to project the kind of authority they wish to claim.

Baym broaches the subject of “skilled communication.” Much like face-to-face conversation, text based virtual communication also is an indicator of social skill. Good face-to-face communicators often lean in close to the conversational partner, but not too close, say the “right thing” at the expected time, and use their hands and facial expressions to reflect confidence and empathy. Virtual communication allows none of these markers of skilled interaction. Online communicators must develop their own markers of what constitutes skilled communication. Part of skilled communication is the two-way nature of dialogue. Baym states that “without replies there is no way of assessing whether others found one’s contribution worthwhile or competent, let alone skilled” (Baym 1993:159). Replies (or lack thereof) clue the observant participant in to

139 how their posts are received. No replies may indicate a lack of interest, a desire to avoid a topic or not become personally associated with a person or subject, or it may simply suggest that people have no strong feelings one way or the other.

Baym reports that “the criteria of skilled performance [on the listserv] are humor, insight, distinctive personality and politeness” (Baym 1993:159). On bluegrass listservs, demonstration of knowledge is also a marker of skilled performance. These criteria are met by those who have participated in the community long enough to know the social norms. On BGRASS-L and IBMA-L, Karl/Carl Frobee is an in-joke that lightens the mood. Dan Keen tells the story of Karl Frobee.

Karl will usually "speak" in the middle of heated discussions as kind of a tension breaker. He also pipes up on very, very complex issues as the consciousness of the Simpleton. He always speaks through someone on the list. (In other words, anybody can post on his behalf. He is not the "property" of any one individual). He tends to be sort of clueless. Examples: during the anxious broohaha over moving WOB from [Louisville],KY to Nashville, Karl posted saying he came to the convention in Nashville, Indiana and "where was everybody"? It is often noted that he is the grand marshall or king of some obscure festival or celebration somewhere, usually in the boondocks. (p.c.)

Anytime a discussion becomes too heated, Karl Frobee interjects with some off the wall comment or observation, such as:

Hello from Louisville...

You will be pleased to know that Carl Frobee & Driving Force brought promo copies of their new single and distributed it to all interested deejays this week. It was available on cassette, but for those not able to play this technology, Carl generously offered the new song on eight track cartridge.

I urge all disk jockies who report either to Bluegrass Unlimited or Bluegrass Now to immediately list Carl's great new original song, composed by personally by Mr Frobee and based on a true life experience:

"Gertrude, Accept My Apology Now."

Thank you!

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Sorry I'm late on this:

Carl Frobie & Driving Force will give a free concert this evening at the Visitor's Center Of Mount St. Helen's, Washington.

"We're real honored to be invited to play at a famous western tourist site," said Frobee; "and we're really glad that this old volcano has been dead for twenty years, so we ain't scared nobody will show up for our show."

SORRY ABOUT THIS SHORT NOTICE, BUT I TRY...

As humor is subjective, awareness of the type of humor accepted and preferred by the group or community is another marker of skilled communication. Due to the increasingly diverse makeup of the groups, regional humor is often off-the-mark, as is gender or race based humor. Monitoring the jokes made on the listservs over time serves to provide newer members of an understanding of what types of humor are acceptable. Older members may find that jokes that were once seen as riotously funny are now perceived as off color or dated.

Baym states that “while humor, insight, and personality contribute to making a post stand out as particularly good, politeness is a criterion of communicative competence that keeps posts from standing out as particularly bad” (Baym 1993:170). In general, bluegrass fans are polite and mannerly to each other. Rudeness or carelessness is swiftly noted. Some of the most well known early bluegrass musicians did not adhere to this code of politeness – Jimmy Martin was known for his brash behavior and Bill

Monroe famously held grudges. Likewise, some listserv participants are seen as curmudgeonly or just “grouchy,” yet they are still accepted as community members.

Online, politeness is demonstrated through kindly worded replies, tact, and welcoming dialogue.

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Demographics and Personality

In face-to-face local groups, gender, age, and race are generally quite evident and shape interaction. In virtual scenes, age is implied only by the member’s musical preferences or recounted life-state experiences. The other factor that comes to the fore in virtual communication is evidence of education, particularly facility with the grammar and vocabulary of written language” (Lee and Peterson 2004:195).

On a listserv, someone is simply an email address with a bluegrass-related personality. Other online community hubs expand the one-dimensional community member. Facebook, for example, allows members to post photographs, list interests, post status updates, and leave comments or multimedia links on friends’ “walls.”

Someone may see that his or her bluegrass-affiliated Facebook friend also enjoys classic rock, klezmer, is in a romance-novel book club, has five cats, or enjoys adventure travel. This is even more information than one might reveal in face-to-face communication (in terms of interest, if not personality and mannerisms), on the opposite end of the spectrum from email-list based relationships and interaction.

Lysloff refers to Burkholder’s statement that “establishing human difference is no less relevant online than it is offline (1999:74)” and that “offline interactions generally depend first on visual codes inscribed on the body to establish the identity of others.

Online interactions often reverse: once the other’s perspectives and values are established, we tend to make assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality” (Lysloff

2003:240). Offline, a young bluegrass fan might be drawn to other young bluegrass fans, banjo pickers to banjo pickers, and women to women. Festival volunteers generally commune with other volunteers, staff with staff, attendees to attendees.

Online – in text based communication – the lines are somewhat less obvious. Each participant “speaks” in plain text font with the only individual identification being the signature line.

Again, social networking tools such as MySpace and Facebook clearly present demographic information to other members (and sometimes the general public) –

142 occupation, age, gender, sexuality, marital status, appearance, friend group, and a variety of interest categories. Even more so than in face-to-face interactions, people on social networking sites may seek out people with similar demographic markers and interests. Lysloff states that “difference on the Internet is generally not based on visible markers of race, gender, and age, but emerges through the textual based interactions among generally invisible groups and individuals” (Lysloff 2003:240). This assessment is valid for email lists, but as multimedia becomes more and more standard (YouTube,

Facebook, etc), the idea of anonymity fades somewhat. I agree that it is much easier to be anonymous in the virtual world than the face-to-face world, but anonymity is rarer than it was in the time before Web 2.0 and high speed Internet access.

