Despite what many would be led to believe due to the innate connection between Monroe and his mandolin, the true pillars of the bluegrass style are the fiddle and banjo, a combination that has been reported to occur since the mid-eighteenth century.
The American Old-Time and eventually bluegrass fiddle style can first be traced to the French Quadrille tradition as well as the French Contradanse in the seventeenth century. While not directly connected to Irish and Scottish fiddle styles, they soon became acquainted due to their shared association with England. In contrast to past English royalty, Charles II’s travels to France resulted in an explicit preference for the French styles of vocals as well as dance. The quadrille eventually became the framework for the reel, a simpler Irish dance that did not contain elements that displayed dancers’ abilities and became immensely popular in England during the 1780s. The synthesis of these French, Irish and Scottish styles was what came into the new world in the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. And while it can’t be explicitly traced, it is very safe to assume that much of the old-time material performed today is inspired by or derived from these tunes created under this framework. Along with reels being framed under the quadrille form, they were also advertised as the evolution of the quadrille in the regard that they were the new elite dance for distinguished parties and royal events. Due to the elite nature of these events, the members were much more knowledgeable and skilled in terms of dance moves which resulted in a more complicated pattern of steps in the old world. Once these types of events moved to the new world the steps became less and less complicated and more and more purposed for lower class and slave gatherings. After the war of 1812, anti-British sentiment resulted in a conscious distancing and removal of all English vestiges which resulted in a much more simplified form of dance which didn’t even call for a dance leader, but instead solely a fiddler who could play tunes in time for as long as possible.
It has also been established that white culture in the new world had been introduced and influenced by the banjo during this era. This resulted in a change of musical style in the English derived dances that spread to the new world in the eighteenth century. After a large portion of the century being performed with a sole fiddler as the dance leader, the African influenced banjo was introduced and added rhythmic variety as well as dynamic energy to the events. In the early part of this era, the banjo was such a successful and profitable instrument that it became the symbol and tool for America’s first popular music: the minstrel song. Not only were these songs performed with the use of banjo techniques that would inspire the evolution of the banjo towards the three-fingered style bluegrass musicians know today, the technique of striking the top string with the thumb and strumming the rest of the strings with your other fingers ( a technique derived from black musicians and repurposed by early minstrel stars such as Dan Emmett and Joel Walker Sweeney) was appropriated by the “hillbilly” record mainstays such as Maybell Carter and later Lester Flatt who instilled it as the standard for bluegrass guitar rhythm.
Not only were these minstrel songs inspired by black banjo musicians of the past, but their material was derived mostly from the melodies and lyrical tropes of Scottish and Irish ballad music that was brought to the new world along with European fiddle techniques. This American popular music moved closer into what many would consider “old time” today with the implementation of guitar backup using the previously mentioned style traits of the minstrel banjo tradition. This pushed the banjo into a harmonic accompaniment role.
In terms of vocal style, the “high lonesome sound” characteristic of bluegrass derives from the modal nature of Irish Sean Nos singing in addition to the shape note vocals that Monroe, as well as many other southern future bluegrass musicians, grew up chanting in their local churc
