Back when music was new as a form of commodity in
America, it hadn’t yet been divvied up like it is now, and they just had a “jukebox
singles” list, or the shit that got played the most in jukeboxes. It was a
folksy mix of honkytonk white folks and bluesy African-American shit. I’d
researched all this because I had been contemplating launching a podcast about
the history of number one country singles, and the earliest history of what is
now country, fell under that non-racially divided jukebox listing. It wasn’t
until later, when the industry made a concerted effort to segregate music into
racialized categories that this division became the standard. Organically, when
it was just people putting a coin into a jukebox – a true democracy – it was
far more mixed.
I bring all this up because bluegrass music is raw
as fuck, and one of the weirdest folk contributions to American culture that
came from an ethnic European subset, up in the nether regions of Scotland and
Ireland, and all the settler-colonials who weren’t English enough to be fine
and welcomed mightily into the Eastern strongholds of newfound American
culture, so they got sent out into the native wilderness to help settle it. “We
kinda hate you, but you’re better than non-Europeans, so go out there and make
that shit safe for us all, and if you succeed, well glory be to god we have
expanded our idea of what civilization is. And if you fail, well fuck it, it’s
not like you’re fine English people anyways.” Bluegrass hyperspeed twang is a
wonderful example of fermentation of old world shit plopped into strange
environments of a different continent, and something amazing sprouting from that
shitpile.
Ralph Stanley obvious is the God of bluegrass
music. The music form sort of revived itself in recent years with fringe
crossover from jam band circuits, and I’ll be honest, I don’t like a lot of
that stuff. And it’s weird, because you can’t really define what’s not good
about it, but it’s very much like when you hear some white dudes doing blues
music or jazz music or hip hop, and sure it’s technically fine, but something
integral is missing. Often times we just call this “soul” when we can’t put a
scientific thumb on what it really is.
In our racial divisions of whiteness and
non-whiteness, we sort of forget the fact that if you focus in on “whiteness”
alone, there’s a lot of shades of difference within that too. A lot of cultures
were oppressed and destroyed on the European continent alone, before global
expansion of certain European empires. I mean obviously the history of the
English in the British Isles is one of the best examples of this, with the Scots,
Irish, Welsh, Cornish, Manx, and others all having been conquered by the
English. All that just got laundered in the offshore investment operation of empire
that ended up being called America into a vague whiteness.
But there’s plenty of examples, even within vague
whiteness, where some white people just ain’t doing something else correctly that
other white people have a long history of doing pretty great. Bluegrass is that.
Shaggy-haired, oil bearded dudebros can learn the mandolin, can learn a banjo,
but it doesn’t mean they’re doing it in a strong way. Something often times is
still missing, which you can’t pinpoint, or teach, but would likely fall under
that “soul” term.
There’s a lot of weird Appalachian identity memes
online now, I guess people attempting to distance themselves from the dominant
white culture that’s done so much damage. A lot of that memetics looks heavy-handed,
and not real though. Ain’t all these people out here had somebody they called
Meemaw. Some of y’all performatively complaining about people putting soap in
your skillet bought that “skillet” at Target about three years ago.
But I ain’t here to complain (though I just did),
because when real culture hits – not planned culture like an English garden,
but feral culture that sprouts from the shitpiles of human existence,
volunteering itself to make life feel better – when that type of shit hits the
most dirtgodly high notes, it is transcendent. That’s Ralph Stanley in his
finest moments. When I die, I hope y’all remember to cremate me and scatter my
ashes around the 69th mile marker of the Rivanna subdivision line, between Scottsville
and Bremo Bluff, right near the Seven Islands where I used to play dominoes
with elven people. But I also hope y’all have a big ass party in a field somewhere,
and remember me in good ways, and hopefully somebody has the sense to play “I’ll
Fly Away” loud as fuck. Just do it from a car with the doors opened so
everybody can hear the radio though if all you can find is unqualified dudebros
to try and do a cover. If y’all have some raggedy ass shinefaces hiding behind
false beards playing bluegrass at my “Raven is dead, let’s remember that fool” celebration,
I’m gonna haunt the fuck out of you all.
