Discovering Bluegrass (as a lapsed classical violin student)

As someone who discovered bluegrass as an adult, I've always found it interesting to ask people about how they got into what is, let’s face it, a fairly niche genre of American music. In bluegrass and old-time circles, I think there’s sometimes a romanticized view that in order to be considered a true authority, you are required to have listened to this music while in the womb, and played in a family band while growing up, actually have brewed your own ‘mountain dew’, built your own cabin home in the Blue Ridge mountains, etc. - and even that might not be sufficient, because if someone else comes along with a yarn of how they once met Bill Monroe for ten seconds at Bean Blossom thirty years ago, then all your authority may be upstaged! But what I’ve found, at least in the Bay Area in California, is that most people discover this music through a variety of paths, and it’s interesting to hear about the different journeys that people take.

I know that the path that I took isn’t unique, particularly among fiddle players: I came into the world of folk music from classical music. I started playing the violin in elementary school and, like many others, learned classical violin repertoire through the Suzuki method.

Looking back at my memories of playing the violin as a kid, I have to admit to having mixed emotions. There were parts of it that I certainly enjoyed. It exposed me to world of classical violin repertoire, which I think contains some of the most beautiful music ever composed. Go listen to Meditation from Thais by Jules Massenet, or if that’s too schmaltzy, I’m quite partial to the lovely wistfulness of Beethoven’s Romance No. 2 in F major. There are skills that classical training gave me that I’m now quite grateful for: I can’t remember a time that I haven’t been able to read music, and I learned enough music theory to get by in most genres, although I have to admit that I’m mostly lost in the woods when it comes to jazz.

But there were other parts of playing violin that I didn’t like so much. There was, of course, the mad scramble every week where I frantically practiced in the hour or two before my lesson with my violin teacher, praying that I’d be able to fool her into thinking that I’d actually been practicing regularly throughout the week. (Spoiler alert: I’m pretty sure I never actually fooled any of my violin teachers.)

There was also the muted passive-aggressive competitiveness among the other kids I knew who played violin, usually people I knew through orchestra, where there were sometimes not-so-subtle remarks about who got selected for the first violin section vs. the second violin section, or who would get to be concertmaster/mistress, etc. The fact that there are also literally dozens of violinists in orchestra also made me feel a little bit beside the point; would anyone even notice if I didn’t show up at rehearsal? What difference did one violin make, anyways?

But the thing that actually demotivated me the most was, ironically, listening to professional recordings that introduced me to all of that wonderful violin repertoire. What was the point of trying to learn the Mendelssohn concerto, or the Bach sonatas and partitas, or the Paganini caprices, when I already knew even before I started that I was never, ever going to be able to play any of those pieces as well as Itzakh Perlman, or Pinchas Zukerman, or Sarah Chang? (This feeling of demotivation was particularly acute when I listened to albums by child prodigies.) Why even try playing this game in the first place, when I knew that I’d already lost?

And so even though I enjoyed playing the violin in middle school and high school, I put the instrument away when I went to college, and didn’t touch it for years. It wasn’t until I moved back to California to look for work that I decided to open that case again. I found that I missed making music, and figured I shouldn’t let all those years of violin lessons just go to waste.

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I found the first few weeks of playing the violin again to be truly frustrating - if I’d been discouraged as a kid at the gulf between my playing and the playing I heard by professional soloists on CDs, then that gulf had widened to a canyon. I recorded myself playing some basic scales and exercises, and winced when I listened back; it sounded like I’d lost all sense of rhythm or fluency, everything sounding choppy, herky-jerky, like I was playing while riding in a car with broken shock absorbers.

This did, eventually, get better! But re-learning to play the violin didn’t really solve the other part of the problem. I’d opened up my violin case again because I’d missed making music, and more particularly I’d missed making music with other people. It didn’t seem like there were a lot of opportunities to make music with other people; I half-heartedly looked into a few community orchestras that were around, but the memories of how small and replaceable I felt in high school orchestra brought an end to that. What I really wanted - (and still think would be a lot of fun, incidentally) - was to play chamber music with other people. In chamber music, a small group of musicians play together: each instrumentalist has their own part to play, but each part intersects and interacts with each other part, in sort of intricate, interlocking puzzle.

But in my experience, it doesn’t seem like there’s a widespread culture of amateur classical musicians getting together to play chamber music together. I wish there was, and maybe there’s a different culture among professionals, but for somebody like me, who on a good day could maybe be classed as a semi-talented amateur rather than an outright hack - and who didn’t have a lot of musician friends - trying to find people to play with felt like an insurmountable task.

But then one day, I was browsing the website of a local music venue, and noticed that they had a page for ‘Education.’ It turns out that they offered music classes for adults in various subjects: swing guitar, songwriting, ukulele. But the class that caught my eye was a beginning bluegrass jam class; the description promised that students didn’t need any particular background in bluegrass, and that nothing was needed beyond a basic level of ability on your instrument and a desire to play music with others.

Well, I certainly didn’t have any background in bluegrass. I’d heard the term before, although I would have been hard pressed to name any bluegrass songs.¹ Maybe there were banjos involved, somehow? But, what the heck; the class fee was reasonable, it was scheduled at a reasonable time and at a convenient location, and the description said that the violin (well, it said fiddle, but same difference) counted as a bluegrass instrument. So, I signed up.

