Let the record state, I have recently fallen in love with bluegrass music.
As a music fiend of many years past, I’ve doused my ears with everything from A Love Supreme to The Black Keys. In college, I was of the breed that packed like sardines into a local club for a few notes from the likes of Anathallo; and in early adulthood I have swooned over the tunes of Brooke Waggoner, Ratatat, and Jonsi. But never did I ever think I would fall over to the dark side of anything that resembled country music. Banjos and fiddles, no sir. The thought of rocking my hips to the beat of tunes reminiscent of country line dancers has always been the farthest thing from exciting in my book.
Yet the same girl who once mocked Dollywood as backwoods country nonsense is now swooning over covers of “I’m Gonna Sleep with One Eye Open.” Truth be told, there is just something wonderful about that pared-down, comfortable enough to cut the fool when a few wrong notes are hit, experience. It feels authentic and inviting. Likewise, it breathes a sympathy that acknowledges that the world is spinning rapidly but reminds us that we don’t always have to keep pace.
In my short relationship with this brand of music, I have learned that bluegrass cannot be fully appreciated until it is experienced “in the moment.” There’s something about the genre that just does not translate the same at a distance as it does in the flesh. The ethos of a few hours of shared aural experience in a sparsely decorated room with antique wood floors and a few tattered thrift store chairs strums a rhythm that brings its audience together. Social barriers are broken down, and people feel at ease approaching strangers to strike up a conversation or ask for a dance. All in all, the connection that is experienced through such music is a feeling of presence, a feeling of rootedness. To fully grasp it, you must taste and see. It is, to reference Polyani, a kind of tacit knowing.
At a recent office-wide lunch, I joked with a few colleagues that I had become a groupie of a bluegrass band here in town. The great irony is that this joke is fairly true-to-reality. As I recently recounted my weekend past, I realized that a brief house show played by said band, was the true highlight of my time out of the office. After only a small initial dose of their elixirs, I can now hardly avoid any opportunity to listen closely, jig and sway, to the tunes of these musicians. Following this band-multiple days a week at times-I have become enraptured in the experience of their music. Again and again, surrounded by a roomful of grinning twenty and thirty somethings, the stresses of my week melt away to a series of foot tapping beats. Collectively, we experience songs that stir our spirits and warm our hearts like hot toddies on a cold winter evening.
In surprising ways, my experience of bluegrass has moved me. It has stirred up the part of me that longs to live in a place where I know my neighbors’ names and spend Saturday afternoons sitting on a front porch with a big pitcher of lemonade. Stepping into musical experiences where one might find a husband and wife duo jovially strumming melodies on a small stage in a wooded backyard, my heart fills with nostalgia. The pace of life to which bluegrass tunes often allude is characteristic of my childhood in the south. Yet today, the very notion feels incredibly foreign and almost idealistic. My day-to-day is now filled with subway rides across town and afternoon tet-a-tets in tea shops filled with foreigners. Life feels exciting, but it also sometimes, perhaps even often, feels exhausting.
My generation is craving the lessons that the bluegrass experience can impart. Modern bluegrass artists like The Dave Rawlings Machine, Gillian Welch, and my new friends in The Second String Band here in DC, remind us that there is more to life than rush and go, see and be seen. There is a casual restfulness to such music, which one cannot help but soak up when basking in its presence. Grasping to put this feeling into words, one might say that this music speaks to the part of us that often lies below the surface but is longing to be unearthed. If my own experience is any indication, the more persistent we are to discover it, the stronger its allure.