The difference

Modern Bluegrass has nothing to do with modern country music, and the three camps seem fairly arms-crossed and certain about that. But behind both of them is Old-Time. Which, whenever I say that to people who aren’t familiar with it, seem to get this glazed-over look of arthritic sarsaparilla drinking Alzheimer patients clapping their hands at a flat picked guitar.

No.

Old Time music means exactly that. That is comes from an older time in musical history than recent acoustic mountain incarnations. Old Time is the merging of Scotch/Irish reels, jigs, hornpipes and slides and the rhythm and energy of African music. Like all great American music. Throw in some old English Ballads about murder, love and vengence and you've got it. This blending of white and African sound made mountain music what it is. Energetic and heart racing or somber and lonesome at others. It has it’s own heartbeat of deep African drums and it’s arteries and ventricles are immigrants like the Italian mandolin, the Irish fiddle, the Cuban guitar and the German dulcimer. For an “American” invention, it is completely non-native. But like most things that are great about this country, it takes the best things of so many different cultures and fuses them together to create brand new animals. Think jazz, baseball, and the south beach diet. (I kid about that last one)

So, no disrespect to Bluegrass, which I recently would happily prefer to listen too than 70% of other types of music, but it is not old-time. To us historians it’s the excessive dressing up and nickel plating of something already utilitarian in it’s perfection.