Anonymity

Most scholars of CMC [Computer Mediated Communication] have argued that, in addition to reducing the conventional cues used to frame talk, the lack of visual and auditory information in computer-mediated talk reduces most cues to status, appearance, identity and gender. Some hold that lack of information inevitably reduces the communicators to anonymity, which would seem to prevent the formation of true community. However, regular readers of a group use a number of cues to create personalities for themselves and to identify others immediately (Baym 1993:168).

In the bluegrass community, both virtual and offline, it is difficult to find anonymity. The offline community is so tight knit and overlaps so extensively with the online community, most people have some kind of connection – many are involved in some way with the bluegrass world as musicians, promoters, association members, etc. Few participants are truly isolated to just the online community. In general, people want to be known to the community, not to be faceless, nameless, and personality-less. Chapter Four speaks to this topic in more detail.

Many survey respondents identified “knowing others’ names and personalities” as a marker of community, thus highlighting the importance of non-anonymity in the online

143 bluegrass world. A few participants may attempt to stay anonymous by lurking, while others may choose a generic screen name. Communication without identifying oneself is frowned upon and often ridiculed. Participants may publically call out someone who posts a message (particularly a strongly opinioned one) without providing a name.

Participants on both BGRASS-L and IBMA-L are expected to identify themselves when posting, so other members may know with whom they are communing. Anonymity is frowned upon and treated as suspect. Why would someone not claim his or her own post, except for suspect reasons?

Online Communication and Age

Age is an issue that is often discussed in bluegrass conversations. Discussions frequently cover the desire to encourage more young people to become interested in bluegrass music. On social networks, the audience skews to the younger fans. My bluegrass affiliated Facebook and MySpace friends are younger than my fellow listserv participants. Younger fans seem to think of bluegrass as one part of their online self – one interest out of many - while older social networkers treat these sites as more of an advertising tool or a way to express their bluegrass identity or as a loudspeaker to broadcast their thoughts on the music. On social networks age can be determined though a posted birth date or by viewing users’ pictures, assuming the photographs are genuine and up-to-date.

Email lists are less clear regarding ages of the participants. One may determine a poster’s age by the choice of words, sharing of life history, and interactions with others.

Musical preferences are less reflective of age. One might assume that younger fans would express that they like more modern, crossover-type groups. In my seven years as a member, I have never read a post from a young person expressing such preferences.

One reason could be that there simply are not many young people on the mailing lists

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(or on any emailing list for that matter) and those who are on seldom, if ever, participate in discussion. Also, young people, knowing they are in the minority, might be reluctant to speak up as a dissenting voice – stating a preference for non-traditional bands immediately brands you as an outsider, unless you are already known to the group as an insider. From my observations, no young person is an “insider” or core member on

BGRASS-L or IBMA-L, though many young people participate in bluegrass-related community activity on Facebook and YouTube.

Lee and Peterson report that “tribal identity markers are absent in the typical virtual scene, since the only mode of communication is the written word. Because of this, one’s standing in the group is maintained by the quality and quantity of one’s written communication” (Lee and Peterson 2004:194). Is the listserv the typical virtual scene?

For the older communities, yes. But for younger community members, social networks constitute the virtual scene. I might guess that many younger people have not even heard of email lists, though younger bluegrass fans likely have more email list awareness than the average young adult or teenager as a great deal of bluegrass community activity takes place there. Many of my bluegrass-related Facebook friends are below age twenty-five, while many active listserv participants are over age forty or fifty. That leaves out the folks in the middle, indicating that there may be an age gap in bluegrass fans between ages 25 and 40.

Conversation

Speaking to each other as equals is actually a commonplace of life in all communities and societies, and it is valued because it enacts the social ideal of reciprocity. Communication of this kind does not plumb the depths – its satisfaction lies in sociability, in the opportunity to have one’s say in the presence of others (Tuan 2002:316).

Tuan’s idea of conversational reciprocity leads to the question of whether or not lurkers are truly part of the community, even if they do not participate in communication. Those

145 who do not communicate, who only read the communications of others are not sharing in the sociability of community, and thus they are not participating in social reciprocity.

As online communities are primarily text based, do they have a greater requirement for regular communication and participation? Or may some people simply

“live in” the community and only voice their opinions occasionally, as in offline community? Foster asserts that “the interactivity of CMC [computer mediated communication] is about human connections. It is about talking. It serves individuals and communities, not mass audiences” (Foster 1996:29). Foster goes on to say that

“conversation with others can shape both the culture and the sociology of the conceptual space that its electronic interlocutors inhabit” (Foster 1996:31). On BGRASS-L and

IBMA-L, conversation is the primary community activity and it does shape and create community. Blogs and social networking sites are also dominated and shaped by and through conversation - mostly text based though with some audio-visual elements, such as photo and video.

Kibby states that “communities exist through dialogue; through an exchange of past social history and current social interaction” (Kibby 1993:91). Online bluegrass communities establish and develop themselves through dialogue, shared history, and shared present. The space of community is defined through conversation and text.

Some could argue that for these online text-based communities, communication is the community. However, Foster states that “though communication serves as the basis of community, it must not be equated with it” (Foster 1996:24). There is more to community than simply conversation – as discussed in previous chapters – such as relationships, ritual, and shared interest. The conversation is only the means to the end of community creation and expression.

Despite the availability of multimedia advancements, written communication retains its importance in the virtual world. Text based conversations take the place of

146 verbal conversations. The quality of one’s written language is of utmost importance in determining the value of one’s community participation. Good communication often equals good community. Quantity of communication is also important, though frequent

“flaming” (argumentative, inflammatory comments, often directed at one individual) or non-informed communication often serves to alienate one from the group rather than draw one in. Written communication is unofficially judged based on community norms and expectations.

Face-to-Face versus Online Communication

Interaction at local scenes is face-to-face, completely textured and not readily visible to the researcher. Interaction on the Internet is flat, in that it consists of words on paper and the images they can conjure. Although it is readily available to the researcher both in real time and from archived messages, understanding the nuances imbedded in the discussion takes long exposure in either kind of scene (Lee and Peterson 2004:191-2).

Online venues may enable and encourage regular communication. Online participants may interact daily, while offline communication may only take place weekly or monthly, or even annually – as is the case with festival based communal activity.

Online communities also often offer a faster response to queries or news dissemination

– though the fastest response is not always the most accurate.

