I have to confess something right now. I am an aging baby boomer. These days, when I listen to music it’s mostly music that has been around for quite some time. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great music and anyone could enjoy it just as much as I do. But let’s face it, I’m old and my tastes might not reflect the norms of the day, the zeitgeist as it were.
Most of what i like to listen to might be called old people’s music. That begs the question: Is bluegrass music old people’s music?
In the past few weeks I have been troubled by this question because I happened to catch a few performances by legendary artists from the folk and bluegrass scene who, though still entertaining, were clearly past their prime. I remember these special artists from a time when they were young and full of energy, setting the world on fire.
Despite the white hair, less nimble fingers and less agile voices, I enjoyed these performances from some of my heroes and heroines of the past but I noticed that the faces in the audience were mostly old like me. And there were some empty seats.
When I was young did I listen to “old people’s music”? You bet I did! I loved going to the symphony and listening to classical music. My mother took me to the opera. Even Lawrence Welk and his Geritol crowd had some good stuff that a sixties teenager could admit to liking. Music is a common language for young and old and it always has been.
Today bluegrass music is a really small part of the mass audience music scene but it still has its niche. If you take an average person who is young and open to hearing some new music, I would argue that you have a potential audience. Say that person happens to wander into a set by a really tight bluegrass band. Do you think they might possibly be hooked by the machine gun banjo rolls or the fiddle double stops or the tight vocal harmonies? That person would be a fool not to jump right into the living music that will always be bluegrass.
Sure, it’s a small market these days compared to other genres but there are a lot of good musicians still taking the music forward. Go to any CBA event and you will see kids and young adults that will blow you away with the old standards or their own original material.
Some day these young whipper-snapper musicians will be old like me. They will gravitate toward their peers and wonder where the music is going. And they will be playing and listening to music that will never grow never old.
