This Friday and Saturday, Raleigh Wide Open is taking over the streets of our state's capital. The festival is a celebration of American roots music ranging from gospel to folk and also features arts, crafts, and food from local vendors.
It also offers attendees a heavy dose of both old-time and bluegrass music from some of North Carolina's leading artists in the genres. To the casual listener, these two types of music might be hard to tell apart. Both genres of music predominantly feature stringed instruments like fiddles and banjos, and while there are differences, they can be subtle.
"This is something I run into a lot as a teacher," said Tatiana Hargreaves , one of this generation's most accomplished fiddlers who teaches at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. "Oftentimes, what I say to my students is that old-time is what existed before bluegrass. Bluegrass is really a modern genre, it didn't really congeal into a genre until the 1940s."
Bluegrass came out of old-time, blues, gospel, and jazz.
"So old-time is part of the roots of bluegrass," said Hargreaves.
While Native American music predates it, old-time is known as one of the earliest forms of traditional music in North America. It has roots in different cultures from around the world ranging from Africa to Ireland.
"It's based around dancing and community gatherings. Bluegrass is more of a performance genre," Hargreaves said. "That's changed a lot over time, but bluegrass originally started as commercial, performance music."
Once you get into the history and nuances of the two styles of music you learn that people can be attracted to them for slightly different reasons. There are plenty of people who enjoy and play both styles of music, but there is also a bit of a playful rivalry between modern day players.
"There's a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek ribbing that goes on back and forth," said bluegrass band Hank, Patty & The Current's Hank Smith. Smith also teaches banjo, guitar, mandolin, and bluegrass fundamentals at UNC-Chapel Hill. "It's like two teams going against each other when they actually play for the same team."
For the most part, the ribbing is all in good fun. Players of both styles of music often convene with friends and peers for jam sessions.
Joey Pilot is a musician who runs an open bluegrass jam at Bond Brothers brewery in Cary every Sunday afternoon. His band is the Eastside Ramblers and he notes that they play "both types" of music. At the jams, Pilot's band opens things up with an hour-long set before letting whoever shows up with an instrument take over to jam. "It's a good place for people to come hang out and listen to music and have a great time," he told WUNC.
Pilot says that while he plays both types of music, old-time jams might be more approachable to newcomers. "Bluegrass jams tend to have more preconceptions about who they want and what they want," he said. "In old-time, since you're generally playing the same rhythms together, you can get away with things you can't in bluegrass. People might feel more self-conscious in bluegrass because you're more exposed and you're really putting yourself out there."
Russell Johnson, the director of the bluegrass ensemble at the UNC-Chapel Hill says that these days it's pretty easy for people starting out to find a bluegrass jam to join, including one with PineCone, the Raleigh organization that works to preserve and promote traditional folk music.
"It's a slow jam and I think they even have the chords there for everybody," Johnson said. "A lot of jams are almost like concentric circles. There'll be an inner circle of people that probably know the song, and then there'll be people in the outer circles that are just playing along and learning."
Misconceptions within the worlds of old-time and bluegrass
While old-time is known for its repetition, Hargreaves says that there is a misconception about it not being improvisational music.
"There is totally improvisation within old-time," she said. "It's not virtuosic solos like in bluegrass, but there are all these little micro adjustments and improvisations happening. You hardly ever play the tune the same way twice, and you're responding to the other instruments like you would in a band. One thing that frustrates me about the way bluegrass musicians sometimes talk about old-time music is they think it's simple. There are a lot of subtleties and complexities in old-time that don't exist in bluegrass."
Speaking about misconceptions in the bluegrass world, Hank Smith notes that the genre isn't as rigid as some people make it out to be. "There is some of that, but it really depends on where you go," he said. "In the southeast we have a lot of 'capital B' bluegrass that is strictly in the tradition of Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe. But if you go out west to Colorado the definition is a lot looser. It may just be a rock band with a banjo in it. Up north it's folkier. It might have more of a Kingston Trio or Pete Seeger influence to it."