Online communities may hinder a member’s ability to become known as a multifaceted individual, due to conversations being limited to the topic of bluegrass. At an in-person event, such as a festival, participants get to know each other’s interests other than bluegrass through small talk and casual conversation. Online, however, some of the formats (including BGRASS-L and IBMA-L) restrict conversations to topics pertaining to bluegrass. In person, one might learn that a new friend enjoys North

Carolina style barbeque, wears overalls, but drives a Porsche. Online, particularly on listservs, that information is irrelevant to the topic of bluegrass and does not come up in

147 conversation. In the text-based online format, this type of information cannot be obtained visually, as it might in in-person interaction. In person, one doesn’t need to share that he/she wears overalls and drives a Porsche; others can simply view those facts for themselves.

In your Internet community, with a few colleagues, you share thoughts, opinions, feelings. With members of this community, you may be more open and direct than with your brothers or sisters or parents. Many of your fellow network colleagues will be complete and utter strangers…on the Internet, you feel more strongly about your virtual community…than you do about your own town or city. Why? (Valauskas 1996:2).

Online communities are seen as containing more forthright conversations and more immediate opening and sharing. As these communities allow less of the face to face

“getting to know you” activities, such as small talk and sharing the mundane aspects of life, members may share more about themselves much faster, more candidly, and with less prompting than they would in “real” life, or they may choose to share nothing other than their appreciation of bluegrass.

Putnam indicates that “on-line discussions tend to be more frank and egalitarian than face-to-face meetings” (Putnam 2000:173). Participants in online discussion do tend to be more forthright with information. As there is less “time,” conversations are more direct and efficient, and members “waste” less time on fripperies, small talk, and sugar coating. Face-to-face discussions are often softer and approached more gently.

A community member would be very unlikely to begin a face-to-face conversation with a question such as “what do you think about the 2010 Grammy nominations?” or “I disagree with this article, what does everyone else think?” Online, these conversational openers are the norm. New members may introduce themselves without prompting, providing biographical details in an introductory paragraph with information that would trickle out slowly in usual face-to-face conversation.

People tend to be more direct and possibly offensive when using mediated

148 communication. In addition to being more forthright, members are sometimes harsher than they would be “in person.” People do tend to be more obviously unkind in the online bluegrass community than offline. One of the negative aspects of online communication may be that even though it is not anonymous, people treat it as if it were.

Many people see it as having less impact and fewer consequences than face-to-face dialogue, perhaps due to the lack of immediate reaction. I would argue that online communication has equal if not greater consequences than offline communication, as the virtual world is just as “real” as the real world, and information can spread much more rapidly through virtual channels.

Space, Time, and Communication

Rheingold asks “what are the minimum elements of communication necessary for a group of people to cocreate a sense of community?” (Rheingold 1993:176). How often must members communicate with each other – daily, weekly? Many BGRASS-L regulars do communicate multiple times a day, some a few times a week, and some only rarely when a particular topic of interest arises. Perhaps the offline parallel would be that some people are very active in maintaining and being involved with the neighboring community – they participate in many local events, attend community meetings, and voice their opinions regularly. Others show up at some events, while others might show up rarely or never. All levels of participation may live in the community, but some are more involved than others.

Referring to the previous discussion on the dearth of social cues, Blanchard expresses that

the presence of fewer social cues does not necessarily mean that identity is less important in ict [information and communication technology] than in ftf [face to face] interactions…it simply takes a good deal more time for an appropriate amount of cues to be accumulated in ict and for the relationships to become similar in scope and magnitude (Blanchard 2008:2110).

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Time is a key factor in online communities (as well as offline ones). Online participants often need more time than they would in face-to-face interactions to build up and develop recognition, due to the lack of physical presence. At a face-to-face community event – a festival, for example – participants listen to and play music together, they eat together, they visit the facilities together, and they even sleep in close proximity to one another. Shared space and time forces the attendees into community, even if it is temporary. Online, however, members must actively reach out to each other. To participate in community, they must regularly communicate – expressing their thoughts, feelings, and identities through the written word.

Sharing Information and Knowledge

One of the key aspects of a community of interest is the practice of sharing information. Kibby states that “it is the ritual sharing of information which binds contacts into communities” (Kibby 2000:95). People connect through sharing and receiving information. In the bluegrass community, this information includes news and gossip such as tour dates, band lineup changes, new albums, personal milestones (weddings, births, illnesses, and anniversaries), historical tidbits, and personal anecdotes. People new to the music often ask basic questions, including requests for listening recommendations, instrument brand suggestions, and advice about where to find bluegrass activity in specific geographic locations. Kibby asserts that

the ritual exchange of information online allows fans a feeling of community between themselves and between them and the performer, facilitating a belief in commonality, although they are dispersed geographically and disparate in needs and experiences. An electronic place in which to ‘gather’ enables a direct link between fans and even makes possible a direct connection between fans and performers (Kibby 2000:91).

In many musical genres, fans and musicians are mediated by press agents and

150 managers, but in the bluegrass world, artists and listeners often directly connect.

Musicians may not regularly participate in discussions, but quite a few read listservs and blogs and maintain their own social networking sites.

Baym argues that one social consequence of pooling insight is the creation of a vast body of public knowledge and opinions to which all group members share access”

(Baym 1993:167). Bluegrass community members have a shared history – of both the music and the people surrounding it. Blanchard refers to the prediction of McMillan and

Chavis (1986) that “knowledge about the community and its history is integral to sense of community” (Blanchard 2006:6). To be an accepted member of the bluegrass community, people must have some background knowledge of bluegrass music. They need not have substantial historical knowledge of the online community – when it began, who began it, etc, though they should quickly develop familiarity with the social norms and “netiquette.”

In his discussion of collective memory and groupmind, Rheingold mentions that

“one of the advantages of computer conferencing is the community memory that preserves key moments in the history of the community” (Rheingold 1993:42) providing an archive of online oral history. The Bluegrass Blog, BGRASS-L, and IBMA-L (as well as other blogs) all contain archived material, which community members (as well as anyone with an Internet connection) can access as a reminder of previous conversations. Blogs embed links to earlier posts relevant to current discussions, while listserv participants may recommend new members refer to the archives when a recently repeated discussion topic is brought up.

