Love this little group

[Phil Perry]

[turboplanner]

Nice to hear a group singing both melody and a story these days. Only this week a friend of mine in Scotland posted a video of an old guy singing a 1745 Jacobite song.

The US industry is claiming Country music started in 1922 in the Appalachians but that music came over from Scotland and Ireland with the people fleeing Lord Cumberland who was keen to kill every Highlander, the "Clearances" of the 1800s and the Irish forced into poverty.

A lot of people are griping about Coronavirus and their freedoms, but 87 Camerons in one valley in Scotland were told to get out by the end of the week, and the only places were overseas.

These people took fiddles and other small instruments and told their stories in song.

DJ Ralph Emery documented their music in the Appalachians. I couldn't find the segment, but posted my friend one of Ralph's All Stars events, but the singers were pretty much all dead, so hope the Petersens stay together and make plenty of music.

[IBob]

I guess all music is some sort of evolution. It surprises me to hear that anyone thinks this particular strand 'started' in the Appalachians: as Turbo points out, the whole foundation of early bluegrass is fiddle music: the banjo is trying to follow the fiddle melody, the mandolin is tuned exactly the same as the fiddle and doing the same. And the tunes are so similar to the Irish and Scottish rags, reels and airs, they may as well be the same.

 

But it has inevitably evolved too: the finger picking of the banjo is American, as is the tenor harmony. I don't know where the dobro/steel/slide guitar found it's way in. And it would be interesting to know at what point the mandolin became a flat backed instrument: the earlier Neapolitan mandolin has a rounded back like a lute.

[IBob]

My alltime favourite from the strand that is 'tearass bluegrass' is Return to Dismal Swamp from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (who also gave us the definitive version of Mr Bojangles). Here you also have great flatpicking of the guitar, which is another American innovation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq8QDbp_oiw

[Flightrite]

Still prefer the Dixie chicks in ever sense of the word?

[APenNameAndThatA]

Nice to hear a group singing both melody and a story these days. Only this week a friend of mine in Scotland posted a video of an old guy singing a 1745 Jacobite song.

The US industry is claiming Country music started in 1922 in the Appalachians but that music came over from Scotland and Ireland with the people fleeing Lord Cumberland who was keen to kill every Highlander, the "Clearances" of the 1800s and the Irish forced into poverty.

A lot of people are griping about Coronavirus and their freedoms, but 87 Camerons in one valley in Scotland were told to get out by the end of the week, and the only places were overseas.

These people took fiddles and other small instruments and told their stories in song.

DJ Ralph Emery documented their music in the Appalachians. I couldn't find the segment, but posted my friend one of Ralph's All Stars events, but the singers were pretty much all dead, so hope the Petersens stay together and make plenty of music.

 

Kings In Grass Castles gives an Australian perspective on the Irish forced to leave. Amazing story. ≈ 10 years after Burke and Wills died, there were settlers in the area of the dig tree. I'm still *p-ssed* if the internet goes down.

[pmccarthy]

I understand the rednecks were Scots who wore a red cloth around their necks as a political statement when they arrived in America.