Navigating Bluegrass Community on the Internet
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THE HIGH LONESOME WEB: NAVIGATING BLUEGRASS COMMUNITY ON THE INTERNET BY 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 ©2011 KATY E. LEONARD 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 iii 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) iv 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 v 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. vi 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 vii 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 viii 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. 2 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