Putnam reminds us that “information itself needs a social context to be meaningful”

(Putnam 2000:172). The social context of information presented to the online community is based on the larger offline bluegrass community and the specific online bluegrass community. Blanchard asks “can computer-mediated community increase

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knowledge?” (Blanchard 2006:6). My own store of bluegrass knowledge has increased

due to participating in the online bluegrass community. The online community increases

general awareness of bluegrass news (a bluegrass patriarch’s new grandbaby or a

change in band personnel), but also provides a way for incorrect assumptions and false

information to spread under the guise of “news” – online, personal opinions may be

regarded as “fact.”

Adding technology to information sharing/exchange, Rheingold refers to Sproull

and Kiesler’s statement that “with electronic communication, folklore can be more

broadly accessible” (Rheingold 1993:58). Thus, the folklore, expectations, and social

mores of a community can be shared with members with the click of a button. Bluegrass

folklore is in many ways more widely available online, particularly for those people

geographically distanced from the areas with a higher concentration of bluegrass fans.

Putnam states that “at its best, computer-mediated communication allows wider, more

efficient networks that strengthen our ties to the social world and increase our

“intellectual capital,” for information can be shared at virtually no cost” (Putnam

2000:172).

Public Exchange of Information as Community Activity

The community is built at the intersection of public and private spaces and relationship interactions. Local community interacts in the pub, the community center, the park, as well as in the home. Internet community interacts in “public” spaces such as the email list, blog, forum, and social network, and the private spaces of email, instant messaging, and individual chat. Solely private institutions do not make a community – community requires some kind of public space – even if that space is a web address.

Bluegrass fans in Boston are able to connect with other Boston bluegrass fans through local events and meetings, but how do bluegrass fans in Des Moines connect

152 with fans in Atlanta? Knoxville to Prague? Pre-Internet bluegrass fans connected through attending the same local events and in a more abstract sense, feeling psychically connected to others who share the same musical interest. Geographically separated bluegrass fans also constructed community by reading (and writing letters to) the same magazines, such as Bluegrass Unlimited. This connection through print magazines continues today.

Bluegrass Unlimited includes a few columns specifically tailored to communications from and between bluegrass fans. Murphy Hicks Henry compiles the

“General Store,” a collection of the author’s thoughts and newsworthy happenings throughout the bluegrass world, such as new band personnel, births and deaths, and recently released albums. Walt Saunders posts reader comments and responds to requests for information in a section titled “Notes and Queries.” An example from this section in the August 2009 issue of BU reads:

…in the May issue, a California reader was looking for a band, Ricky Prater & the Midnight Travelers, who he saw on the Cumberland Highlanders Show on RFD- TV. We subsequently heard from one of the band members.

“I received the May issue of BU and was surprised and pleased to see a query about Rick Prater & the Midnight Travelers. I play bass for this group…

“Rick has played with many different bands in Knott County, KY., before his move to Indiana. He’s worked with Larry Sparks, Dave Evans, Vince Combs, Wendy Miller & Mike Lilly, and Sam Wilson & the Bluegrass Colonels.

“The current version of the Midnight Travelers was formed in 2004. We have one CD available with another studio project in progress with some original material. We have a busy schedule in the Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky area.”

An example of a “query” follows.

Q – “Anyone know where the song ‘Blue-Eyed Boston Boy’ originated? I’d forgotten it until I heard the band Hard Ryde from Canada sing it recently. I’m sure I heard the Bluegrass Cardinals’ version way back when, which is why it wounded so familiar.

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A – This writer had no information on the song, other than the Bluegrass Cardinals’ version was listed as ‘Traditional.’ Thanks to Joe Hickerson, of Wheaton, Md., for his research on this old Civil War song.

“I found a recording of ‘Blue-Eyed Boston Boy’ by the Bluegrass Cardinals on their 1977 LP Welcome To Virginia (Rounder 0097, released on CD in 1998). An Internet site led me back to a version titled ‘Two Soldiers’ on Hazel & Alice’s eponymous 1995 CD, Rounder 0027 (originally recorded in 1973). They in turn got the song from Mike Seeger who recorded it on his eponymous LP on Vanguard in 1964; this version appeared in Sing Out!, volume 14 #3 and in volume 10 of Reprints from Sing Out! Mike’s source was a Library of Congress recording performed by Munroe, Cathlyn, and Bert Gavedon and recorded on October 27, 1937, in West Liberty, KY., by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax for the Archive of American Folk-Song. It is a version of Laws’ ballad #A17, often titled ‘The Last Fierce Charge’ or ‘The Battle Of Fredericksburg.’

“I’ve also seen ‘Two Soldiers’ listed as being on Rounder CD 0266 (1990), Norman Blake & Tony Rice, Vol. 2. And there are two 78s listed on page 17 of Country Music Sources.” We checked Country Music Sources, A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music, Guthrie T. Meade, Jr., with Dick Spottswood and Douglas B. Meade. We found that Carl Sprague recorded the song as “The Two Soldiers” for the Victor label in 1927, and Green Bailey cut a version as “Just Before The Last Fierce Charge” for Gennett in 1929 (never released).

This same type of text based communication occurs online. Members of BGRASS-L and IBMA-L post requests for information, and other members supply that information.

Some replies may be useful to the questioner, while others may provide incorrect or irrelevant information. Regardless, the participants have found a connection through sharing of information and knowledge.

Conclusion

Online bluegrass community, particularly that affiliated with email lists, is dependent on text for communication. Likewise, online community is dependent on communication in order to develop and maintain community. Text, by which I mean

“words,” plays a major role in demonstrating awareness of community norms and expectations, expressing or disguising personality and identifying characteristics,

154 conversation, and sharing and exchanging information and knowledge. The following chapter connects these ideas of text and communication with previously discussed concepts to examine how members of online community/ies create meaning within the larger world of bluegrass community.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Conclusion

In this work I have examined online interactions among bluegrass musicians, fans, and industry figures as a lens through which to examine community in the bluegrass music culture at large. I discussed the overlap of on and offline community and three main ideas relating to online bluegrass community – relationships, virtuality and reality, and text and communication. These ideas reflect three of the most prominent themes in on and offline bluegrass community today. The goal of this study is to understand how bluegrass fans enact community in today’s changing, modern world. On a larger scale, this study represents how people, specifically those with interest and practice based connections, negotiate and enact community activity and a sense of community with the tools available.

