This is sort of bluegrbutt 101 for some of you, but I thought I'd throw it out to the group...

One facet of the history of American folk music in the 20th Century (which I've been doing as a study of bluegrbutt for an upcoming lecture in Spokane) is as a sort of technological sound battle. At the beginning of the 20th Century, fiddle and banjo dominated stringbands, because they're naturally the loudest instruments. Mandolin, with its double strings managed to be heard in early recordings, but not dominate. But as the guitar gained popularity it snuck in to the string bands, first as a bbutt instrument, later as a lead instrument. The technology part emerges from trying to get heard in a band situation. The historical small bodied parlor guitars (I've got a small 00-18 Martin) get lost in the crowd. One guitar answer was the Dreadnought (which I think is also a battleship), a large guitar with a louder sound. Another response was doubling the strings, as in 12-string guitars (also mandolins), although 12 strings never seemed to make it into old time and bluegrbutt for some reason. The steel bodied and resonator guitars also were built for volume. Meanwhile the banjo went from openbacked to adding its own resonator. Many of these instruments were also incorporated into jazz bands, where they lost out in the compebreastion with horns and reeds. So the electric pickup was added to guitars to bring it to parity, and the electric steel guitar was invented roughly concurrently. Meanwhile sound amplification systems were getting developed to help the voice compete, and eventually the acoustic bands learned to weave in and out from the microphone to do instant mixing. All this leads up to an ongoing debate in jamming circles as to the fairness of using amplifiers. On the surface, the easiest dividing line between folk and other musics is amplification, and that should be that. (Dylan certainly crossed that Rubicon playing electric at the Newport folk festival in the 60's) But while performing on stage different instrument volumes can be accounted for, playing acoustically leaves the tech war raging, with the fiddles and banjos still winning. I quit bringing my little Martin to jams, since I could hear it, mostly, but no one else could. My own contribution to the sound wars was to switch to 6 string banjo, which I can play as softly or loudly as I want, without using picks (which were another volume contribution in the sound wars). But there are still a few instruments that never caught up in the sound war, such as dulcimer and autoharp. They weren't ever designed for projecting sound, and often get lost in the shuffle. So the autoharpist I play with bought a nice little battery powered amp, with a very natural sound, and although generally accepted at jams, occasionally gets asked not to use it as it's an "acoustic jam." Another delineator is the use of drums. Nashville made a distinct turn in the 40's at first resisting both electric music and drums, then by the 50's becoming generally electric and percussion oriented. Bluegrbutt in its pure form resists both, but there are plenty of newgrbutt and fusion groups that have recorded with both, so while it might be a good delineator for purists, it's not for the whole genre any longer...

Brad Sondahl -- For my pottery how-to videos, original art, music, pottery, and literature, visit my homepage

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