Lance LeRoy on the Future of Bluegrass

Lance LeRoy, founder of the International Bluegrass Music Association recently sat down with IBMA's Nancy Cardwell  to reflect on the association's first and next 25 years.   The following is an except from that interview published in the IBMA December Newsletter. To read the full article, click on the link at the end.

Lance LeRoy, IBMA Founder

Looking toward the future, LeRoy believes the most important thing to do is to preserve the identity of bluegrass music, the unique sound created by the first generation bands who created it. “I hope we don’t follow the route of country music,” LeRoy says frankly—“in other words, dilute it in order to gain more popularity. Bluegrass will never be a mainstream music. The only way it might ever be, would be to dilute it and call it bluegrass, but it not really be bluegrass. And there’s too much of that going on as it is, already.  Some of these groups, what they play isn’t bluegrass, but yet they appear as guests on the Opry and on the IBMA Awards Show and they go as bluegrass. They’re acoustic generally, but that’s about as far as it goes.” 

“I’d like to go on record as saying one other thing,” LeRoy says, putting on his journalist and linguist hats.  “I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as ‘traditional bluegrass’ or ‘contemporary bluegrass.’ It’s progressive or contemporary acoustic music.  It ceases being bluegrass when you’re no longer doing it the way Flatt & Scruggs did it, or Bill Monroe or Jim & Jesse. It ceases to be bluegrass when they deviate from that style.”  And to say “traditional bluegrass” is redundant,  he adds.

Full Story

 _____________________________