As fans of bluegrass music are particularly passionate about the music and especially close and connected with each other, they are in a special position to shed light on how people make community in both usual and unusual circumstances.

Bluegrass fans are also especially vocal, both about their musical preferences as well as about other topics, such as community. Bluegrass musicians, fans, and industry figures tend to be initially friendly and welcoming though admission to the “inner circle” takes time and investment.

I have had an enjoyable, enlightening experience immersing myself in the bluegrass world. Beginning with my (re)exposure to bluegrass while studying in Ireland

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(initially as a scholar of Irish music), I encountered one person after another eager to talk about bluegrass music. I was hosted in musicians’ homes, introduced to families, and transported to gigs. Later, in America, I interned with a bluegrass association, volunteered with local clubs and organizations, and was eventually hired as a staff member of the IBMA, for which I managed member databases, answered all sorts of bluegrass questions, and played a part in running the three events that make up the fall

World of Bluegrass celebration.

As a constant fan and sometimes researcher (and former professional when I worked for the IBMA) within the bluegrass world, I have participated regularly in both on and offline bluegrass community activity since 2003, both in the United States and in

Ireland. I have developed friendships as well as professional relationships with people from all over the world and from diverse backgrounds and occupations. I feel included in the bluegrass community even as I provide these final thoughts on the subject.

Why (Do People Want) Community?

Feintuch states that “we all seem to want community, even if we do not know quite what it is” (Feintuch 2001:157). Most scholars today agree that the perception and reality of community has changed as human society has evolved. Whereas in earlier times, people depended on a community for support – both social/emotional and physical, people today perceive themselves as more independent and community as something extra. In the past and today, communities have provided safety and security, companionship, friendship, care, division of labor, and structure. Communities could also be exclusive, powerful, and even dangerous – as witnessed in the Salem witch trials. Today and in the past, communities can be both a comfort and a threat.

The definitions discussed previously in this work demonstrate the varied ideas of what “community” is to different people. The concept of community has varied over

157 time, place, as well as through personal interpretation. Foster states that the search for community “makes it more difficult to marginalize people who are different from ourselves” (Foster 1996:26). I would argue that membership in a community may also make marginalization easier (by way of exclusion), considering that once we have found our community, we create boundaries of exclusion and inclusion in order to feel more fully invested - bluegrass music fans excluding modern country music fans for example.

Quoting Allan, Smith states that in addition to helping us to build a sense of self and individuality, these informal relationships “also enable us to navigate our way around the demands and contingencies of everyday living” (Allan 1996:2 in Smith 2001:4).

Communities help make life tolerable. They help us get through the day, emotionally and physically. As Thomas states, a community offers “the opportunity to belong to a place and a social context more personally fulfilling than the transience of student or suburban life” (Thomas 2001:172).

Zygmunt Bauman describes the community we long for as “the kind of world which is not, regrettably, available to us - but which we would dearly love to inhabit and which we hope to repossess” (Smith 2001:6). Bauman seems to indicate that the community we long for must be an idyllic representation – an unattainable utopia. Is the community that bluegrass fans strive for (or long for) unavailable – or do they seek a more accessible community, one with twenty-first century hopes and dreams, possibilities and pursuits? Some bluegrass fans imagine the family-based rural ideal represented by the lyrics of the songs, but many simply enjoy participating in the real-world bluegrass community. Perhaps the ideal community for bluegrass fans is the family reunion of the festival, with jam sessions, access to “star” performers, and absence of day-to-day worries.

Feintuch states that he

would guess that people who live in the kind of social settings we idealize as

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functioning communities have, by and large, not been bothered to talk much about community. It is likely that those of us who feel a kind of displacement or a desire to connect talk most about community. Treating it as a value, at times a felt reality, the kind of thing people sometimes experience when festivity, celebration, euphoric music, or dance touches us, permits us to touch others, and at least for a time, lets us feel connection (Feintuch 2001:157).

Perhaps Feintuch would argue that bluegrass community overall is not really a community, but a temporary connection, something that does not really exist, but is felt or imagined. In some cases, such as festivals, these really are temporary connections, but on the whole, the bluegrass community is an ongoing, participatory collection of individuals.

Feintuch speaks to our longing for or attempt to recreate community, stating that

“desiring community is not the same as having it, whatever it is” (Feintuch 2001:160).

So who then decides what “having” community is? Who draws the line between

“desiring” community and “having” it – scholars or the people themselves? I would have to agree that desiring something does not make it so, but that desiring community may lead to the creation and enacting of community.

Speaking of music makers, Feintuch states that “in the course of making their music, they have also managed to create a social space that is moral, and despite its contingent and ephemeral qualities, this allows them to feel the kind of connections long associated with community, however fleeting the experience” (Feintuch 2001:159).

Feintuch refers to connections associated with community, rather than community itself.

He does not regard regular music making as a form of community due to its temporary, inconstant nature. Feintuch defines community

as more than what happens in one, occasional sphere of interaction. To be in community is to participate in a web of connectedness to others that continues beyond special events. And it is easy...to believe in community when everyone is having fun, when the music occasions a kind of generous consciousness and a sense of connection (Feintuch 2001:149).

He goes on to say that we should think of “the music-playing not so much as community

159 but as a complicated striving - or longing - for a moral kind of community” (Feintuch

2001:152). Again, Feintuch emphasizes the lack of actual community, but the presence of longing – wanting a community when one does not actually exist.

Feintuch and I differ on the definition of community. Feintuch requires sustained regular face-to-face interaction for community to exist, while my definition calls for some sort of interaction and connection, but not necessarily face-to-face communing. My definition makes accommodations for the technologically mediated, geographically dispersed way of life in the twenty-first century. Due to the geographic dispersion of bluegrass fans, most bluegrass fans think of the “bluegrass community” as including all bluegrass fans, not only those they have met or regularly interact with. Of course, smaller communities occur within the larger community (which could be called a society) such as the D.C. bluegrass community, California bluegrass community, or the online bluegrass community.