I really didn’t know what to expect when I attended the first class. There was a mix of other first-timers who were equally clueless, to people who had clearly been coming to this class for ages and knew a lot about bluegrass. Luckily, the instructor gave a quick intro to the history of bluegrass, and then instructed us on the etiquette rules of bluegrass jamming.

The way that a jam circle worked, he explained, is that we would go around the circle and each person would pick a song to lead. If it was a singing song, then the person who picked the song would lead off by singing a verse and chorus, and then the person to the left of them would take a “break” or a solo over the melody of the song. Then the next person to the left of them would take another break, and so on and so forth until the singer jumped in with another verse and chorus. After the chorus, the next person in the circle who hadn’t yet taken a solo would start playing their break, and the song would move around the circle until it got back to the singer who would sing the last verse and chorus, wrapping up the song.

I raised my hand. “Wait, so what are we supposed to play during our solos?”

“Well, you can play the melody, and add different licks or phrases to make your solo sound fancy,” the instructor replied.

I was skeptical. I was very, very skeptical.

“Uh, but what if you don’t know the song?”

“In that case, you can improvise over the chord changes. Just make it up as you go!”

And that was the point where I came to a juddering halt. Imagine a lot of high-pitched screeching going on inside my head.

Improvise? Over the chord changes? Improvise? Over? Chords? Chord changes?

Make it up? MAKE IT UP?!?

I knew what each of the words meant individually, but strung together they did not compute.

Classical violinist self: What does he mean, make it up as you go? How are we supposed to know what to play if there isn’t any sheet music?

Me: (trying to stem the rising tide of terror) I’ll figure something out, the other people in the class seem to be able to do it. How hard can improvisation be? (*Future self doubles over laughing.*)

Classical violinist self: Improvise? The only time you’ve ever improvised a note in your life is when you’ve *forgotten how the song is supposed to go*, and that is called FAILURE, not IMPROVISATION.

Me: Look, I can just play arpeggios over the chords if worst comes to worst. It won’t be very interesting, but at least it should sound okay.

Classical violinist self: You’re just going to sound like you’re playing études, and you don’t play even études by ear! That’s what ETUDE BOOKS are for! What rhythm are you going to play? What are you going to do about bowing? How will you know when they’re going to change chords? What if they pick a weird key, like, D flat major? HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT TO PLAY IF THERE ISN’T ANY SHEET MUSIC?!?

Me: All right, quiet down now, they’re starting the song.

Classical violinist self: (now flailing like a chicken with its head cut off) THERE’S NO SHEET MUSIC, WE’RE NOT GONNA MAKE IT THROUGH THIS ALIVE - ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO -

Me: (now determinedly ignoring classical violinist self, loudly joining in on the chorus) You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...

Classical violinist self: WE’RE DOOMED

Me: (plowing onward) You make me happy, when skies are gray...

Classical violinist self: DOOMED I SAY

There were a few songs called during that first class that I recognized, like ‘You are my Sunshine,’ and ‘I’ll Fly Away.’ But most of the songs were new to me, and since the instructor told us that we could shake our head to tell the person leading the song to skip us for a break, I spent a lot of that first class shaking my head. I think that I may have attempted a solo on one of the few songs I knew during that first class, but I honestly can’t remember - the overriding memory I have is the peculiar feeling of perplexed skepticism warring with gibbering fear that was triggered by hearing that I was expected to improvise.

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And yet, as I kept attending the class sessions, I realized that I was hooked. Despite the low-grade nausea I experienced whenever the song passed to me in the circle, I did start attempting to take solos, at least on the songs that I knew, or the simpler songs. More importantly, I realized that the this class offered what I’d been looking for: I was making music with other people, in a setting where each person had their chance to take the spotlight, where everyone else in the circle listened and heard what that person had to say for those 16 or 32 measures. And even if I didn’t take a solo on a particular song but chopped or played long notes in the background, there was still something gratifying about being part of a group effort to join together and create this arrangement and this instance of this song, at this moment, with these people.

And so when the sessions for that class ended, I signed up for another set of sessions, and then another after that. And then I eventually ventured out to local bluegrass jams, and then I went to a local old-time festival, and then I drove to one of the bigger bluegrass festivals in the state, which was both a lot of fun and also a forceful reminder of how much I dislike camping, and then I decided to go to bluegrass festival out of state, and then, and then, and then...

And so that’s the story of how I ended up discovering and then falling down the rabbit hole of bluegrass. There are many different things that I enjoy about bluegrass music and its culture, but the thing I love the most is that each and every bluegrass jam offers the opportunity to make music and be creative with other people: a chance to hear and be heard, to see and be seen.

(Although I do have to say on the occasions when I completely bomb on a solo these days - which fortunately has become somewhat less frequent! - those are the times when I hope that people maybe weren’t listening very closely after all...)

So what's your story? How did you discover bluegrass? What do you appreciate about it?

1. I later realized that I wasn’t as ignorant to bluegrass as I’d initially thought; after college, my taste in music had become rather eclectic, ranging from downtempo triphop to indie to blues-rock, and if the mood struck me I’d return back to classical music.

But the range of genres that I listened to included what might called Americana, and two of my favorite bands at the time (and they remain favorites of mine to this day) were the Wailin’ Jennys and Della Mae. I now know that the Wailin’ Jennys are probably more in the old-time music tradition, but Della Mae is and always has been unabashedly bluegrass; I guess I just didn’t read their marketing copy closely enough when I first discovered them!