There is a sweet, sweet sound that was born many decades ago in the “hills and hollers” of southern Appalachia, and that amazing sound is still alive and well today. Bluegrass music is a distinctive genre with roots that run deep into the traditional Irish, Scotch and African music that accompanied the earliest immigrants from those lands to the new world.
These days Bluegrass is performed and enjoyed by folks all around the world, but its largest and strongest following is right here in the southern Appalachians where it first got its start. The up-tempo sounds of the fiddle, banjo, mandolin, dobro, flat-top guitar and doghouse bass can be heard on virtually a daily basis at venues ranging from back porches, churches and town squares to massive concert halls and performing arts centers. And the people playing this amazing music just might be wearing a pair of dirty overalls after having worked all day in the fields and factories or a coat and tails at a black-tie event. But one thing will be for certain – the music will be real, and it will be real good.
Here in the Mountain Empire region of Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia, we have what is likely the largest concentration of Bluegrass singers and musicians in the world. In the shadows of these beautiful mountains, the love and talent of performing Bluegrass music has been handed down from generation to generation, and virtually every community in the region has a number of families and individuals who can pick and sing just as good as anyone you’ll find working in Nashville.
One of the most interesting traits of Bluegrass musicians is their uncanny ability to meet up with a group of total strangers, practice in a parking lot for 10 minutes, and then walk onto a stage and put on a performance that makes them look and sound as if they have performed together for years! Their love of the music is obvious, and their dedication to performing it is unmatched by those in any other genre.
The people of the Appalachians have much to be thankful for, and one of our greatest blessings of all is the wonderful legacy of this special music that is so, well… authentically Appalachian. What a sweet, sweet sound!