Bluegrass whistle again

[Bartleby]

I sat in with a Bluegrass band's practice session once.
One of the wives said, "It sounds like that Celtic crap to me!!",

I grew up around bluegrass music and that type of attitude is one of the things that turns me off about playing with many "bluegrass" musicians. I think they fail to see the music's true origins and they mistakenly believe that it is some type of new genre of music that was invented by Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, etc. The five-string banjo was really the majopr musical innovation that brought in modern bluegrass, IMHO, but the music itself was, and is, simply traditional mountain music that was passed down and evolved from our forefathers.

What is most irritating is that many traditional "bluegrassers" are not only very pedantic about what songs can be played, they're extremely rigid about what instruments can be used. Irish musicians seem to be more open to adapting any instrument to their music- like the bouzouki, the accordion, or the 5-string banjo.

[jim stone]

Well, Missouri is the 'show me' state. Everybody has been very
welcoming so far. Just played on Saturday an Irish flute with another bluegrassy/ old timey group. No question they were glad
I was there--asked lots of questions about the instrument
e.g. how many keys it plays in and so on.

So far the only fellow who has doubts about whether the
instrument works in a string-band is myself.

[JS]

Ah, but look what you've done, Jim. You got all those old time tunes going in my head, which led me to take out the fiddle after too long a lay-off, which led to cross-tuning the thing, all of which led to the need to find twice as much time in the day to try to play stuf, which will lead to who knows what level of distraction from what (I guess) I ought to be doing. Not to mention time hanging around at http://www.oldtimemusic.com/, and digging out the Bruce Molsky, Tommy Jarrell, Crooked Jades, and Walt Koken cds.