Bluegrass!

Soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

During my high school years, my peers opted to re-brand the two prominent styles of music of our generation. We needed labels that penetrated the very heart of each music’s modus operandi that reached out to each individual’s subjective musical needs. No more did we listen to country and pop/rock. We, instead, tuned our ears to Twang and Pot-head music.

My musical tastes diverged enormously from those of my fellow students. Though Classical music, by this time, filled a void, I seemed always to search for something that most everyone else either carelessly or purposefully overlooked; something interesting rhythmically, something interesting acoustically, melodically, harmonically. Something that didn’t allow the “Billboard 100” to dictate the terms of what’s “hot” for how long. Something that didn’t simply grovel at your feet, looking for love, but something that floated above, extending a hand in an effort to pull you up. For the most part, I found what I sought.

But now, some twenty-five to thirty years later, I find joy in the music of my generation; the music that has withstood the test of twenty-five to thirty years. Isn’t that marvelous, reader? We can change! We are the works in progress that I talked about on blog entry number one. We fly in the face of our very natures if we remain static, if we devote ourselves to a single way of doing things only because we haven’t tried any other, if we refuse to check now and then to see if we still don’t like the taste of peas.

For years, Mom, Dad, my sisters and I deprived ourselves of the fine-tasting fare of Pizza Hut because, on our first visit, Dad thought the temperature inside was too cold and we had to wait thirty-five minutes for our food. Dad made a vow that evening. “Never again.” One warm day, on the spur of the moment, Mom, Dad and I went to Pizza Hut when they had no crowd. Dad got turned around on the issue. He changed.

In the spring of 2002, my friend James F. invited me over to watch a movie with some friends. He had rented “O Brother, Where Are Thou?”, produced, directed and written by the brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. It had been a long day of rehearsals with the Marine Band that day. I truly feared that I would fall asleep during the movie. And I did doze off a couple of times. But I was totally unprepared for the music they used for the soundtrack. Bluegrass! What? No. No, no, no, no. No. Bluegrass was my enemy by virtue of its association with Twang.

But, guess what. Somewhere along the line, I had changed. I heard spiritual music in this movie. Spiritual from the standpoint that the music bore the brunt of the work in describing the timbre of the scene, the clouds in the sky, the color of the gravel in the road, the shimmer of the dew on the leaves and the grass, the haze rising from the pond that served as a baptismal font for the masses. The KKK was scarier. The sirens were prettier. The chain gang was stripier because of this awesome music. Virtually the entire bluegrass community came together to create this soundtrack, awakening a whole new generation, or generations, to the full impact of the uniqueness, emotional depth, genuineness and simplicity of this rare American musical art form.

I love this movie. It’s one of the fifty or so movies that I keep on my list of top ten movies. Neither of my sisters like this movie. They say that it’s too weird. I hope they change some day.

Credits: To Pizza Hut. You make great pizza. Putt, putt, putt, to the Pizza Hut.