Imagined Community

Benedict Anderson, whose text Imagined Communities is a primary reference for many scholars on the subject, writes that “community is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion”

(Anderson 1991:6). Applying Anderson’s text to a study of virtual community, Lysloff further elaborates that “discussion should be focused instead on the nature and quality of the relationships in the formation of Internet communities. In other words, we should perhaps be asking what these social networks do and mean for their members” (Lysloff

2003:256). This work has been less concerned with judging the real-ness of a community, than with discerning how the participants perceive gatherings as a community or not and in pointing out the elements of community.

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Noyes asserts that

imaginings are not limited to their first imaginers. Like texts, ideas once propounded live in the world and travel long distances from their points of origin...These realizations in social memory...[build] up in the social imaginary, ever larger, ever more real, until at last it is as big, as dense, and as difficult to deconstruct as “race” or “Germany” (Noyes 1995:466).

These community constructs become difficult or impossible to break down, as is sometimes the case with “bluegrass community.” As Noyes proposes, “The imagined community offers a focus for comparison and desire, and at the same time, is itself subject to revisionings in the light of everyday experience” (Noyes 1995:471).

In the twenty-first century, are not most communities imagined? I know much more about my online community than I do about people in my geographical community.

I do not know the name of any of my neighbors. I spend significantly more time online than I do interacting with people in my neighborhood. In modern times, especially in the

West, the traditional idea of community as a village or concrete geographical space is disappearing or has in fact already disappeared. Despite or because of the fading of geographic community, other forms of community have developed and strengthened.

Brint states that “communities and community relations continue to exist” for example “in the interchanges of core members of usenet groups” (Brint 2001:8).

For bluegrass fans, community is often a felt reality. Even if all members do not communicate regularly or share physical co-presence, they feel part of a community.

Noyes states that “the prestige of objective reality - if not as a political entity, at least as a culture - gives a well known boost to the position of a group in the imaginary. And of course it makes the culture negotiable as a commodity in the material realm” (Noyes

1995:467).

Community continues to be a popular ideal in the present day, even though it must often be actively sought out. Rheingold focuses his attention on virtual communities, stating that they “require an act of imagination to use…and what must be imagined is the

161 idea of the community itself” (Rheingold 1993:64). Brint defines imagined communities as “communities of belief in which members are not in face to face contact with one another” (Brint 2001:11). So the community members believe they have a community, creating an “imagined” community. Can an imagined community ever be a “real” community? What about a virtual community? The overall bluegrass community might be considered an imagined community, but to many of its members, the community is very real.

Church asks “if we say that all communities are imagined, do we mean simply that they are merely symbolic constructs? I think not” (Church 1990:37). Tuan continues

“although community is no longer essential to the survival of fragile individuals, it continues to exist, and where it does not, or is weak, social workers and political leaders urge that it be formed or strengthened” (Tuan 2002:314). Why do people insist on community? Why do so many believe it necessary and worth building and encouraging?

One reason is because people find meaning in community.

Community and Meaning

Our efforts to imagine, create, and participate in community allow us a way to engage with and experience the world. The perception of community is important in securing an individual’s identity. Its meaning lies in its value as an identity marker – a statement of self as part of the group – a member of the bluegrass community. In his discussion of virtual communities, Lysloff states that “how and why people find meaning in their use of the Internet should be as important as textual analysis for anthropologists to study. Ethnographic approaches understand the social and technical interactions

(and processes) that despite taking place in the virtual realm of cyberspace, have consequences for lived social worlds” (Lysloff 2003:234). One way of finding meaning is by becoming part of a community either established or developing. Online social

162 interactions do have an impact on the larger bluegrass community. For example, despite the fact that only a small percentage of IBMA members subscribe to the IBMA-L, and an even smaller percentage participate in discussion, these online discussions can have a lasting impact on the organization as a whole. The listserv sometimes serves as a space to gauge general member opinion.

Meaning is created and affirmed in the present, but also gains importance from links with the past. Bellah, et al. discuss a collective memory or a community of memory:

one that does not forget its past. In order not to forget that past, a community is involved in retelling its story, its constitutive narrative and in so doing, it offers examples of the men and women who have embodied and exemplified the meaning of the community. These stories of collective history and exemplary individuals are an important part of the tradition that is so central to a community of memory (Bellah, et al. 1996:153).

The bluegrass community constantly refers to its past; history is a distinguishing part of the music and of the community surrounding it. Bill Monroe is often referred to, as are anniversaries of notable events, birthdays and death dates. The tradition of bluegrass community is an important part of the music. Participants speak of the “big family” and call festivals and events “family reunions.”

Thomas mentions a “viable modern community sustained through participation in a developing tradition…tradition situated within a living and growing human community”

(Thomas 2001:178). Speaking to this idea of shared tradition, Shoupe asserts that “it is the memory of it, and the anticipation of its occurrence on a future occasion, that draws people back to events that carry the potential of communitas” (Shoupe 2001:142). This memory of shared tradition, of community, plays a strong role in the music.

McMillan and Chavis state that

a shared emotional connection is based in part on a shared history. It is not necessary that group members have participated in the history in order to share it, but they must identify with it. The interactions of members in shared events and the specific attributes of the events may facilitate or inhibit the strength of the

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community (McMillan and Chavis 1986:8).

Many bluegrass fans did not participate in the early history of the music. Many joined the bluegrass bandwagon during the revivals of the 1960s (approximately 15 years after the genre’s inception), and even more joined after the release of the film O Brother

Where Art Thou in 2001. These fans have a connection with the tradition through their connection with other members of the community. Many of these relative “newcomers” are often more focused on history and tradition than those who have been with the genre all along and are comfortable with outside influence – Earl Scruggs, for example.

Twenty-first Century Bluegrass Community

The makeup of bluegrass community appears to have changed little due to the

Internet. Other factors, such as the popularity of the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack and the follow up Down from the Mountain documentary film and tour have added to the bluegrass fan base, extending interest to younger and more diverse listeners. The demographic makeup of online bluegrass community participants, especially those on listservs, continues to skew to the older (American) white male.

Social networking groups have a younger, more gender-diverse membership, but these sites have not been stable long enough to gather a clear picture. The biggest change in the bluegrass community is communication between people of widespread geographic locations.

