String Theory
In the Atlanta suburb where 13-year-old Sarah Schneider lives, the instrument tucked under her chin is called a violin. She plays it in her middle school orchestra and takes formal lessons. Here in Lexington, Kentucky, it is something else entirely. As she practices with Steve Mayo, a soft-spoken Indiana farmer more than three times her age, skipping and then pushing the bow across the strings, trying repeatedly to get just the right combination of notes, the instrument in question is a fiddle. Sarah is at a music camp hosted by the Festival of the Bluegrass, a four-day outdoor music festival where students learn to play bluegrass the traditional way—one riff at a time, from seasoned musicians.
"Nobody in my school plays music like this, but I've been listening to it all my life," Sarah says. "It's fun." Her grandmother, Patty Gillespie of Shepherdsville, Kentucky, observes her progress from a nearby chair in the shade. Gillespie has attended the Festival of the Bluegrass all 30 years it's taken place. She carries a sandwich bag with pictures of her children alongside bluegrass players and one of her husband selling a horse to Bill Monroe, the mandolin-playing "Father of Bluegrass." Watching her granddaughter, she beams as the music she's always loved becomes something more personal.
These are changing times for bluegrass. The musical form, with its fast- paced harmonic sound, was created by self-taught farmers, miners, and working- class people who were in the midst of a transition themselves—from rural lives in Appalachia and the South to factory work in bigger cities—in the years after the Great Depression. Now, the style is seeing many of its original masters pass from the stage. At the same time, country music, which has long had a noticeable connection with bluegrass instruments and styles, is moving away from its roots toward a more commercial pop sound. Yet the twangy, acoustic sounds of old-time songs like "Muleskinner Blues" or "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" still have the power to captivate listeners, as demonstrated by the success of the soundtrack to the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? The album, a collection of bluegrass and folk songs from artists like Emmylou Harris and Ralph Stanley, won a Grammy for Album of the Year and sold more than 6 million copies. Seizing a rare moment when mainstream America had a bluegrass tune in its head, the music's supporters have stepped up their efforts to promote it,...
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