By CHARLES HAND - For The Californian Posted: March 18, 2010 1:47 pm
Bluegrass is where the traditional meets the contemporary, where the rugged individualist amateur trained on someone's front porch meets highly trained professionals, where rural meets urban in a complex matrix of Scotch-Irish hill music wedded to country and contemporary.
This weekend's annual Old Town Temecula Bluegrass Festival will offer all that, and a few more oddities not likely to be found in more musical venues.
"There is barrier between performer and audience," said Alan Munde of the headliner band the Alan Munde Gazette. "It's a very collegial atmosphere. You might see the people who just finished on the stage sitting out in the audience."
That is part of what drew Munde into bluegrass, though he cannot really explain why he has loved the style since the moment he heard it.
"I have this theory that it's something genetic," he said.
Whatever the reason, Munde has spent his life in bluegrass one way or another, starting as performer and working his way up to teaching banjo in college. And still performing. That is something Munde said he will always want to do.
Munde got his start and early education in the way many bluegrass performers do it, by learning some on his own, imitating the things he heard on the radio and records, getting tutoring over the years by increasingly sophisticated professionals with whom he played, and eventually even getting formal instruction.
"Bluegrass is a lot about doing it on your own," Munde said. "To me ultimately it is seeing a lot of value in a person making music on his own." More...
Bluegrass is where the traditional meets the contemporary, where the rugged individualist amateur trained on someone's front porch meets highly trained professionals, where rural meets urban in a complex matrix of Scotch-Irish hill music wedded to country and contemporary.
This weekend's annual Old Town Temecula Bluegrass Festival will offer all that, and a few more oddities not likely to be found in more musical venues.
"There is barrier between performer and audience," said Alan Munde of the headliner band the Alan Munde Gazette. "It's a very collegial atmosphere. You might see the people who just finished on the stage sitting out in the audience."
That is part of what drew Munde into bluegrass, though he cannot really explain why he has loved the style since the moment he heard it.
"I have this theory that it's something genetic," he said.
Whatever the reason, Munde has spent his life in bluegrass one way or another, starting as performer and working his way up to teaching banjo in college. And still performing. That is something Munde said he will always want to do.
Munde got his start and early education in the way many bluegrass performers do it, by learning some on his own, imitating the things he heard on the radio and records, getting tutoring over the years by increasingly sophisticated professionals with whom he played, and eventually even getting formal instruction.
"Bluegrass is a lot about doing it on your own," Munde said. "To me ultimately it is seeing a lot of value in a person making music on his own." More...
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