One of the largest changes in bluegrass community brought about by the Internet is the ability to maintain ongoing relationships with fellow bluegrass fans from around the globe. Pre-Internet, bluegrass fans felt connected to other fans through a sense of awareness that other fans existed in the world. Magazines and radio allowed some of these fans to communicate with each other, though indirectly. Local associations connected fans in geographical communities and beginning in 1985 the IBMA connected

164 professionals as well as fans by serving as a central hub and hosting a yearly event.

Festivals enabled people in a certain area and those able to travel to connect with each other for a weekend. The Internet allows anyone (with knowledge and a connection) to connect and communicate regularly from any distance. The fan base of bluegrass (and especially the awareness of the fan base) has increased in the past fifteen years of

BGRASS-L’s existence.

The Internet has had an impact on who listens to the music, but less of an impact on who seeks out and participates in community. The availability of music on the

Internet has increased access to the music (particularly to young listeners), but few are interested in taking the next step into becoming part of an interest-based community. A study of young bluegrass fans, including those who participate in bluegrass community and those who do not would be a valuable one.

Another major distinction between on and offline community is the mode of communication. Offline community activities include the text-based medium of magazines, but the online community is primarily text-based. Most offline interaction occurs face-to-face, while most online encounter occurs through the written word. The focus of online community activity is conversation, while the focus of offline community is often music-making. Due to this focus, online community conversation centers intensely on bluegrass and bluegrass-related topics, with little small talk. Relationships online are maintained almost exclusively through text. Multimedia-based interaction through online venues such as YouTube and Facebook are changing the way people interact online and would be another worthy area for future study.

Another area of difference between on and offline bluegrass community is debate over the existence of community itself. While some scholars (such as Feintuch), would argue against offline communities of practice as “real” community, even more would call into question the reality of community taking place online. Questions of virtuality versus

165 reality are brought up frequently in relation to online community, while offline communities are often simply accepted. The idea that online community is so nebulous and seemingly unbounded makes some scholars resistant to referring to it as a real community.

The relationships that exist in bluegrass community are maintained in three main ways: exclusively online, exclusively offline, and through some combination of on and offline interaction. Many of those relationships are real even though they may have been formed or maintained in the virtual realm. In the twenty-first century, many bluegrass fans have found community in the space between the overlap of reality and virtuality. In many ways, bluegrass community in the twenty-first century is simply a continuation and extension of twentieth century bluegrass community. Though fans increasingly hail from points all around the world, a majority still live in the Southeast.

The online format allows members worldwide to commune with each other regularly, but the southeast is seen as the central hub of bluegrass community.

Many of the same people interact on and offline. Often fans experience bluegrass community offline and then move to the online format. A few dabble in the online community format before joining in offline community activities. Some only participate in offline community and a small number (especially those geographically distanced from bluegrass hubs) only participate online. Some people have been bluegrass fans for many years and simply see the Internet as another way to meet and be in touch with fellow fans. Both online and offline bluegrass community is heavily populated with white males over the age of forty-five. One might assume those in the online community would tend to be younger than those offline. In some ways this is true – fewer people over seventy participate online than offline. But perhaps surprisingly, few young people participate in established online bluegrass community activity, such as listservs, blogs, and forums, though many participate through Facebook and Twitter.

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Discussion topics are similar on and offline and many of the same topics from early bluegrass community continue to be brought up today. People commonly discuss what is or is not bluegrass, established or up and coming bands, major events, important news, and instruments. Online discussions tend to be more forthright and explicitly bluegrass focused, with less small talk and a much faster timeline for the spread of information. Community norms, excluding format-specific behavior, are also mostly consistent on and offline. Appropriate language and expectations of polite behavior are similar across on and offline community boundaries.

The bluegrass tradition has been transmitted since its inception by person to person interaction as well as through recordings and radio broadcasts. The Internet has added a new format for transmission, though sharing many characteristics with earlier transmission methods. Web video is an extension of DVDs, but the Internet increases access to all with Internet connections with video capabilities. Most information and music is not bought and sold, but freely available on the World Wide Web. Information is freely accessible as well. Anyone may search for events, historical facts, or local bluegrass associations, rather than trying to track down a local person to obtain the information. Because of this, the Internet also enables decreased human contact, unless that contact is sought out. One may simply watch a YouTube video, or one may comment and communicate with the poster. Many more people view or read content than actively participate in interaction. The Internet allows for increased ways to transmit the music as well as a variety of ways to both extend and avoid contact with others.

Suggestions for Future Research

While completing this study, I have encountered countless ideas for future research in the overall area covered in this project. As the state of community, bluegrass music, and bluegrass music community is constantly evolving, a similar study

167 undertaken even five years from now will likely produce quite different observations and results. Technology is changing our concept of community, of fieldwork, even of music.

This dissertation is a presentation of a music community at a certain point in time and future study would provide a valuable comparison.

As bluegrass-focused electronic mailing lists have existed for at least fifteen years, they have most heavily influenced this presentation. A study focused on online social networking, though constantly changing, would provide significant insights into another area of online community activity, particularly in relation to people under the age of thirty- five. Worthy areas for deeper investigation include how music is shared and discussed on these networks, what type of music fan populates them, and how bluegrass fans and musicians participate in and utilize them. Forums and participatory websites such as iBluegrass or CyberGrass would provide another worthy area for exploration. Some of these forums have existed for many years, and it is likely that relationships have been developed and maintained around them.

YouTube also provides a fertile space for ethnomusicological study. For years, bluegrass musicians have offered DVDs on playing instruments at varying levels, but

YouTube allows anyone to teach and learn. The site is also a space for discussion – with comments, private messages, and profile pages, much like other social networking sites. YouTube’s main focus is on video, making text-based conversation a secondary form of communication. Many fans post concert footage of bluegrass artists, festivals, concerts, as well as down-time conversations and antics. The site is a video-recorded microcosm of the bluegrass world and would be a rich area for a large-scale study.

