A Bigger Tent: A Frank Conversation About Diversity And The Future Of Bluegrass
No music scene is monolithic, but few encompass the extremes of the bluegrass world. Both musically and ideologically, it runs the gamut from conservatism to progressivism, a range of sensibilities that it's rare to see commingling elsewhere in American society at this polarized moment.
There have been divergent ideas about what constitutes real-deal bluegrass and who can stake a claim to it nearly as long as the jazzy update on string band music has been around. The genre's classic template crystallized in the 1946 lineup of Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys (featuring tenor-singing guitarist Lester Flatt and banjo player Earl Scruggs), combining instrumental virtuosity and innovation with nostalgic song themes in a way that went over big in cities full of working-class, Appalachian expats. By the '60s, lefty folk revivalists from more middle-class, college-educated backgrounds were also latching onto the music as an authentic, unsullied folk form, which they considered to be the antithesis of a slick, commercialized countrypolitan sound.
Nashville's Jon Weisberger has devoted his music career to deliberately bridging those gaps. In the '70s, he decided to focus on making inroads in Cincinnati's blue-collar bluegrass scene, rather than join a more likeminded crowd of bluegrassers. "What I found was that for me personally, as somebody who was not from an Appalachian migrant background, that my cultural background and leanings put me in one milieu but my musical passion put me in another one, which was the more hillbilly one," he reflected. "Musically I felt
