In Europe, dozens of bluegrass concerts, festivals, workshops and jam sessions take place throughout the year. Homegrown bands take center stage, but American musicians also often tour. And local bluegrass associations, Web sites, blogs and publications promote the music and chronicle events. Scotland, the Czech Republic, Norway and other locations have even had bluegrass programs in public schools.
The scene is small but intensely active, said Dennis Schut, a Dutch musician who has been involved in bluegrass since the 1970s. “I see it as a sort of religion or something,” he said. “You get addicted to bluegrass. The first time you hear it, you’re hooked.”
The Czech bluegrass band Cwrkot at the Banjo Jamboree, Caslav, CZ, 2007. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber
My article on Bluegrass in Europe appeared today in the International Herald Tribune and -- thanks to the Trib's new web site merger with the New York Times -- on the NYTimes web site.
The original peg for the story was going to be the European Bluegrass Summit I attended in Buehl, Germany two months ago -- but things cropped up in between, and the story ends up being more a preview of events in Europe for Worldwide Bluegrass Music Month in May. I also delayed long enough to be able to add a line about Druha Trava playing ahead of the Obama speech in Prague April 5...
Bluegrass Thrives, Far from Home
By RUTH ELLEN GRUBER
Published: April 9, 2009
PRAGUE — A recent concert in Prague demonstrated the far-flung reach of an infectious musical genre that spells “Americana” from the first ringing twang of a finger-picked string.
It was a concert of bluegrass music — but the event was a far cry from the high lonesome hills of Appalachia.
Lilly of the West, a bluegrass band from Bulgaria, was joined by Czech musicians for a performance hosted by the Bulgarian Culture Institute at its premises in the heart of the capital.
“The music is very sincere, it’s about the lyrics, about the songs; every song tells a story,” said Lilly Drumeva, the singer who founded the band more than a dozen years ago. She had first heard bluegrass in Vienna, she said, when she studied there in the early 1990s.
Famed for its close harmony singing and lightning-fast fingerwork on the banjo, mandolin and fiddle, bluegrass music has an international following among a passionate niche of devotees.
In Europe, dozens of bluegrass concerts, festivals, workshops and jam sessions take place throughout the year. Homegrown bands take center stage, but American musicians also often tour. And local bluegrass associations, Web sites, blogs and publications promote the music and chronicle events. Scotland, the Czech Republic, Norway and other locations have even had bluegrass programs in public schools.
The scene is small but intensely active, said Dennis Schut, a Dutch musician who has been involved in bluegrass since the 1970s.
“I see it as a sort of religion or something,” he said. “You get addicted to bluegrass. The first time you hear it, you’re hooked.”
The EBMA reports that there will be a "European Bluegrass Summit" in Buehl, Germany in Feburary. Doubtlessly, my friend Walter Fuchs, a country music fan/DJ, expert and author, is involved -- he founded an annual bluegrass festival in Buehl, and has been tireless in promoting the music.
* To provide an opportunity for a wide audience of up to forty participants to meet face to face, bond, and get to know each other,
* To highlight some of the issues affecting the promotion of bluegrass music in Europe,
* To explore the issues facing different countries and different cultures in Europe,
* To motivate people to work together more closely and to communicate more effectively.
There's a steering committee -- but it seems a little odd that there are no Czechs on it, given that there is more bluegrass per capita in the Czech Republic than just about anywhere else....
At the end of July, the weekend after the Country Rendez-vous in Craponne, I took in the first couple days of the European Bluegrass Music Festival and contest, held for the third time in the Alps at La Roche sur Foron, France, between Geneva and Mont Blanc.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to stay for the entire event, which ran July 30-August 3. One of the biggest bluegrass festivals in Europe, it featured 30 European bands and drew some 8,000-10,000 people. All concerts were free. The headline act was 3 Fox Drive from the United States, which had also performed in Craponne.
The festival was organized by the chairman of the French Bluegrass Music Association Christopher Howard-Williams, an English businessman who lives in La Roche, and sponsored by the town's mayor and tourist board.
Artists came from the Czech Republic, Britain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Slovenia, Russia and Sweden.
Winners this year -- judged on a long list of criteria including stage presence, repertoire, and use of bluegrass instruments -- were:
1. Monogram (Czech Republic), 2. Toy Hearts (Britain) 3. (Shared) G-Runs & Roses and Wyrton (both Czech)
It is not surprising that the Czechs did so well -- there is a long history of bluegrass in the Czech Republic, going back to the 1960s. From what I saw, the Czech groups that took part were mostly made up of younger musicians. This means that they grew up in the music; they did not discover it or start to learn it or listen to it as adults. They feel at home in the music, and it shows. Lee Bidgood has explored a lot of this in the thoughtful blog he was keeping while in the Czech Republic doing research on Czech bluegrass over the past year.
My good friend and bluegrass chronicler Lilly Pavlak, who is based in Switzerland but was born in CZ, will be posting a long report on the Festival on the European Bluegrass Blog.
Meanwhile here are a couple of links to some (fuzzy) video I have posted on youtube.
For several years I've been exploring the imaginary wild west in contemporary Europe -- observing and experiencing the many ways that Europeans embrace the mythology of the American Frontier to enhance, imbue or create their own identities. (Or, indeed, just have fun.) On this blog I will post pictures, stories and links relating to this multi-faceted subculture, from European country music to rodeos, theme parks, round-ups and saloons....
I'm an American writer, photographer, and public speaker long based in Europe. I've chronicled Jewish cultural developments and other contemporary European Jewish issues for more than 20 years and currently coordinate the web site www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu. My latest books are "National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe," published in 2007, and "Letters from Europe (and Elsewhere)," published in 2008.
I also am working on "Sturm, Twang and Sauerkraut Cowboys: Imaginary Wild Wests in Contemporary Europe," an exploration of the American West in the European imagination for which I won a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEH summer stipend grant. In 2015 I was the Distinguished Visiting Chair in Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston, SC.
Posts