Conclusion

How does the bluegrass community, prized and self-mythologized for its person to person interactions translate to the virtual world? Fans of the genre have, in many

168 ways, always been part of a “virtual” world, one with a psychological connection based on shared interest in bluegrass music, but in which members are separated by geography. The Internet has played a role in surmounting the obstacle of distance, enabling widespread community members to actually commune with one another, virtually if not physically. Internet based interaction does not replace face-to-face interaction within the bluegrass world, but rather supplements it, allowing members to connect with not only those fans in their geographic proximity, but with the global bluegrass community. Though the Internet has allowed far-flung bluegrass fans to connect with one another, it has also limited those interactions to primarily text-based communication, with the screen-to-screen rather than face-to-face environment leading toward more inflammatory comments and the spread of potentially hurtful or inaccurate information. Interaction in the virtual world has led to both positive and negative real world outcomes for the bluegrass community, in some ways encouraging greater connection between fans, but in other ways isolating and separating them.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY

This essay will provide a discussion of the scholarly and popular literature for the reader who would like to know more about literature on the subjects of bluegrass and technoculture. As chapter two is devoted exclusively to a discussion of community, I have left a discussion of community literature out of this essay.

Bluegrass Music

Bluegrass-related writings have been published on issues of race, geography, place/space, history, biography, personal ethnography, structure, style, and jam sessions. Previous and current studies of bluegrass music mainly focus on two areas: history and locality, though community is also a reoccurring and closely integrated area of investigation. The two main texts on bluegrass, Neil Rosenberg’s Bluegrass: A

History (1993/2005) and Robert Cantwell’s Bluegrass Breakdown (1984/2003) maintain a historical focus and highlight the founders, key players, and the developmental influences on the musical style. Both of these texts serve as references in my study.

Thomas Goldsmith’s The Bluegrass Reader (2004) is an invaluable collection of articles from both academic and mainstream sources tracking both the history of bluegrass and particular issues, such as women and musical progressivism, relating to bluegrass music. The Reader includes major bluegrass articles such as Mayne Smith’s “An

Introduction to Bluegrass,” Alan Lomax’s “Bluegrass Background: Folk Music with

Overdrive,” and Robert Cantwell’s “Believing in Bluegrass,” as well as articles

170 addressing the current bluegrass scene, such as Baker Maultsby’s “Progress Rooted in

Tradition: Del McCoury Talks about Work with Bill Monroe, Steve Earle,” Robert

Oermann and Mary Bufwack’s “‘Little Darlin’s Not My Name’: Women in Bluegrass,” and

Jon Weisberger’s “Going Back to Old Kentucky: Ricky Skaggs Rediscovers the Rules of

Bluegrass.” Another recent bluegrass text is Stephanie Ledgin’s Homegrown Music

(2004) – an approachable introductory narrative that highlights the impacts of O Brother

Where Art Thou and internationalization on the bluegrass scene.

A few texts relating to folk or traditional music and the folk revival also either expressly or implicitly address bluegrass as part of a folk culture and as a revival. Works such as Benjamin Filene’s Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots

Music (2000) discuss the public’s perception of folk music and folk community: the definition of “folk” is often in the eye of the beholder. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s writings, particularly “Folklore’s Crisis,” (1998) touch on definitions of the “folk” and folklore’s survival in spite of or because of technology and digital media. Neil

Rosenberg’s Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined (1993) also serves as a foundational text, covering bluegrass and other folk music revivals in the mid twentieth century, including a chapter on bluegrass in Japan. Writings on related genres, such as Charles Wolfe’s Kentucky Country: Folk and Country Music of Kentucky

(1982) and Bill Malone’s Country Music, U.S.A. (1968/2002), center bluegrass in a larger frame of reference – as one of many forms of American Vernacular music.

Musical Technoculture

In the area of musical technoculture, specifically that pertaining to the Internet, I have found a number of readings useful as starting points. René Lysloff and Leslie

Gay’s Music and Technoculture (2003) stands out as the current major work relating ethnomusicology with technology. Trevor J. Blank’s edited volume Folklore and the

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Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World (2009) is the most recent volume relating folklore to technoculture, specifically Internet studies.

In other academic fields, Marjorie Kibby’s “Home on the Page” (2000) presents a study of a web-based John Prine discussion board, tracking members' participation and reactions. René Lysloff examines music communities on the Internet in both “Musical

Community on the Internet: an On-Line Ethnography” (2003) and “Musical Life in

Softcity: An Internet Ethnography,” (2003) two articles exploring identity in a “virtual world of disembodied presence” (255). Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson’s edited volume Music Scenes (2004) explores the effect of online scenes on the offline and overall music scene or community. Brian Wilson and Michael Atkinson also examine the on/offline overlap in the article “Rave and Straightedge, the Virtual and the Real:

Exploring Online and Offline Experiences in Canadian Youth Subcultures” (2005).

Wanda Bryant’s 1995 dissertation Virtual Music Communities: The Folk-Music Internet

Discussion Group as a Cultural System inspired a new generation of Internet-based scholars and provides an early view to an online community such as the bluegrass community of my research.

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Baym, Nancy K. 1993. “Interpreting Soap Operas and Creating Community: Inside a Computer- mediated Fan Culture.” Journal of Folklore Research 30(2/3):143-76.

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APPENDIX

Online Bluegrass Community Survey Questions

1. In what way(s) are you involved with bluegrass, both online and offline?

2. What attracts you to bluegrass?

3. How long (in years) have you had access to the Internet?

4. Of which bluegrass-related listservs are you a member? a. BGRASS-L b. IBMA-L c. BLUEGRASS-L d. Other (please specify)

5. How long have you subscribed to each (in years)? a. BGRASS-L b. IBMA-L c. BLUEGRASS-L d. OTHER

6. Why do you subscribe to each listserv?

7. Do you participate in listserv discussions? Why/Why not?

8. What topics of discussion are most popular?

9. Which bluegrass-related blogs do you read? a. Bluegrass Blog b. Bluegrass Journal c. Other (please specify)

10. Why do you read these blogs?

11. Do you participate in forums and/or leave comments on blog posts? a. Often b. Sometimes c. Never

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12. Do you write for a blog? a. Yes b. No c. Web address of Blog (optional)

13. Which social networking sites do you belong to or visit? a. MySpace b. Facebook c. Twitter d. GrassSpace e. Friendster f. Other (please specify)

14. Do you prefer one social networking site over the others? Why?

15. Why do you participate in social networking sites?

16. Do you feel that these social networks constitute a community? Why or why not?

17. Do you feel that there is a bluegrass "community" online? Why or why not?

18. Any additional comments?

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